Sunday, January 02, 2005

Chinese Lunch

We were gallivanting yesterday and got a little hungry so stopped by a huge Chinese shopping center. There are endless rows of produce, rows of products, and lots of Chinese. I also saw many Caucasian men shopping with their Asian wives. We went to the back where they were passing out samples just like at Costco, er, well, except the samples themselves were NOTHING like Costco's.

A man in a butcher's smock was handing out small, warm Tortillas and motioned to his little table of hot sauce and fish. Ruth made a wrap for me while I looked for a cart for all our stuff. When I got back everyone is standing around munching. I took a crunchy bite. What is this? Ruth whispers she doesn't like it. It felt as though I was grinding fish bones. I kept grinding.

I thought of what a friend said that spent five years in Taiwan:

"When I first went to the Chinese market I was appalled at what these folks were eating. But then I thought: They are surviving. No one's is dying here. Once I came to that conclusion I was fine."

So I kept chewing, what could I do? There was no spit bucket and I didn't want to offend. But I was looking for something to clear my palate. We passed two Chinese kids and their mom viewing the tank of eels.

Sushi. A Japanese man was making sushi plate lunches. The way the Japanese arrange their food is half the pleasure. He was making large sushi plates of twenty or so sushi slices. Some of this even my dad would like. Like the one that was simple rice sprinkled with sesame seeds stuffed with cucumber and avocado.


Shopping Chinese style

It didn't last past the parking lot.

We tore open the plastic wrap, emptied the shoyo, mixed the wasabi, laced a sliver of ginger on top, dipped and downed each mouth-watering bite.

...dave
Never eat more than you can lift. - Miss Piggy

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