I haven’t encountered a single vegetable-centered dish at any of the Thai, Japanese, Malaysian restaurants I’ve visited in LA. It is possible to eat differently from the rest of the world (re a conversation a few days ago about always having to order v...
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Adrianna Tanreplied to Adrianna Tan on last edited by [email protected]
The ‘why don’t you eat seasonal vegetables at every meal’ convo reminds me of the ‘why don’t people in Indonesia eat yogurt, it’s healthy’ convo. 1, there’s no dairy culture 2, only rich people can afford it, 3, and this one is really important: when you live at the equator there are.. no seasons! Ahahaha
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Adrianna Tanreplied to Adrianna Tan on last edited by [email protected]
(I used to meet backpackers in Thailand and Indonesia who were not used to the food. They often had very colonialist views on it too, right down to ‘there’s no yogurt here why don’t people eat it yogurt is healthy’ to ‘people here don’t eat veg’, so I feel quite strongly about this!)
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Adrianna Tanreplied to Adrianna Tan on last edited by
In southern Chinese food, we cook with so many types of vegetables. There’s celtuce, whose leaves you can cook like spinach and whose stem works like asparagus. There’s kohlrabi. There’s all kinds of gai lan and bok choy. There’s taro leaves. There’s sweet potato leaves. There’s water cress. It’s just different from veg in other cultures. There’s soups. There’s steamed stuff. There’s many veg in a dish with diff textures. Never roasted (we never use ovens)
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Adrianna Tanreplied to Adrianna Tan on last edited by
There’s at least 10 types of tofu (types, not tofu dishes). There’s hundreds of tofu dishes. There are so many types of veg soups. Often with pork, chicken, seafood, Chinese herbs, even with alcohol. Most of them have more veg than meat, but the meat is often essential in specific dishes for flavor (soups that are boiled for hours).
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Adrianna Tanreplied to Adrianna Tan on last edited by [email protected]
The reverse of this food culture shock is, when I ask my friends from Indonesia or Malaysia or Singapore how their trip to Europe was, they almost all say, beautiful countries.. way too much bread and potato (I can only do 3 days of it)
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neocolonial malcontent chicreplied to Adrianna Tan on last edited by
@skinnylatte yES
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Adrianna Tanreplied to neocolonial malcontent chic on last edited by [email protected]
@toridas_ one time I tried to explain the anti non veg Hindutva stuff and vegan Europeans thought I was making it up
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neocolonial malcontent chicreplied to Adrianna Tan on last edited by
@skinnylatte they were all probably white, too, were they?
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@skinnylatte I miss even San Francisco's variety of tofu. I need to drive to Denver to get anything close.
Especially miss getting fresh tofu cut on trays for you at Wo Chong on Washington St. Even after COVID, the price per block went up from 25 cents to 30 cents. I met the owner of Wo Chong when he came into the store once. He usually works in the factory, but he was a really, really nice guy who keeps their little market open there as a way of helping the community.
https://www.yelp.com/biz/wo-chong-company-san-francisco-3 -
@skinnylatte Portugal: meat and 4 carbs with every meal! Potato, rice, chips, bread. Tiny bit of salad if you're lucky.
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@skinnylatte @skinnylatte My understanding is that *most* of the world’s population can’t digest dairy anyway! It’s some kind of weird genetic mutation, if I recall.
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@mculbertson I think the severe lactose intolerance of a lot of East Asians in N America actually comes from hormones in the milk, not from lactose. That’s been true for me anyway. Lots of people do like milk but it’s just not the same way like in W or N Europe
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@skinnylatte “no dairy culture”. I get it!