ABDOMINAL

Aside from the fact that that woman has one heck of an interesting sense of humour, there is one other major reason why despite our break-up I like having Savage Kitten still living with me.
No, it’s not the occasional unintended glimpse of skin – though that IS icing on the cake (I am, after all, quite pervy) – nor the fact that she has so few bad habits.

It’s the food thing.

For an American woman, she’s amazingly open minded about edibles. The fact that her parents were Cantonese may have had something to do with that. Though personally I think it’s an entirely self-cultivated virtue, seeing as her siblings are not nearly so broad in their culinary habits.

Most American-born people are negatively inclined towards such things as raw fish, rotten fish, dessicated fish, and totally putrid fish.

[Groene haring, bulatjong, da’ing, and trassi: Dutch raw herring, Indonesian style fermented fish condiment, hard dried fish, and thoroughly decomposed very salty shrimp-paste.]

But that’s not all.

In my mind’s eye looking around our kitchen: cans of coconut milk, matze meal, jars of gefilte fish, a bag of dried black mushrooms, a bag of mushroom fragments for soup, several cans of spam (in case there’s an earthquake), thick rice stick noodles, thin rice stick noodles, bean thread noodles, kong chai mien, little Italian spirals, udon, crinkly rice noodles, cod fish jerky, dried flounder, tinned eel, tinned dace, curry pastes, canned broth, century eggs, astragalus root (黄耆), rehmania (地黄), garlic, ginger, fermented black beans, glutinous rice flour, regular rice flour, corn flour, white flour, tapioca flour, black fungus, dried Chinese dates, powder chocolate, English hot chocolate, Mexican chocolate, wild honey, farm honey, several canisters and packets of tea, coriander seed, coriander seed powder, cumin seed, caraway seed (“shahi zeera”), mustard seed, fenugreek powder, fenugreek seeds, fennel seed, bay leaves, djarok parot, chiltepin, turmeric, saffron, stick cinnamon, powder cinnamon, nutmeg (whole and powdered), mace, five spice powder, tamo kuntji, langkuwas, sereh powder, dried trassi from Malaysia, star anise, kluwak nuts, kemiri nuts, Sichuan peppercorns, white pepper corns, black pepper corns, orris root powder, dried shrimp, Madagascar Vanilla, dried oysters, dried orange peel, dried tangerine peel, seaweed sheets, Texan long grain rice, Thai Jasmine rice, pudding rice, dried chile d’arbol, dried New Mexico chiles, dried guajillo, scallion biscuits, pickled lemon, lime oil-pickle, rice vinegar, white vinegar, dark vinegar, balsamic vinegar, etcetera.

Spare jars of chili paste and bottles of hot sauce, soy sauce, sherry, olive oil.
Irish whiskey, Scotch single-malt, Scandinavian Rye, and Genever.
Bottles of red wine (California and otherwise).

Yes, there’s stinky fish stuff in the refrigerator. Bottles, jars, packets. Plus a selection of other condiments.


Some of this stuff is NOT mine. But I know what to do with all of it.


If she were a rosy wasp American, none of this stuff would be there.
Instead, cans of tuna and boxes of hamburger helper. Which I do not know how to use.

I would return every night to the smell of either fresh cookies or lutefisk.

That, more than anything else, would probably turn me into an alcoholic.



NOTE: This obsessive mental tour of the pantry was prompted by a recent post on SEARCH FOR EMES.
In particular, this post: meat!astrophe:
Music. Evocative lyrics.
A little love song.
Play it. Loud.
You like.


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