STEP AWAY FROM THE DEEP FRYER

If you came to this blog more than once you might have noticed that food is often mentioned, sometimes till you're full of it and wish dammit that I would write about other things. Food is a consuming passion. Not only for me, but for most Americans, judging by the entire aisle at Walgreens with acid indigestion remedies and stool-softeners. We don't get enough of it.
Our holidays MUST feature sumptuous buffets.
It's the law.

In the next aisle over: diet aids and dietary supplements.

Diabetes rates and bowel cancer are spiralling out of control. So is kidney failure. These are just coincidences that we'll blame on the Russians and the Cold War.

Since World War Two there's been a burger in every pot.

Americans no longer eat hog's head chili.

That's Depression Era food.

Poor folks chow.

As you can probably tell from this illustration I like food. And it is easier to write about, without offending every Tom, Dick, and Harry than very many other subjects, which got me in trouble years ago, and which because I like peace and quiet I now seldom opinionate about.


However, I am not a social eater. This is a matter of circumstance. At the computer company down the peninsula I was. And I would happily organize trips to the civilized world for eaties at lunch time. At the law offices and later the toy company it was a different matter. Instead of urban types curious about good stuff to eat there were a lot of suburban bumpkins there, and people doing credit and collections for a living tend toward solitary vices anyhow. These days I work in the suburbs again, Marin County, where everyone complacently chows down on chicken nuggets and donuts, and other than kale there's a lot of kibble orthodoxy.

Yummy, yummy kale. Nom nom nom.


Home-cooked food would be nice.

Laksa: Seafood and chicken soup with noodles. There are two general kinds of laksa: coconut curry type, or sour tamarind broth.

Either way, it should contain dried toasted ground dried shrimp, kemiri nuts pounded in the mortar and pestle, plus fresh seafood, shredded cooked chicken, and beansprouts. With both rice stick noodles and Hokkien noodles. A thin coconut soup, made with chicken broth, touch of shrimp paste (蝦膏 'haa gou'; pâté de crevette), and a little fried garlic. Adding a roasted tomato or two, skinned and chopped, and a pinch of sugar is good. A shortcut for the bumbu (home made spice paste) would be to use a spoonful yellow curry paste. Add a dash of fish sauce and a dash of a vinegar-based hot sauce. Also minced scallion or chives.

Shrimp, clams, fish chunks. Fish balls. And shredded chicken.

Many of these ingredients aren't available in Marin.
But kale is. Abundantly.


Plus there's tofu.
Of course.



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