FEEDING THE BIRD

This past week I've been living mainly on noodles with things. No, no famous dish from the bowels of an ancient city, served with reverence. Just usually rice stick noodles (米粉) with vegetable and meat add-ons, curry or chili pastes, stock or preserved seafood to deepen the flavour. My apartment mate, also infected with Covid, had been doing very much the same: wheat noodles (麵), veggies, chicken, and stock. Her preferences and mine do not overlap much. She eschews chilies. And prefers thin rice noodles, whereas I am fond of the broad ones. It's a textural thing.

As a Dutchman, I tend toward an Indonesian hue to my food.
She's Canto-American. Savoury - fresh - subtle.

What we can agree on is dried ingredients, fried egg on top, and occasionally tinned meat products. Of that latter I am fonder than she is by a wide margin. Same goes for dried fish and fermented shrimp paste.

Her essential condiment is oyster sauce. Mine is chili paste.

Where all comparisons fall apart is in the breakfast department. Like a typical American she likes to eat while waking up, whereas my idea of breakfast is coffee, a smoke, and a gloomy attitude till around eleven o'clock. At least until after I've spent time in the bathroom. Morning is for being depressingly European, and thinking about man's inhumanity to man, existential terrors, why Russia is a depraved state, and the price of herring. Some more coffee.
Another bowl of tobacco. Rain. Viking raids. A gothic-mediaeval gestalt.

Americans are insanely cheerful in the morning. It's very irritating.

Not far from 垃圾麵

The variety and convenience of noodles both accounts for their popularity and explains their dominance in a very large part of the world: from Pulau Penang all the way to Suzhou noodle restaurants thrive, from just before the crack of dawn till long after the movie theatres have shut down for the night.


Lunch for me today will be yauchoi, sliced pork, a preserved egg, with peanut & green curry rice noodles, sambal, slivered pickled veg (榨菜 'jaa choi'), and a double-bagger milk tea. It will be considerably later than hers. Customarily we feed the turkey vulture before eating.
He has grown fat while we get through Covid.

紅頭鷲

My current Sunday coworker whom I haven't seen since last I worked and will not see till nearly a week hence prefers Tabasco over Sriracha. The previous coworker liked Tapatio. Lee Kum Kee Sriracha is good, but I wish they'd add preservatives, so that once opened it doesn't gradually start tasting like pickle juice because of the effect of the vinegar.

Sydney Fylbert (the turkey vulture) claims to dislike hot condiments.
The truth, of course, is far otherwise.
He loves food.



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