the friday five for jan 13 2023
This one was about food, so how could i not? Check out the comm on thefridayfive.
1. What's a food you liked when you were younger but don't anymore?
I never really like-liked American-style junk food when i was younger, but i did eat it now and then. In particular i remember Hungry Jacks (aka Burger King) which i mostly ate when i was living in the Brisbane suburbs about one block from the restaurant. Maybe it helped that it was one of the only places open late in the area, and when i was a young drunk i still had the metabolism that made me want to eat food in the middle of the night. Nowadays i rarely eat American-style junk food, and when i do i always feel sad afterwards because it is incredibly bland, overpriced and even if you ordered a "meal" you still feel hungry.
It's so wack how popular it is, because in America you can go to Walmart and buy peanuts or oats for much cheaper and get way more calories and deliciousness. Wrap peanuts or 豆乾/tofu jerky in a tortilla with carrot or cucumber or tomato, plonk some guac or hummus, Tajín, beats any junk food burger a million times over. Oats plus dates, fresh fruit - cheaper, faster, more nutritious and way better than any fast food dessert. Although, to be fair, i never ate an American fast food dessert i liked, so that's not really in the spirit of the question.
I also used to like cheese, but since i started eating vegan at home and "mostly vegan" out... now when i see cheese just looking at it makes me feel bloated. I still get the intellectual appeal of a really strong blue, or an asskickingly sharp/mature cheddar, but plain old melty nachos/kraft dinner/toasted sandwich cheese just comes across repulsive to me now. I don't mind throwing a ton of oil because it makes my dumplings crispy and my baguette luscious, but cheese, God, i can barely even comprehend how i used to casually melt a ton of it onto everything. Ick.
2. What's a food you used to not like but now you do?
There are several foods that used to be my most hated.
When i was younger, i found onions and bell pepper/capsicum almost inedible. Now i am fine with onion (aka the inferior version of garlic) and i'll eat bell pepper (aka the inferior version of chili) if i must. Actually, i had some grilled green pepper tonight at 燒烤 BBQ, but it's definitely the flop Taiwanese version of 青椒 in China, which is the same kind of large green chili that they use to do chile relleno in Mexican cuisine.
The other big thing is pizza. For years i could not even be in the same room as a pizza, i found the smell so disgusting it literally made me gag and occasionally full-blown vomit. Nowadays i find most pizza hard to eat because of the excess of bland yellow spooge (see above), but after a childhood of visceral hatred, there was about a 10 year window where i learned to get it down without choking. My then-favorite version of pizza was introduced to me by my ex-wife: replace the tomato sauce with barbecue sauce, hold the mozzarella, then - as toppings - chicken, feta and broccoli. Trust me to end up liking the least pizza-like pizza you can order in a Canadian take-out joint.
I gotta say, for being an Italian (American?) invention, Taiwan (and China for that matter) is a billion times more ambitious with their pizzas than just offering a barbecue sauce option. We're talking fucking... durian, mango, century egg, curry, tripe, you name it, they have it all at the mainstream chains over here. Most western pizzerias are amateurs when it comes to throwing ridiculous shit on a piece of flatbread with melted cheese.
Anyway, point being, i used to hate pizza, then briefly i thought it was decent, and now i merely tolerate it. Last time i ate it was in Windsor where they have their own style featuring shredded pepperoni and canned mushrooms, which sounds gross on paper, but take-out pizza is gross to begin with, so put it in perspective. It was pretty good, as far as pizza goes. Which isn't very far. Still. Crispy. Cheesy. Bready.
Come to think of it, cheese on toast is far superior.
Or. You know. Just fucking baguette with olive oil and salt. Jesus.
I changed my mind, pizza still sucks.
Onions are okay, though.
3. What's a food you enjoy eating both warm and cold?
Porridge (aka oatmeal) is great both hot and cold (or, well, room temperature). 豆花 bean flower/tofu pudding is nice both hot and cold too. I mean. Room temperature. Because if we're talking cold cold, as in iced... yeah there's not much that tastes good iced, period. In fact, there's nothing. Food you intend to eat should never be colder than room temperature. It's sustenance, for chrissakes, not a local anaesthetic for your teeth.
4. Are there any foods you can't get anymore? Why not?
If you're a migrant worker, you can easily make whole lists of shit that you can't get in your new country that you could get in your old country. From Europe but not in Asia or North America: proper bread. From North America but not in Asia or Europe: good burgers. From southern US and Mexico: tacos that don't suck. Coffee in China, the fuck. I could go on forever.
In the same country, it's less clear.
One thing that is proving hard to get for me in Taiwan that was in Taiwan last time i visited is 烤地瓜 (aka 烤紅薯 in Chinese (aka roast sweet potato in English)). Those guys used to be all over the place roasting their deliciousness and i thought it was just Taipei which sucked, but i mentioned it to one of my colleagues over the company end-of-year lunch today and he said he hasn't seen the guys around much either over the past few years. He says he thinks it might be COVID related, and that would make me sad. I guess people transitioned to ordering all their food online, or going to convenience store chains... and, like, no convenience store sweet potato taste as good as the guy on the street with a barrel full of hot rocks sweet potato :-(
5. What's your favorite "breakfast for dinner" (or "dinner for breakfast") food?
Sometimes when i'm feeling fat i'll have fruit for dinner and nothing else. I suppose for a lot of people fruit is a breakfast food? Although, thinking about it, when i lived in China i grabbed fruit on the way home from work almost every day so it was almost always a dinner food. (There i ate out steam bun for breakfast most days, whereas here i slice a banana or guava on porridge at home so the association is different.)
This is a weird question, since all food you can eat any time. I wonder if the idea that you have to eat certain types of food for breakfast is a marketing concept invented by American cereal companies or fast food outlets? I mean, there's food people tend to eat in the morning all over the world because it's faster to cook than the food they start preparing for later in the day, but, also, if you find a place that still serves that morning food in the afternoon, it's not remarkable. And in the modern era, almost all food has quick cook options no matter when you want it anyway. So who cares? Calories is calories, doesn't matter when you consume them.
1. What's a food you liked when you were younger but don't anymore?
I never really like-liked American-style junk food when i was younger, but i did eat it now and then. In particular i remember Hungry Jacks (aka Burger King) which i mostly ate when i was living in the Brisbane suburbs about one block from the restaurant. Maybe it helped that it was one of the only places open late in the area, and when i was a young drunk i still had the metabolism that made me want to eat food in the middle of the night. Nowadays i rarely eat American-style junk food, and when i do i always feel sad afterwards because it is incredibly bland, overpriced and even if you ordered a "meal" you still feel hungry.
It's so wack how popular it is, because in America you can go to Walmart and buy peanuts or oats for much cheaper and get way more calories and deliciousness. Wrap peanuts or 豆乾/tofu jerky in a tortilla with carrot or cucumber or tomato, plonk some guac or hummus, Tajín, beats any junk food burger a million times over. Oats plus dates, fresh fruit - cheaper, faster, more nutritious and way better than any fast food dessert. Although, to be fair, i never ate an American fast food dessert i liked, so that's not really in the spirit of the question.
I also used to like cheese, but since i started eating vegan at home and "mostly vegan" out... now when i see cheese just looking at it makes me feel bloated. I still get the intellectual appeal of a really strong blue, or an asskickingly sharp/mature cheddar, but plain old melty nachos/kraft dinner/toasted sandwich cheese just comes across repulsive to me now. I don't mind throwing a ton of oil because it makes my dumplings crispy and my baguette luscious, but cheese, God, i can barely even comprehend how i used to casually melt a ton of it onto everything. Ick.
2. What's a food you used to not like but now you do?
There are several foods that used to be my most hated.
When i was younger, i found onions and bell pepper/capsicum almost inedible. Now i am fine with onion (aka the inferior version of garlic) and i'll eat bell pepper (aka the inferior version of chili) if i must. Actually, i had some grilled green pepper tonight at 燒烤 BBQ, but it's definitely the flop Taiwanese version of 青椒 in China, which is the same kind of large green chili that they use to do chile relleno in Mexican cuisine.
The other big thing is pizza. For years i could not even be in the same room as a pizza, i found the smell so disgusting it literally made me gag and occasionally full-blown vomit. Nowadays i find most pizza hard to eat because of the excess of bland yellow spooge (see above), but after a childhood of visceral hatred, there was about a 10 year window where i learned to get it down without choking. My then-favorite version of pizza was introduced to me by my ex-wife: replace the tomato sauce with barbecue sauce, hold the mozzarella, then - as toppings - chicken, feta and broccoli. Trust me to end up liking the least pizza-like pizza you can order in a Canadian take-out joint.
I gotta say, for being an Italian (American?) invention, Taiwan (and China for that matter) is a billion times more ambitious with their pizzas than just offering a barbecue sauce option. We're talking fucking... durian, mango, century egg, curry, tripe, you name it, they have it all at the mainstream chains over here. Most western pizzerias are amateurs when it comes to throwing ridiculous shit on a piece of flatbread with melted cheese.
Anyway, point being, i used to hate pizza, then briefly i thought it was decent, and now i merely tolerate it. Last time i ate it was in Windsor where they have their own style featuring shredded pepperoni and canned mushrooms, which sounds gross on paper, but take-out pizza is gross to begin with, so put it in perspective. It was pretty good, as far as pizza goes. Which isn't very far. Still. Crispy. Cheesy. Bready.
Come to think of it, cheese on toast is far superior.
Or. You know. Just fucking baguette with olive oil and salt. Jesus.
I changed my mind, pizza still sucks.
Onions are okay, though.
3. What's a food you enjoy eating both warm and cold?
Porridge (aka oatmeal) is great both hot and cold (or, well, room temperature). 豆花 bean flower/tofu pudding is nice both hot and cold too. I mean. Room temperature. Because if we're talking cold cold, as in iced... yeah there's not much that tastes good iced, period. In fact, there's nothing. Food you intend to eat should never be colder than room temperature. It's sustenance, for chrissakes, not a local anaesthetic for your teeth.
4. Are there any foods you can't get anymore? Why not?
If you're a migrant worker, you can easily make whole lists of shit that you can't get in your new country that you could get in your old country. From Europe but not in Asia or North America: proper bread. From North America but not in Asia or Europe: good burgers. From southern US and Mexico: tacos that don't suck. Coffee in China, the fuck. I could go on forever.
In the same country, it's less clear.
One thing that is proving hard to get for me in Taiwan that was in Taiwan last time i visited is 烤地瓜 (aka 烤紅薯 in Chinese (aka roast sweet potato in English)). Those guys used to be all over the place roasting their deliciousness and i thought it was just Taipei which sucked, but i mentioned it to one of my colleagues over the company end-of-year lunch today and he said he hasn't seen the guys around much either over the past few years. He says he thinks it might be COVID related, and that would make me sad. I guess people transitioned to ordering all their food online, or going to convenience store chains... and, like, no convenience store sweet potato taste as good as the guy on the street with a barrel full of hot rocks sweet potato :-(
5. What's your favorite "breakfast for dinner" (or "dinner for breakfast") food?
Sometimes when i'm feeling fat i'll have fruit for dinner and nothing else. I suppose for a lot of people fruit is a breakfast food? Although, thinking about it, when i lived in China i grabbed fruit on the way home from work almost every day so it was almost always a dinner food. (There i ate out steam bun for breakfast most days, whereas here i slice a banana or guava on porridge at home so the association is different.)
This is a weird question, since all food you can eat any time. I wonder if the idea that you have to eat certain types of food for breakfast is a marketing concept invented by American cereal companies or fast food outlets? I mean, there's food people tend to eat in the morning all over the world because it's faster to cook than the food they start preparing for later in the day, but, also, if you find a place that still serves that morning food in the afternoon, it's not remarkable. And in the modern era, almost all food has quick cook options no matter when you want it anyway. So who cares? Calories is calories, doesn't matter when you consume them.