I love the junk food but for our kid not so much.  Our kid just started school this year and lunch boxes are encouraged by the school to get as healthy as possible.  So we cooked chinese mushrooms, put in some tofu and chicken – white and rice for her to bring along to school.  By packing this lunch, it isn’t messy and she can quickly eat them down and join her friends at the playground.  I know what you are all thinking, why we didn’t give her a sandwich instead.  Well, the kid is wierd and refuses to eat bread – and not only bread, just about anything new.  I was told by family and friends that it will get better.  One can always hope right.

If you haven’t tried the Vietnamese sandwiches that they called Banh Mi – you have to, they are simple, delightful and cheap when you are in Vietnam.  But i didn’ t get mine in Vietnam – we were on a short break to San Francisco. Located in a corner in San Jose – this shop is a chain based store.  Everything is fresh, a wee bit spicy and the bread was nice and light.  Inside the sandwich were cold cut ham and some crunchy vegies – and the taste was pretty good.  You should try it too.

]]> http://www.locombia.org/2010/06/vietnamese-sandwiches/feed/ 0 http://www.locombia.org/2010/04/ghettis/ http://www.locombia.org/2010/04/ghettis/#comments Mon, 19 Apr 2010 01:04:37 +0000 Queen Of Snacks http://www.locombia.org/?p=90

It’s spaghetties but getties is stucked because the kid calls it that.  One never knew how versatile the spaghetties can get until you get a chinese wife craving for noodles.  Lately, we haven’t had any luck getting her some udon to fry some noodles for herself and the kid.  So she did what she knows best, IMPROVISED and used getties and some bee hoon instead.  Bee hoon is rice vermecilli if you didn’t already know that.  So for those like my wife, who needs noodles but can’t find them, try using ghettis.  The tip that may save your marriage.

We cooked some curry in the middle of the night in hope that we didn’t have to get up too early the next day too cook before rushing the kid off to school and us to work.  It was late and I didn’t realised that the chicken was bad till i cooked it and it smelled really funny.  A check with the wife and she said – no – the curry is bad – it smelled awful.  I had to throw the whole pot out.  Bad chicken makes bad curry.  The next time, I better check the chicken first, the spices are precious to the wife because you can’t get them here, she had friends sent them to her from home.

The neighbours saw the wife cooking the above noodles and wonder what it was.  It’s called Mee Pok, a kind of flat noodles, just like spaghetties but flatten.   We don’t get this very often in Atlantic Canada but once in a while when are up in the city, the wife buys them and store them in the freezer.  She have to remember to get to them before they get freezer burn though.

This is what the wife and daughter eats all the time, when she has the time to cook them at home – or when she misses her home.  I tried some and it was alright.

The chinese restaurant owners in our town are good friends of the wife.  They go on and on when they meet, so whenever there is food for her at the Chinese restaurant, I am sent to pick them up, so she doesn’t get stuck.  Fried bread or bun you don’t even get to eat them here.  It is common in Chinese restaurants in Asia but not so common here in the West, so these are special treats that the wife gets every now and then.  How do they taste?  The wife said a little too oily for her taste buds and her health.

These were the ones we had in Hong Kong not too long ago, so you see how different they are.  Glutinous squares and fried bun and a tapioca jelly are all for desserts in Asia.