There I was, doing my thing by strolling up and down the snack aisle, when the stockboy pointed to an item and said to me, “Try this. It’s good.” I huffed a little at the interruption, internally, because couldn’t he tell that I was busy talking to myself in my head? But I appreciate food suggestions, even non-descriptive ones, and so…

I put this package of Almond Pancake in my shopping basket.

This item with the above message on its back, which I understand every word of, oh yes I do…maybe…probably…I think.

Continue reading »

This mooncake post comes about a month after the Mid-Autumn Festival, and comprises only two photos. With the tardiness and small number of photos, I wondered if I should even put it up. But I’d told reader Lian that I would take mooncake photos if I got a sunny enough day, so here we are…better late than never, and better some than none.

I got a frequent dining companion to translate the Chinese characters on a mooncake I bought from a Chinatown bakery. He told me the literal translation of the top character is west and the bottom one is dim. I gave him one of my signature looks and eloquent replies—a forehead scrunch and “Huh?”—before asking for a translation that made sense. He then gave me a loose one, Western pastry, which I understood only slightly more.

But then I got confused again (it happens often to me) when I cut into the mooncake. The bakery lady had asked if I wanted white or yellow lotus seed paste. To which I thought, “I want brown. Where’s the brown?” But I didn’t say/ask that and instead played it cool by telling her I wanted both. I then walked away with two mooncakes—one of each color and both with salted egg yolk. Or so I thought.

As you can see in the above photo, this mooncake had neither white nor yellow lotus seed paste and there was no salted egg yolk in sight. Instead the mooncake contained brown lotus seed paste and walnuts. Hmm…I waited a year to be able to eat a dense, rich, and sweet cake with soft walnuts? Fine by me this year, as I’m sure it will be the next year, too.

My sister sent the mass alert at 8:09 on a Saturday morning. Really, she began the email with, “Alert! Alert!” and continued by writing, “There is a fried dace shortage, thanks to two family members.”

The guilty party of two was TAMS (The Asian Martha Stewart) and her partner-in-crime husband, the self-proclaimed Tool.

According to the Asian supermarket employee whom my sister demanded answers from—my family is kind of, uh, on a first-name basis with this store’s employees—TAMS and Tool had bought practically a whole case of the fried dace, leaving only a small number of cans on the shelf, which my sister snapped up.

Accusations continued to travel through our family gossip-vine. I asked TAMS if the rumor was true. She neither confirmed nor denied my sister’s words. In fact, we didn’t hear back from her at all. (I think she was too busy shooting a wedding with Tool, the nerve of them. I mean, were we family or not?)

We got the truth, days later, as it often happens with these sordid situations of greed. TAMS and Tool had bought ‘only’ 17 cans of fried dace.

So…you may have noticed, especially in this post so far, that I’m a tiny bit of a drama blogger. But I think my overreactions are justified with the subject of this post. See, the fried dace had been unavailable on store shelves for months and months and months, and I didn’t know how much I missed it until I couldn’t open a can up and eat the contents with rice.

Whew.

Dace, Fried, Whole, With Salted Black Beans In Oil is buyable in the United States again, at about four times the previous price—this can cost me $3.99.

Continue reading »

Do your days ever blend into each other so that you don’t know what day it is…or heck, you forget what time of the year it is?

It took a table display of colorful mooncake boxes to remind me that fall was approaching (where did my summer go?!), and with that, the Mid-Autumn Festival (a.k.a. Moon Festival). It’s celebrated on September 22nd this year (it’s a different date every year; last year it was October 3rd).

I quite enjoy inspecting the outsides of the brightly decorated boxes and tins. Like this one, with a built-in gold ribbon.

Continue reading »