dumpster diving

You may have heard of Sandy, the “super storm” that hit the East Coast recently. In an action opposite evacuating, Matt came from NC to keep me company during the storm. It wasn’t bad at all in my area, only about as bad as an average thunderstorm in Texas—a few downed trees, a couple flooded bridges, 24 hours without power—NBD. (Do not mistake me; I am not trying to downplay the effects of the storm elsewhere. My dad spent two weeks in New York doing emergency medical work on Long Island.)

Anyways, school was shut down for two days due to the storm, so after taking a jog in the storm, Matt and I had some time to chill and watch lots of old TV episodes, as well as the Simpsons’ Movie (this being part of Matt’s plan to convert me to thinking the Simpsons is the greatest TV show ever). We even had some time to talk to each other!

The morning after the storm, everyone in the house was scared to go out, but as we were already developing splitting headaches when it was 8am and we had not yet had our morning coffee, we ventured out. What did we find? That it was really only our neighborhood that was out of electricity. That we could drive everywhere no problem because there was no traffic! So, after our truly terrible cups of coffee (still better than none!) we took a little tour of downtown DC because I wanted to look at the Potomac (it wasn’t nearly as interesting as I had expected).

Later that evening, when we were getting really bored, we went grocery shopping. Matt is always kind enough to take me grocery shopping via car when he is here so I can buy more than two bags of food at once and don’t have to carry them over the hill with my stick arms. (Speaking of my stick arms, though, I think the swimming might finally be paying off. How can I tell? My size-small arm warmers no longer slide hopelessly down my arms while I ride.)

So, we went everywhere—Trader Joe’s (our favorite), Whole Foods (highly disappointing in size and lack of ANY samples in comparison to the Austin, TX model), and finally, Safeway. The only reason for the final stop at Safeway was that I needed lunch meat. When I got to the lunch meat section, I found that all the lunch meat was missing. All of it. Just… gone. Turns out that, since the electricity in the store had gone out the night before, Safeway was forced to throw out tons and tons of food.

I was disappointed—the only reason I had come to this store was to buy some flingin’ flangin’ lunch meat! Matt, however, was elated. He drove me around to the back of the store and we embarked on our inaugural dumpster-diving experience.

What this actually looked/sounded like was me pacing around at the foot of the dumpster saying:

“Are you sure this isn’t illegal?!”

“Don’t slip!”

“Eww, it’s wet.”

“Don’t you think that’s enough? It isn’t all going to fit into my fridge!”

And again,

“Are you sure this isn’t illegal?!”

Meanwhile, Matt dug around exclaiming,

“Look at all this turkey!”

“Ice cream!”

“Can you get me a bag for all this?”

and

 “I’ll make it fit!”

 …and generally sounding like a little kid on Christmas morning.

Matt spent the rest of the evening texting his buddies about how amazing he was… while simultaneously crying about the large bag of donuts that some dingbat had left open to get rained on (seriously, it took him hours to get over that loss).

Well, I got my flingin’ flangin’ lunch meat. 15 packages of turkey and one of ham. Three weeks later, I officially never want to see turkey again. Perfect timing, as Thanksgiving is four days away. (Yes, I know that is it now actually five days after Thanksgiving. However, after Matt insisted that we write his/hers posts on this subject, he neglected to write his version for quite some time. Now that he has written his version, you can read it here.)

We laughed a little later, though, thinking about how, when we tell people we want to be pro triathletes, they seem to think we are superstars living the life. (This is, of course, the people who don’t think we are officially insane.) Really, a better perception of the life of an aspiring pro triathlete is in the story I just related—feeling like you’ve hit a gold mine when you find a month’s-worth of turkey in the dumpster.

And did I mention the Klondike bars?!!!

chillin' in sa pa (while ha noi blazed)

Last week, Ha Noi was blazing hot. And the weekend was worse, with highs reaching around 40 degrees and humidity making it feel far hotter...or so I hear. Fortunately, I can't bear witness to the latter, as I was chillin' in Sa Pa, wearing a sweater and jeans (something I thought I wouldn't get to do till I return the the States), though I did don my swimsuit occasionally.

Sa Pa is a village in the mountains near the China border. It is cool, rainy, and lusciously green. It looks exactly like I expected Viet Nam to look.

It is home to amazing street food (including grilled tofu that will change your life!);

lots of ethnic minority vendors who will follow you around incessantly, trying to sell you their traditional cloth (they might even sneak up behind you in a restaurant and put one of their hats onto your head);

rocky waterfalls perfect for climbing up, swimming under, and lounging by (or for having a church service by, complete with communion of rice and water);

cheeeap hotels (though I suppose any hotel is relatively cheap when you shove ten people into two rooms);

and rocky roads to traverse on motorbike (though the wiping out was my least favorite part of the trip).

This weekend, it also happened to contain some of my favorite people in Viet Nam. (I like the ones who aren't in this picture, too...this just happened to be a great one!)

So, you'll understand why I can now call Sa Pa my hands-down favorite place in Viet Nam (see, it even makes me look great in pictures)!

Seven friends and I boarded the over-night train on Thursday night and were joined by 3 more Saturday morning. We arrived back to Ha Noi at 5:30 am Monday morning, with just enough time for Hannah and I to snag a couple hours' sleep on cots on our office floor before our co-workers showed up for work--only in Viet Nam!

P.S. Remember those purple sweet potatoes I told you about? They have those in Sa Pa too (another point, as if it needs one).

taste the rainbow

I thought I'd gotten used to "weird foods"--I've eaten snake, after all. And as far as fruit goes--I can eat my weight. In fact, one of the things I love most about Vietnamese cuisine/culture is the part where we all sit around after the meal and eat fruit and drink Vietnamese green tea. This is a pretty traditional habit; but in my family it's a fairly consistent nightly occurrence. Thus I've tried a plethora of fruits--from familiar (boring) things like apples, to things that look like they must come from other planets--hot pink dragon fruit; spiky, red rambutans; bumpy custard apples; and green oranges. Often, I find myself eating fruits I don't know the English names of; for all I know, some of them don't even have English names.

After more than 8 months of exposure to phenomena like these, I usually don't even glance twice at strange-looking fruit, but tonight was an exception. I was pleasantly shocked when, after supper, Co Van produced, from a large pot on the stove, purple sweet potatoes! I never even knew such a thing existed! (I find it interesting that the disfigurement of a known element is often more shocking than the appearance of a completely foreign one.) They were steamed to perfection and required no condiments. Mine was by far the most delicious and beautiful thing I have consumed in awhile, especially considering that purple might be my new favorite color.

Isn't it great when shockingly colored food does not necessarily have to imply a warning against its countless preservatives, unnatural dyes, and surplus sugar? I think so. It's just so much more fun this way! Of course, Vietnamese people are deathly afraid of pesticides (especially from Chinese-grown fruit), but this mostly means that even the most pain-in-the-butt types of fruit are washed multiple times and painstakingly peeled. At home, I would probably be far to lazy to put in the effort it takes to eat these exotic fruits; but here, they aren't exotic, and preparing them is an everyday task. (One that has rarely been assigned to me since my mango-peeling episode, and due to the fact that Vietnamese are naturally dubious of any foreigner's fruit-cutting ability.)

I'll taste this rainbow any day.

snake snacks

I recently got a request to write about food--something that should not be too difficult considering that food is something I'm pretty passionate about. It is especially easy to comply to this request because I just wrote a related article for Viet Nam Cultural Window, the tourism magazine (which I play a large part in editing) published by The Gioi Publishers every two months. However, given past experience, the article requires a preface (even though--once again from past experience--it probably won't work):

WARNING: READ AT YOUR OWN RISK. This entry may contain information unappetizing to those with weak stomachs or who are opposed to eating even animals commonly considered palatable by Western standards. Furthermore, the author will not accept future complaints about its contents (though she is not opposed to compliments about her culinary bravery).

Snake snacks

So, you’ve eaten phỏ by the side of the road more times than you can count—even taken it away in a plastic bag once or twice. You’ve braved the sketchy fresh greens in bún chả and bún ốc, and tried their siblings, bún ca, bún thang, bún bo, chả ca—yeah, you’ve got the bún noodle dishes covered too. Maybe you’ve been more daring than that and ventured into the “weird meat” territory—the land of dog meat and bubbly pig skin. Perhaps you have even developed a habit of gnawing on pigs’ feet. However, if you are one of those people who prides yourself on your fearless ability to try anything, there is still one stop left for you on your tour of the more exotic foods of Hà Nội—the snake village of Lệ Mật, located just outside Hà Nội on the road to Bát Tràng, the famous ceramic village.

One Sunday afternoon, seven friends and I headed across the Long Bien Bridge to visit Bát Tràng Ceramic Village,then stopped at Lệ Mật on the way back. What ensued was not the most filling or cheapest food I have yet eaten in Việt Nam, but it was the epitome of dinner and a show.

The restaurant owner and his son welcomed us enthusiastically by dangling two writhing snakes before us and rattling off the prices and merits of each. They told us that the larger bamboo snake (800,000VNĐ) was better for eating than the smaller, more expensive cobra (1,000,000VNĐ), whose blood made for better wine. While the cobra was enticing—mainly for the exotic idea of eating a poisonous reptile—the bamboo snake and its cheaper price proved more appealing to our group of hungry twenty-somethings, half of whom are volunteers.

After checking out a room filled floor-to-ceiling with glass vats in which coiled snakes and various other animals stewed in wine, we took seats in the delightful open-air dining room and awaited our serpentine dinner-mate. Our host brought the snake right to our table and allowed us to watch as he expertly slit its belly, squirted its blood into a jar, and extracted its still-beating heart.

As we waited for our meal—a set menu of six dishes, one of which apparently disappeared en route, made from various parts of our snake, complimented by an assortment of dipping sauces and a dish of qua sung moi (traditional Vietnamese pickled figs)—our server brought shots of rice wine mixed with snake blood, which the more courageous among us used to toast our forthcoming culinary adventure. One particularly lucky individual got to add the snake’s heart to his glass. We chased that shot with a round of bile wine.

bile: just so romantic...

After the wine escapade, we began nibbling crushed snake bones. The crunchy consistency of this dish—which was served with sesame rice crackers—turned some off, but its liberal sprinkling of peanuts and sesame made it a tasty appetizer by my standards.

snake bones and sesame crackers: the new chips and salsa?

Next on the menu was grilled snake meat. The small amount of meat I was able to pull off the bones was quite good; the seasoning was superb. The following course of chả cuốn lá lốt (ground meat rolled in lolot leaves) was well flavored but, once again, bone-riddled. My favorite dish was the miniature fried spring rolls; of course, I am partial to spring rolls in general. By group consensus, the sticky rice—which claimed to be made with our snake’s fat and was topped with fried garlic—was also a hit.

If your goal is to get as much food as you can for as little money as possible, then find yourself a plastic chair and some mý xao in the Old Quarter; but for a culinary adventure and a story that will guarantee the amazement of your friends at home, venture across the Long Bien Bridge for snake snacks at Lệ Mật.

So there you have it. Any other requests? :)

a brief note on noodles:

phỏ: This word by itself can refer to one of the more famous Vietnamese dishes, and certainly the most famous of Hà Nội origin. However, the word phỏ also refers to the specific type of noodle used--a thin, flat rice noodle. This noodle soup features a clear broth, either beef or chicken, and some green onions. It is best with lemon (have I mentioned that Vietnamese lemons are green?--and no, they're not limes), black pepper, and chili added. (This is one of my favorite parts of eating phỏ--the process of doctoring it up and mixing it, while the delightful aroma wafts into my face.) There are many other uses of the phỏ noodle that I don't mention in this article.

bún: this is another variety of rice noodle, but this one is round and even skinnier--sort of like a pale, flimsy version of angel-hair spaghetti. The dishes I mention in that paragraph are various dishes that incorporate bún noodles--bún with beef, bún with snails, bún soup, bún soup with fish, bún with grilled fish...

mý xao: mý is (did you guess it yet?) yet another type of noodle. This variety is egg based and curly--close kin to that friend of the stereotypical college student, the Ramen noodle. Xao means pan-fried. This dish is usually topped with veggies and meat, or both, and is quite delicious in a greasy, comfort-food way.

A noodle is not just a noodle: If the number of different names and seemingly minuscule distinctions seems ridiculous and unfathomable to you, then don't let me get started on the different types of rice and "cakes." But believe me, I was right there with you at first. It seems silly, but to put it into perspective, just think what it would be like to be a foreigner who hardly ever eats bread who is just arriving in a Western culture. Think of learning the difference between French bread, wheat bread, focaccia, bagels, muffins, and croissants. Alternately, think of all the varieties of Italian pasta; to call noodles "noodles" in Việt Nam is like calling lasagna "spaghetti."

This is clearly not a comprehensive look at the noodle, the "for fun" Vietnamese food (rice is what you eat every day because you have to, noodles are what you eat for fun), but hopefully it helped you at least understand the snake article a little better!