Monday, March 30, 2020

FLAVORS OF QUARANTINE

On the second week of the plague, Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf obliged us with an adventure through digital space, hopping through a myriad of routers that brought us to Vitoria-Gasteiz where The Kraken ran and intercoursed in the silence of the white city before a quick snack of txantxigorri with Baztan's invisible guardian.

In Chaosan, our eyes and ears feasted on a spread of rice noodle strips, marinated crabs, bouncy beef and fish balls, fresh Jingzhou oysters, an array of raw and boiled fish, handmade tofu cakes, fresh mussels and a variety of hotpot that were all garnished with olive fruits, dried seaweeds, preserved radish and tempered with brine, Puning bean paste, Chaozao orange, fish sauce, chopped galangal, Chinese motherwort and Hakka tea.


And in Yunnan, the centerpiece is sliced Xuan Wei cured ham, fried and stewed, with mashed nan pie vegetables and sa pie meat slices sauteed in lacquer seed oil, pickled sow thistle, strips of Dali cheese and rice cakes made from salted flour on the side that were finished off with a dessert of sour fruits and boiled Musa bananas with sticky rice.      



We also got to play with young Simon in San Mateo and were with him when he apprenticed in Madrid and spent a mournful debauchery in Paris, prepared his notes as he organized his first rebellion in Caracas and during his exile to Jamaica, and cheered his victory against the Royalist army in the decisive Battle of Boyaca where appratently, his forces were nourished with dried beef (and sometimes horse) jerky.

We broke through quarantine to find 5 days of solace in the trails and for 7 days, subsisted on brunch and linner, with french toast for late evenings when we feel the need to eat, preparing just enough for us and the dogs, alternating between fish, chicken, pork and beef garnished with rationed vegetables because these are uncertain times with restricted access to food sources.     

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