More about food. Then lunch.

Chickadee? Not food. Not for me, anyway. It was, however, ticked off at me because I was standing between it and the bird feeder, so I guess it sort of fits.

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My Dad gave me a bit bit of a surprise when I got in yesterday. Coming into his kitchen I noticed an open package of Indian spicy chickpea snacks (labelled Masala chani, if anyone's looking for some spicy chickpeas). I thought to myself that he picked them up by mistake and now that he'd tried them they'll just sit until they need to be thrown out. Nope, wrong. Turns out that a recently re-branded grocery store in town (was an Extra Foods, now a No Frills. Still, all Loblaws all the time...) has an Indian snack section and he decided to try a couple. On purpose. And he likes them. Will wonders never cease, as they say. Mind you, I don't know what he'll think of the Bheri puri when he tries it.

Things have changed a lot around here since I was a kid. I grew up in a food culture that basically hadn't changed much since the fifties. Meat, potatoes, slightly overcooked pasta... and it should say something that my favourite dish at the local Chinese restaurant was pineapple chicken balls. Westernised Cantonese food was as daring as we got in those days around here. Even the pizzas didn't get past the excitement of pepperoni.

It's conceivable that I might have stayed that way if I'd never gone to the great cultural stewpot. Um, that'd be university, for those who didn't follow. Unless you spent your entire time eating at the rez dining hall or living on ramen (even ramen was a new thing to me, to be honest), you can't help but experience at least a few new things when you move from a small town to a big university. In my case, my best friend was Chinese and her family owned a restaurant. For anyone who doesn't know, that's one of the best ways to experience the things that aren't on the menu. When I'd go to a Chinese place with her we never even saw menus. She'd just order. I didn't know most of the time what we were having until it got to the table. Sometimes I didn't know even then until she'd explain it to me. That's how I found out that it wasn't all about deep-fried battered things, plum sauce, and "special" fried rice (it was always white rice with her. I have to admit, though, that I'll still order fried rice much of the time. I just like it). Did you know that there are actually spicy Chinese dishes? It sounds weird, but it was a new thing for me back then. Nowadays you find a lot more of it on the actual menus, but we're talking nearly thirty (sigh) years ago and things have changed.

Lots of things have changed. There's so much more variety out there, and more people are accepting it. It's not just the food we eat and the food THEY eat anymore, and I think it's fantastic. I wouldn't have imagined myself enjoying curries and being a regular sushi eater, but I am. When the girls at work ordered Chinese food and it was deep-fried battered things and plum sauce, I was honestly a little disappointed. And I even put a little heat in my own cooking, especially when you compare it to what I grew up with.

Now, granted, a little heat. Not that I can't stand hotter; it's just that I like to taste my food rather than blow my brain up.

Did I mention Thai or Vietnamese yet? Not so much pho because I'm not really a soup person, but you don't have to go pho to have some great meals from those two cultures.



Aaanyway. Enough food talk, especially when I'm about to go upstairs and have a leftover hamburger for lunch. Tonight, though... oh, right. I'm planning to do some baking so I'll probably just buy a rotisserie chicken so that I have lunch meat for work. Nothing wrong with rotisserie chicken, though. After all, there was a time when even that was new to me. Later, folks.