A Taste of Home

Just one cha siu bow, 1 roast duck cha siu fan, or just one bowl of mom's mapo tofu. What I would give for those foods now. As you might imagine, getting a taste of home for me is particularly difficult. Sure there are a couple Chinese and Korean restaurants in Asuncion (run by immigrants that have been here 15-30 yrs and whose food tastes awesomely authentic) but I can only relish those in Asuncion. When I am stuck at home I do the best I can, scrounging up whatever Asian sauces I have left from home and stirfrying the few ingredients I have (rice, green pepper, onion, tomato, egg and soy sauce) It makes for an okay fried rice especially if I have a little meat but honestly I almost never cook meat. Too much hassel with prepping the raw meat plus the raw meat is sold quite unsanitarily here. Meat hangs for unknown intervals of time in unrefrigerated or only slightly refrigerated areas with butchers never washing their hands, never using cloves and usually handling other products and money with the same hands touching the meat. Thus meat has a sort of ominous “im gunna be spewing liquid out both sides” feeling to it. As I was saying, as a result of my isolation I have done a lot of experimenting trying to come up with different things that taste good. Honestly, I have not been particularly successful. Most of my food tastes similar despite my efforts but I like it. I always start with garlic and ginger with a bit of oil. Then add my onions or potatoes followed by green pepper. Thats usually the start of everything. I have been a bit lucky as I made friends with a leaving Koica (Korean Peace Corps) volunteer who handed off his rice cooker and lots of sauces. Yes I have been eating everything with that Korean red bean paste that is so delicious. Note: red paste, hot dog onion and rice is delicious. Long story short, nothing really tastes as good as anything from home, the only thing stable being oyaku don. But im good and always have my runs to asunsion for good beef noodle soup or bim bim bap. That will have to do.

Oh one more thing, I miss stir fried leafy vegetables so much it is killing me. I can sometimes get one type of leafy vegetable in town but thats it. People only eat lettuce and cabbage here!!!!