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Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

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Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#361

Post by vram22 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #303
vram22 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>crispy An abomination of a word :) It should be crisp, AFAIK.

Seconding the proposition that these are two distinctly different words. Then there's crisply which has nothing to do with food but is reserved for describing the manner in which civil servants (British, sizes 4-7) deliver ultimata in trenchcoat spy novels. True fact.

True :) Alistair MacLean novels come to mind. Good entertaining writing, at least some parts of his books. Read them a lot as a kid. The only parts that were a bit tedious were the long descriptions of bad weather conditions in some of the novels set at sea, like Ice Station Zebra, H.M.S. Ulysses, etc. He tended to overdo those parts.

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#362

Post by vram22 »

eropple wrote: post #268
vram22 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>crispy An abomination of a word :) It should be crisp, AFAIK.

No, he's not wrong. An apple might be crisp. A French fry might be crispy.

Okay, you're right. I checked in a few online dictionaries. I was earlier under the impression that crispy was wrong usage.

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#363

Post by vram22 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #303
vram22 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>crispy An abomination of a word :) It should be crisp, AFAIK.

Seconding the proposition that these are two distinctly different words. Then there's crisply which has nothing to do with food but is reserved for describing the manner in which civil servants (British, sizes 4-7) deliver ultimata in trenchcoat spy novels. True fact.

Sorry for the off-topic, but got any good recommendations for such novels? It's been a while since I read any, and would like to read some good ones again. I've read a few - John Le Carre, and MacLean of course. James Bond, but those tend to be better as movies. Can't think of others off-hand.

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#364

Post by euyyn »

mwfunk wrote: post #355
tn135 wrote: post #66

As a fish loving Indian, I was totally surprised to see that in Capitalist America the choice of fish was absolutely pathetic. At American fish places you only get "shrimps" may be "large shrimps" and "small shrimps". Salmon, Bass, Red Snapper and just few handful of usual fish. My small village fish market offers at least 20 varieties of fish in India's coastal region. A proper fish market would offer at least 100.…

I bet if I went to India and complained about how pathetic the local hamburger places were, you might wonder about my maturity/worldliness/naivete/etc. You might also rightfully wonder why I was so intent on looking for hamburgers (or Chinese-American food, or Texas barbecue, or whatever) in India, when there are so many other food choices to explore. Every place you go in the world is going to be lacking in some thi…

Ok, but we're not talking about a specific dish, we're talking about ingredients, so to speak. It's surprising because the US has huge coasts that span climates. I was surprised by it too, and I'm from Spain, whose cuisine is unrelated to India's.

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#365

Post by vram22 »

look_lookatme wrote: post #341
CPLX wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that's what people think instinctively but it's incorrect. Part of the issue is that two world wars served to erase tremendous amounts of the visible cultural legacy of the German influence on the US, streets and towns were renamed, biergardens turned into bars, and so on. The culinary influence is right there in plain sight though if you look for it, from the names of our big mainstream brewing companies to our…

BBQ, too. For instance, the Texas style of smoked BBQ is rooted in German immigration to central Texas.

Interesting. I was just reading about Texas barbecue a couple of days ago (in fact I have a few tabs about cuisines open in my browser right now). They said the influence was from Germans, as you said, also Czech, IIRC (for the barbecue). Apparently East, Central, West and maybe South Texas all have different styles of barbecue.

Edited for typo.

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#366

Post by vram22 »

wahern wrote: post #264
jessaustin wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone in USA Midwest who doesn't just go fishing for himself in any of the many lakes and streams that are open to the public, has very little basis for complaint about selection of fresh fish to eat. The reason we have a variety of sport fish in our inland waters, is because commercial fishing is not allowed.

An aside: I visited Mongolia a few years ago and learned that Mongolians almost universally dislike fish. And given that the vast majority of Mongolians were pastoral and nomadic until about 10 years ago, the many pristine lakes and streams of Mongolia are filled with ridiculously large fish. The waters are very accessible, too, because the vast majority of the land in the country is open to allow the population to f…

What kinds of food did you eat while there, and any comments on it. I'd like to visit some time.

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#367

Post by wahern »

vram22 wrote: post #366
wahern wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An aside: I visited Mongolia a few years ago and learned that Mongolians almost universally dislike fish. And given that the vast majority of Mongolians were pastoral and nomadic until about 10 years ago, the many pristine lakes and streams of Mongolia are filled with ridiculously large fish. The waters are very accessible, too, because the vast majority of the land in the country is open to allow the population to f…

What kinds of food did you eat while there, and any comments on it. I'd like to visit some time.

Sheep (mutton) and horse meat. I also ate camel meat, though I'm not sure how common that still is. The whole country smells like mutton, though, and you will too. It's by far the most common meat and is basically the staple food.

The principle grain is (I think) wheat, often as Russian-style dumplings. Filled with mutton, of course.

The food is pretty simple. Nothing flashy. Not many ingredients. The steppe is a pretty desolate place. Not necessarily bland, either, though. The homemade camel soup was made from dried camel meat seasoned with a wild herb (maybe some kind of allium-related weed?) the host collected while tending his livestock and packed into jars with salt. (Perhaps it pickled a little?) Another dish at a small restaurant was stir-fried horse meat with garlic shoots.

I did eat sheep brains, scooped out of a whole cooked sheep's head sawed in half. That was at a restaurant in Ulaanbaatar. Memorable but definitely the most bland dish I ate there.

I had many other dishes but my memory fails me. Oh, I did have tea with camel's milk on a couple of occasions. Never got to try the famous fermented (alcoholic) horse milk, though.

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#368

Post by hutzlibu »

smallnamespace wrote: post #352
hutzlibu wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Look at all the cheap fish in the super market. If it was really getting scarce, then there would be no fish there. " But it sounds very logical, so why is this not true?

Because the fish can't be stored very economically once you harvest them, the cheapness of fish now is due to overfishing, and directly contributes to future scarcity. Strangely, the best place to 'store' fish is right in the ocean, and for an overly harvested fishery, you even get paid interest for it.

"future scarcity"

But if there is too much fish taken away, then it is harder to catch them, right, so scarcity. But the remaining fish then have much more space and food to reproduce ... so they go ack to the old levels quickly, so where is the problem (unless some species go literally extinct)?

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#369

Post by vram22 »

wahern wrote: post #367
vram22 wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kinds of food did you eat while there, and any comments on it. I'd like to visit some time.

Sheep (mutton) and horse meat. I also ate camel meat, though I'm not sure how common that still is. The whole country smells like mutton, though, and you will too. It's by far the most common meat and is basically the staple food. The principle grain is (I think) wheat, often as Russian-style dumplings. Filled with mutton, of course. The food is pretty simple. Nothing flashy. Not many ingredients. The steppe is a pre…

Wow, interesting. I suppose mutton is the staple food because of their huge area of steppe / grasslands.

About the dumplings, I was just recently reading about manti [1], a Turkish dumpling (which is basically steamed or fried balls of dough filled with ground meat or other fillings).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manti_(dumpling)

The Wikipedia article said it may be of Central Asian or Turkic / Mongol origin, and had spread to many countries, including Central Asian ones, the Caucasus, Russia, etc. I'm guessing the Russian-style dumplings you mention are a form of manti.

Edit: Just looked it up again, the manti article links to buuz, the Mongolian name for it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buuz

Also, do they eat much of vegetables, fruits, etc.?

Re: Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)

#370

Post by Coincoin »

mauvehaus wrote: post #247
kuschku wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s one type of western sausage you can get everywhere, globally, easily. Volkswagen Replacement Part # 199 398 500 A That’s VW’s own self-produced currywurst (in the past also from VW’s own farms, now they outsource that part of the production chain): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen-Currywurst

The fact that Volkswagen sells currywurst delights me, and the fact that they sold more sausages than cars in 2015[0] makes my day. If you weren't already aware of it, I hope you are similarly charmed by the fact that Lego is the worlds largest manufacturer of tires[1]. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go call my local auto parts store. [0] http://www.autoblog.com/2016/02/19/volkswagen-sausage-curryw... [1] http://…

And Peugeot make the best pepper mills in the world.
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