Vacation Food

The Garden

When visiting Grace's Cousin they had a beautiful garden. Not just tomatoes, but cucumbers, strawberries, corn, peppers and even limes. I was surprised of the variety. I suppose there is a difference between the weather in Connecticut and Boston, but I never thought it was that much. I suppose if we had a yard we could grow more too and the limes were brought in during the winter obviously. There was also an apple tree because the area used to be  an apple orchard. It was a very mysterious looking tree. They don't eat the apples though because the deer always get them first. Noah was very impressed by the garden and I hope to one day provide more than just tomatoes for him.


Jolliebee

We went to this Filipino fast food place that is pretty popular on the West Coast and Singapore and obviously the Philippines. Well New Jersey has one and we knew about it because of Anthony Bourdain. Grace ordered the Spaghetti ( I wasn't impressed) and for me she got burger and fries except instead of a bun it came on rice. I have eaten this sort of food on rice before in my own house, but it was nice for someone, a food chain, to affirm that this combination does work and that I am not the only one. In fact while I was eating this I never realized how much I missed rice while eating at a burger joint. So you get the idea, the food is like how American food would be in the Philippines and the concept went international. It's a Fillipino McDonald's. The service is like the McDonald's in Hong Kong, in that they get your trays for you. Everyone was Fillipino except us and this one white guy who I'm pretty sure was married to a Fillipino woman, and Grace said she saw one black guy. The whole idea should work for mainstream America I think. I tried to get into the atmosphere by reading a Filipino newspaper. But I found that even though it was in English and even though I recognized Marcos and some othr names, I sadly could not bring myself to care. It was more World Journal and less Sampan, (for Boston Chinatown residents) I.e. I thought it was going to have local Filipino community news too, but it was mostly international stuff.

We had a spam burger, which was awesome and only 99 cents. I asked Grace to buy another one of those. We got a pearl taro drink which was sweet but not overly killing you sweet the way lollicup and those other places can be, and it tasted pretty well made. I'm not sure if they used taro or powder, but my point is, for a food chain, it was a good shake. We also had a Hallohallo, I can't find how to spell it, but Bourdain got a second one of these himself after the show. It has ice cream, flan, and mung bean etc. Again, it wasn't overly sweet the way the bean portion of some Vietnamese shakes can be. But honestly I only really liked the bean part. But it was cool that the food chain exists. I might have to go back to try the Aloha burger.


Shiao Long Bao

Monday we went to look for these soup dumplings, but the first place (a Taiwanese Place) was closed. Because it is Monday and a lot of Chinese restaurants close on Monday. We then went to a Shanghai place which was also closed, and luckily we walked down to another place which was open. "Let's go home and eat instead" Amah said.

"No we are eating without getting in the car," I said, "If this place isn't open we are eating at Subway." And then as an aside to Grace, "I'm getting hungry for real and in 10 minutes I might not be beyond biting someone's jugular and gulping down blood." I suppose this shows that I have a unhealthy relationship with food. I mean technically three days without food should be no big deal. Plus my doctor says I'm 15 pounds overweight, so I have some extra buffer there. But yeah, I need to eat. Or maybe I was just annoyed that we were driving here and there ins search of food when we had small children.

Anyway, the food was good. That is okay. I could definitely tell that the food part was better, as in on a higher level than the noodles. Because although they make the noodles themselves, they do not make the noodles right there right in front of you. So I would like to try the first place we were going to go to, which does that. Their Shiao Long Bao was the best out of the food we ordered, though Gong Gong thought their La mein was better. Eerily, Amah and I agreed on the Shiao Long Bao. It is strange but me and Amah actually think very much alike and have similar hoarding tendencies.

An American couple came in after us and ordered Shiao Long Bao. Right as the waiter told them they were sold out this I popped the last soup dumpling of the two orders we had gotten into my mouth. The man complained, "This is the third place I have been to today looking for those." They had probably gone to the same two places we had, but had been a few steps behind us. And we ordered to orders. U recounted this to our table because I hear better than the elders.

"I should open a Shiao Long Bao place that only opens on Mondays." Laughed Gong Gong.