Grand Adventures and Household Chores
Reflections on our family’s adventures as we live, work, and play around the world
While Hanoi has many interesting coffee options, egg coffee is what I’ve heard about the most.
The first egg coffee I tried was just a little foamy syrup inside of some pretty typical coffee. Not bad, but not anything exciting either. However, the egg coffee pictured below, at The Hanoi Social Club, was excellent: rich, creamy, and slightly sweet on the top with strong coffee on the bottom.
Unexpected fact #254 that I didn’t know about Taiwan before arriving: pearl milk tea (often called bubble tea elsewhere in the world) was invented here in the 1980s, though you’ll have to take your pick of which specific origin story to accept. I’m definitely enjoying it’s relative ubiquity in Taipei. Aside from coffee, this is pretty much my favorite beverage, especially here where I can order it only slightly sweet.
Unexpected fact #255 that I didn’t know about Taiwan before arriving: the baked goods are amazing. (Well, at least the ones near our apartment in Taipei.) We’ve tried several nearby bakeries, and they all offer just slightly varying degrees of awesomeness.
Grocery shopping in Japan is an adventure because most labels are entirely in Japanese. This isn’t so difficult when we are trying to buy things like apples or carrots, but it becomes more challenging for purchases like flour and vinegar. Sometimes, I just have to guess and hope for the best.
As I’ve written before, this is a month without external childcare, which means less time to explore solo. I still really wanted to take a cooking class in Kyoto, so I decided to bring Theo to the bento box class at Cooking Sun. (Their registration form let me add a child under five for free so I took them at their word that preschoolers were okay.)
Continue reading “A Kyoto Cooking Class – With A Preschooler”
Theo and I walked to the local rice shop, only to find it closed. (Boo.)
Luckily, in front of the rice shop we found a rice vending machine. (Yay!)
Finding a Moroccan cooking class in Rabat was challenging – when searching online, I kept being redirected to classes Marakesh. Luckily, I eventually found the web site of Salam Cultural Center, which offers cooking classes in Rabat in addition to language and cultural exchange programs.
For our main course, we made the ubiquitous tajine, a word that describes both the pot used to cook/serve the dish and the food itself. Continue reading “Cooking in Rabat – Tajine”
Friday is the day when most Moroccans eat couscous for lunch – so last week, Brian and I did as well. The couscous, vegetables, and sour milk were all very good, but our favorite part was an amazing chutney, with onion, raisins, and cinnamon.
People at the cafe explained that Friday was couscous day because it is the holy day in Islam, but I still wasn’t exactly clear on why holy day equaled couscous. After some searching on the Internet, it seems like in Morocco the weekend previously included Friday, and this was the day when families would gather for this filling, tasty meal. The Moroccan weekend now falls on Saturday and Sunday. While many people are still heading home to eat with their families each Friday, some people (like us) are eating their couscous in restaurants.
We found the food in Barcelona to be high-quality, affordable, and generally vegetarian friendly. We were staying only three minutes away from a local market, and there were lots of excellent bakeries and shops on the walk home from Theo’s school. Good wine can be obtained for only a few euros per bottle in Spain. Most restaurants had affordable fixed price lunches.
In short, we ate very well all month, at home and in restaurants.
Brian and I were walking through Kreuzburg, looking for lunch, when we saw some elementary school students selling chard, zucchini, and cucumbers from a stoop. I don’t think I’ve seen chard for sale for months – we certainly haven’t eaten it for a while – so I was pretty excited.
(Yes, I’m a vegetable nerd. In case you are too: chard is excellent when braised with olive oil, onions, garlic, and some vegetable broth, and then served it over pasta.)
