Culinary Adventures in East Asia

Being in this part of the world, I've had opportunities to experience a lot of different kinds of foods...and places that serve food. I do not, however, always take "advantage" of those opportunities, but I have still expanded my culinary horizons regardless.

In the past 6 months, I have tried several kinds of ethnic foods for the first time. Indian food (loved it!), Malaysian food (terrible...though Malaysia as a whole does food in general very well), Korean food, Thai food, "Middle Eastern" food, and have maintained a pretty steady diet of "street food."

Not that it's ethnic food, but I also bought peppers for the first time ever to make pasta and omelets last week. As part of our Valentine's Day date, Amy and I "made dinner together." (See picture below). Even while in a different country, she's also done a good job of helping to expand my horizons! Don't get me wrong, I'm still a meat and potatoes kind of guy, but there's not a lot of that here, so you do what you have to in order to get by! (Coincidentally, by my calculations, I've lost in the area of about 15 pounds since the end of August.)

Despite losing 15 pounds, a fairly regular staple in my diet first semester was my pack of 8 mini-chocolate donuts, or "Donettes," if you'd prefer. They don't have much for breakfast here, so it's a quick and easy solution and I could benefit from fattening myself up a little. The culinary highlight of the first semester for most of us was the opening of likely the only donut shop in the city, "Daylight Donuts." Apparently it originated in Tulsa in the 50's and has stores all over the world now, and praise the Lord, one of them is a three minute bike-ride down our street. :) Tom and I celebrated Christmas Eve in the best way we could think of...coffee and donuts at Daylight Donuts. There were tons of good donut and coffee shops in Malaysia, Western food chains (KFC's that actually had potato wedges and good chicken!), many different types of foods, etc, so it was a little depressing to come back to a country whose food is pretty monotonous in comparison.

But sometimes more interesting than the food here are the restaurants you go to. The last two times I've been to a place called "The Tube Station" that makes great subs and pizzas and is right across the street from us, I've seen a mouse running around. Unless its name is Ratatouille, it's probably not a good thing (which may or may not have contributed to my digestive issues lately).

We awarded the name "Cockroach Place" to another place we went to fairly often for their Kung Po Chicken. It was very good, cheap, and quick, but one day, one of my roommates found...you guessed it...a dead cockroach in his food. He had nearly finished by this point, but he pointed it out to one of the waitresses and she reluctantly gave him his money back. But did that stop us from going back? No. Especially not Tom. The reality is, that sort of thing probably happens a lot more often than we think here. Even so, when we returned home from Malaysia, we went to go get dinner at Cockroach Place and discovered a pile of bricks in its place. In a cruel twist of fate, Cockroach Place and the building that it was located in had been demolished.

I'll leave it at that. Go enjoy your steak and potatoes...

-CK