Acquired Ethnic Cuisine & Gardening

[Phaedra]

Dinner last night was fried rice with eggs and lots of chopped carrots, onions and peas from the freezer. Rice for both meals was Nishiki brown rice.

Rice
We love to mix white, brown, and purple (sticky) rice - the amount of purple rice will determine the final color, delicious and fun.

Steve, have you ever try the glass noodle (Vermicelli, either made with Mung bean or sweet potato starch)? We love it, too. One of the advantages is the broth will remain clear. When ordinary Ramen, wheat flour noodle is used, I will boil the noodle in another pot, if I want to keep the nice flavor of the broth.

 

[Phaedra]

I grew up in an apartment in the city and never really had the chance to garden until I moved to Germany. In the beginning, I wanted to grow so many vegetables that weren’t available here—tons of them, in fact.

Looking back, I had a lot of ridiculous misunderstandings at the time. For example, I thought the Pak Choi I grew was much healthier because the stems were obviously smaller than the ones sold in local supermarkets. I assumed the fat stems were the result of heavy feeding. So, the early chapters of my gardening history are full of such naïve, and frankly funny, moments.

Growing up, we rarely had family meals, so my childhood and teenage memories of eating together are faint. There is ethnic cuisine, of course, but it holds very little personal meaning for me. I think I’d prefer to say I use "ethnic ways of cooking"—and if it works, the approach that influences me and my current family the most is preparing "warm meals" whenever possible.

I’ve always had trouble adapting to the cold meals that are common in Germany—breakfast and dinner are usually cold, and I simply can’t get used to it.

Thanks, Steve, for starting such an interesting topic. My thoughts might be a bit all over the place right now, but I’ll come back tomorrow with more to share.

 

[digitS']

Steve, have you ever try the glass noodle (Vermicelli, either made with Mung bean or sweet potato starch)?

I have, Phaedra.

I am happy to see you posting. Please continue .

Steve

 

[Dahlia]

haha! i wish. i thought this had been thrown away but Mom had put it in a teapot. found quite a while later...

Looks iffy!

 

[flowerbug]

Looks iffy!

it was a real long time after - maybe even longer than a year.

 

[Zeedman]

Rice
We love to mix white, brown, and purple (sticky) rice - the amount of purple rice will determine the final color, delicious and fun.

Wow! That's my rice mixture too, but with some red rice added also. Small world.

 

[flowerbug]

Wow! That's my rice mixture too, but with some red rice added also. Small world.
View attachment 71729

at first i thought it was ground beef.

 

[digitS']

What, no quinoa?

Yes, there are ways to punch up white rice. I like the quinoa addition but I'm still inclined to 1 or the other rice variety and then add my other 4 ingredients on top. Just fits with my simplistic 5 notion of "that's enuf, no more!"

Recently learned that the word "punch" means 5 in Hindi. The British seem to have adopted it for what they already had in the way of a mix and a word with a different meaning but a process that could be applied.

I once worked on a farm where lawngrass seed, wheat and oats were grown and harvested. Made me aware of the possibility of threshing things out but I kinda wish that it might have included some more culinary seed choices, like quinoa .