Weird Foods But No Chicken Feet

For the first time in the years since I noticed its existence, yesterday I went to the Tai Li Asian foods grocery store. I found pre-fried tofu, not wanting to try frying it myself as I haven't figured out the proper technique. I was looking for Kombu, the sea vegetable mentioned in cookbooks for making cooked beans come out tasty and tender.

There was a surprising number of varieties of dried seaweeds available, as well as dried chilies and dried sea creatures, and so on. I asked the proprietor for Kombu, but he did not recognize the name. I did buy a package I found towards the back, which answered the description of flat leaves. When I took it home and showed Pearl she said, yes, that's Kombu. Yes!

Just cooked some beans in the pressure cooker, still a relatively new process to me, and working on some beets [they're off the heat.] Will see if the beans taste any differently with the Kombu.

The first time I went to an Asian market in my old neighborhood, trying not to look like the curious white geek that I am, the gross-out item was chicken feet. I learned many years later that in China, at least, they are fried and sold on trains [along with duck feet] as a snack, similar to the pork rinds concept.

One year we took our troop of Junior Girl Scouts on a field trip to the Lincoln District of 38th Street in Tacoma, looking at Weird Asian Foods such as little packages of wet jelly-like candies and so forth. We ended up at the Vien Dong Vietnamese Restaurant eating egg rolls; both recognizable and affordable for a troop of girls. I think it was one of the best activities we did with them.

Later yesterday as I shopped at the Fred Meyer in the Natural Foods section, reading labels and seeing that the interesting chik'n [fake chicken] patties actually contain egg yokes, I felt like a foreigner in my own land. [When the Cambodian refugees first arrived, unable to read English, they had to wonder what was sold in jars with pictures of babies on them.] I conceived the idea of an alien confronted with the odd concept of eating animal products. They're so pervasive. I'm not "there yet" but the idea of eating meat and dairy products is becoming progressively stranger as time goes by.