Babka extravaganza

[magnetic_pole]

* The better half and I are back in our tiny college town in New England after a summer in the big city, and I can hardly believe it's all over. In a fit of enthusiasm for foods not available at our local grocery store (or extremely expensive here), we shopped up a storm and took home no fewer than twenty-four bags. (Which, of course, included clothes and my books and files, but still.) Among our treasured acquisitions: cinnamon and chocolate babkas (mmm!), oyster and hoisin sauce, tofu (why tofu is as expensive as steak here, I don't know), curry paste, mole, and digestive biscuits (from Chinatown, where they cost a fraction of what they sell for in British food stores).

What do you think, flist? Are there any foods you like so much you buy them when you travel or have friends send them to you?

* On the fannish side of things: two short HP fics I've enjoyed this week: the and yes i said yes i will yes by honey_wheeler (Weasleys; PG-13, 6100 words). Summary: Love, life, death, and Weasleys. Nuanced and beautifully written. Also the snippet a little silhouetto of a man by girl_tarte (Lupin/Snape, PG-13, 2000 words). Summary: some shit is about to go down in the shrieking shack. All the sensual detail and psychology that never made it into canon.

* Also, we're discussing Trembling Before G-d this week at lgbtq_recs-- come join us!

ETA: Pingback bot? *meep*

Comments

[busaikko]

Wow, pingback bot spam! That is eerie!

(Though I'm kind of glad to see what it looks like when the 'bot quotes a post. It takes a lot of text! Which is fine if the whole post is about Topic A, but for example this post is a list of items, and the 'bot quoted a lot of irrelevant stuff. Oh, LJ....)

And on another note: you sound like us coming back from the US, with all your bags of treasure! I hope you have many happy days of cooking and eating *g*

[magnetic_pole]

I don't fully understand what this pingback system is. (Must look into it.) I'm a bit unnerved by all the changes and the assumption that greater communication is always the goal.

What do you usually bring back from the US? I was horrified to see just how much we'd bought, since I try very hard not to buy anything extra, ever. But, faced with a few months away from a decent grocery store, I caved and consumed like a pro. *sigh* Er, digestive biscuit, b? M.

[busaikko]

I signed on for pingbot because I have a fat head and I wanted to know when people put my stories on rec lists or whatever. I guess if you get into metafandom-type discussions it might bring people together... but more likely would lead to strife.

When we go to the US we take food (nori, furikake, barley tea, etc.). When we come back we bring *coughs* large-size jeans that fit me, large-size bras that fit me, books in English, DVDs.... I used to bring back American candy, but I don't see the point anymore. Our local mall has imported food. (Protip! Pack a few lightweight duffel bags on top of the stuff in your suitcase when you go, so that you can use them to haul MORE STUFF when you come home! *devlish grin*)

[magnetic_pole]

(Protip! Pack a few lightweight duffel bags on top of the stuff in your suitcase when you go, so that you can use them to haul MORE STUFF when you come home!

Heh. I thought I was being savvy by bringing an extra canvas tote bag. LITTLE DID I KNOW. I clearly need the advanced course you describe here.

It's getting easier and easier to find things wherever you are, isn't it? Global capitalism, how I love you. Sometimes I'm disturbed to find out just how far my cheap, quickly consumed food has traveled.

Teas! I hadn't thought of that. M.

[berry]

pingback bot is creeping me out. i think i've switched it off now.

eh food. if someone could finally develop a pill i could take in place of meals, i would take it most days of the week.

[magnetic_pole]

I don't understand all this networking, b. All I want is for folks to leave me alone (except in small corners of the internet, of course). All I do is reduce e-mail traffic and electronic communication in my life. Who are these people who want more?

Ah, b. Food trumps sleep and sex. And give talking a run for its money. M.

[woldy]

I've been getting pingbacks (most, but not all, about my own DW posts) despite having them turned off. I put in a support request about it, & I agree that it's unnerving.

[woldy]

Also thanks for the Weasley rec - what a great fic!

[magnetic_pole]

I just hate not knowing what's going where. *frets* I always have the nagging feeling that a random flister is going to turn out to be a student. M.

[tetleythesecond]

Are there any foods you like so much you buy them when you travel or have friends send them to you?
Absolutely! When I was on my high school exchange year, my parents sent me bimonthly care packages with sweets and pumpernickel (which may well have been available in bigger cities, but in my case the nearest metropolis had some eight thousand inhabitants). And I once travelled back from Asia with about six pounds of rambutan in my carry-on luggage because if they're available over here they're rock-bottom quality and shamefully expensive.

I used to pester people travelling to the US for stuff all the time (mainly peanut butter cups and baking ingredients), but I now live in a bigger city, where availability is better.

[sophinisba]

I took a bag of peanut butter cups with me to Romania and considered them so precious that I'd have one as a special treat every few weeks, and they lasted so long they actually went bad. D:

[magnetic_pole]

lasted so long they actually went bad

!!! This is an endearing story, S. M.

[tetleythesecond]

Oh dear, that could /so/ happen to me, too!

[magnetic_pole]

Rambutan! Well done. We have the same issue here--it's not like you can't buy various produce items like bok choy, but they're ten times as expensive and just awful, and the better puts her foot down and refuses to get them. (Rightly so, I suppose, but it's very disappointing.) Peanut butter cups! They seem to be a favorite. M.

[tetleythesecond]

Bok choy! I love the stuff! The Vietnamese supermarket in my neighbourhood sells it, but they hardly ever have the tiny-sized ones. I go there all the time to check, anyway. It's a good excuse to pick up their "French" pastry /g/.

And I haven't met one exchange student with whom peanut butter cups were not a total winner.

[magnetic_pole]

Baby bok choy! I miss baby bok choy. (So much better than the regular kind.) And I miss Vietnamese sandwiches, too, with the cilantro and pate and pickled items. *happy sigh*

Peanut butter is indeed the solution to a lot of life's woes! M.

[liseuse]

I always buy apericubes and grenadine when I go to France. You can get grenadine over here, but it's really expensive in comparison and doesn't seem to taste the same. Apericubes are just a guilty love. I also have a friend in the US who sends me chewing gum that I love but cannot get over here.

[magnetic_pole]

Heh. You know I had to look up both those items, right? (Apericube has a facebook page, by the way. Go figure.) Ah, what did we do before the internet? M.

[liseuse]

Hehe. I always forget they aren't a regular part of people's lives. I had a friend at uni whose mother was French and she would always send him Apericubes, and my father would send me them. We used to swap with each other the flavours we didn't like.

[magnetic_pole]

I always love foods that come in so many flavors or colors you can swap. Then you get the joy of deciding the order in which to eat them in addition to the joy of eating them. M.

[liseuse]

It really is all kinds of awesome when you can do that. It may be the reason that when I bake I always do three kinds of everything.

[miss_haitch]

I discovered Reese's peanut butter cups on my first trip to the US, and before they were widely available in my UK city I stocked up on them during my holidays. Nowadays feuille and I always get her mother to send us jamaica and horchata. Yum!

[magnetic_pole]

Horchata! What I would give for a cup of horchata right now.

I didn't realize one of the perils of this topic was realizing I missed things I'd forgotten I liked. M.

[glass_icarus]

OH goodness, every time I go to Taiwan it's food, food, food. :D Of course perishables are harder to bring back (I am always in a haze of alas! no fruit!), but dried/baked goods and tea are GOLDEN.

[magnetic_pole]

Tea! Of course. How could I have forgotten? M.

[red_squared]

First you torment me with babka on email, and now here.

I am sad and babka-less. Curse you :( *shakes fist*

[magnetic_pole]

Babka? Did you say babka?

*smile* Don't worry, E, like they say, the more babka you have, the harder you fall...or something like that. I shall be in withdrawal all too soon! Er, virtual piece? *offers* M.

[kelly_chambliss]

Way behind here -- glad you're home safely. You might want to think twice about the pingbots -- according to what I've been reading, they can provide portions of locked posts as contexts for the "ping."

Funny you should ask about food: half of what was in the box my partner sent for my birthday recently was food that I can't get here in the sticks -- stuff from Whole Foods and Trader Joe's and the Asian markets. Lemon curd. Tonic water in cans. Smoked shredded cheese. McVitie's Digestives. Jacobs cream crackers. Pocky. Etc. And when we go to England, we buy about 1000 (literally) Marks & Spencer extra-strong teabags. We just can't find everyday tea that is as strong and black as the British stuff we love (PG Tips is close).

[magnetic_pole]

The pingbacks have stopped, thank goodness--somehow I'd opted to turn them off but had still gotten a few including two from years-old posts, very odd. The less I know about what's happening in other people's journals, the better. (Er, that's what you meant, right?)

Oh! PG Tips! That's something I miss from the time I was living in London--good, strong, non-luxury tea. Can you get PG Tips here, now? (My specific complains about rural New England aside, there's definitely more selection everywhere these days.)

Also, happy belated birthday! Sorry I missed it. It must have been a good one, if lemon curd and digestives were involved. M.

[liseuse]

Oh, I loathe PG Tips, although not as much as I loathe Yorkshire Tea. Which makes me a very bad Yorkshirewoman. I'm a devotee of Clipper Tea.