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

[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.