This store popped up in Footscray several years ago that sells only pirated DVDs. Admittedly they sell mostly South East Asian discs that wont run afoul of any Australian publishers but they still do have a number of anime and Hollywood movies as well. They also get bonus points for having a bubble tea stall at the back of the store.
A pretty tepid morning considering how cold it has been recently. I headed out solo to Footscray for some Pho. I made sure to sit facing out into the street so I could watch the rain fall as I ate. I then found my iPhone headphones in my jacket so I plugged myself in, cued up some Nujabes and enjoyed a very relaxing breakfast. After what was a pretty stressful week I now feel human again.
Sriracha sauce is one of those things that has always been in our pantry and I’d never once thought about where it comes from until recently stumbling across a great article in the New York Times.
For Mr. Tran, of Chinese heritage but born in Vietnam, neither sriracha-spiked hollandaise nor sriracha-topped tacos with kimchi translate easily.
“I made this sauce for the Asian community,” Mr. Tran said one recent afternoon, seated at headquarters, near a rooster-shaped crystal sculpture.
“I knew, after the Vietnamese resettled here, that they would want their hot sauce for their pho,” a beef broth and noodle soup that is a de facto national dish of Vietnam. “But I wanted something that I could sell to more than just the Vietnamese,” he continued.
“After I came to America, after I came to Los Angeles, I remember seeing Heinz 57 ketchup and thinking: ‘The 1984 Olympics are coming. How about I come up with a Tran 84, something I can sell to everyone?’ ”
What Mr. Tran developed in Los Angeles in the early 1980s was his own take on a traditional Asian chili sauce. In Sriracha, a town in Chonburi Province, Thailand, where homemade chili pastes are favored, natives do not recognize Mr. Tran’s purée as their own.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/dining/20united.html?_r=1
Just watch.
Edit 02/06: Linked fixed #2
Awesome download, this Mixtape. J Period has put together a brilliant tribute to one of my favourite rappers. Tip also appears frequently throughout to provide little bits of trivia for certain landmark Tribe tracks, my favourite is his explanation of a muddled line that ended up being pressed. I’ve wondered for years what Kapelka was supposed to be!
I usually eat pretty cleanly, though my biggest vice is soft-drinks. Since switching to tea drinks I haven’t missed my Coke at all. I’ve tried heaps recently and Pokka Oolong is the best. No carbonation, no sugar, just straight up tea and water (and ascorbic acid 300, but that can be forgiven) It’s so refreshing. I’m hooked. 4.5 stars.
We had dinner the other night to celebrate Dad’s “54th” birthday. I put his age in quotes because his actual age is a topic of some debate. We’re pretty sure he’s been 54 for a couple years now… Anyhow, it was a good opportunity to bust out the D60.
My old man. That’s his girlfriend. She’s 3 years older than me. He’s so gangsta.
I like this shot. Paul’s concentrating hard while dad looks concerned.
Check out the tiny grill. True-to-form, dad left it to the last minute to ask me to pick up my barbecue. This did the job fine, though.
Random Asian greens and enoki mushrooms. I can identify so many different Asian vegetables and herbs but can barely name a single one. Conversations between and dad and I when grocery shopping is like a game of charades sometimes. “You know.. the one that looks like… and tastes like… and you use it in… you know which one I mean!”
Prawn-y!
Squid-y!
My brother: Destroyer of prawns.
Why do the Vietnamese drink shit beer?
Looks like a pretty innocent birthday cake, right? WRONG. It was full of my nemesis; the DURIAN!
Happy Birthday Dad!
SAVE YOUR FUCKING MONEY MIKE.
When was my last post? Mid February. It’s now the end of March. That is how long it has taken to get broadband set up at my place. It has been a 5 week long comedy of errors involving stuffing around with phone companies and various ISPs. In the end I ended up just reconnecting the Optus cable I had set up years ago. Even that wasn’t straightforward. They took the order and promised to contact me near the installation date which would be in around a week. 10 days later we called to see what was happening and was told ‘Oh, your installation is booked in for today. A tech will be there in an hour’ Nice, but what would have happened if we didn’t call. We most certainly would have missed the guy and I’d still be waiting. Anyway, this rant marks the return of the Neglected Blog.
P.S. Fuck you TPG. You may have a cheap product but you have the shittiest service I have ever encountered.
Did I mention moving sucks? All my stuff is still in boxes and I don’t have the energy to unpack or post anything worthwhile.
In the meantime, visit the awesome blog of photographer and nice guy, Kevin Yiu.