Aw, thanks guys.
If there's one thing I can talk about it's food, as I just get bored and lonely and just start retching up words at you all and hope that they make some sense. If you encourage this it will only turn into further monster posts, so be wary of your praise lest ye unleash dragons. Fat dragons who won't shut up about food.
So, last night ended up just being a thai delivery junket instead of the chicken that I meditated briefly upon in my previous post. It was actually mostly a letdown - the pad thai was lacking and the satay skewers tasted a little more like coconut milk than I really care for. The exception, however, was the deep-fried "pumpkin" bits (really an asian kind of squash called a kabocha; it has a thin, dark green skin with pleasantly sweet, bright orange inner flesh) served with the usual kind of thai peanut sauce.
Living in the festering hell-pit of a desert called the Sacramento Valley (as I do) the temperature has finally just started to approach less than 80 degrees during the day, so it feels like Fall has, at last, fallen, if only grudgingly. It is a relief to me, though a nervous sort of relief that teeters on a seasonal edge; it feels like nature could change its mind at any moment and skip right back into blazing summer. But as it currently stands I have been reminded by the heavens that clouds are indeed real and can happen; there are rumours that a sort of damp substance may come out of them occasionally. I am not particularly a sunny-weather kind of person, so I look forward to Fall as a time for my brain cool and re-congeal after being out in the unrelenting sun for eight months of the year.
I bring all of this up because the fried pumpkin bits dipped in peanut sauce tastes _exactly_ like Fall should taste. It is the crackle of dry leaves and the smell of raked lawns and damp Earth, it is hooded sweatshirts and hot tea and baked things from the oven.
When you take a bite of these pumpkin bits, it's like a trip to an entirely different meal dimension, one where you're not on the couch late at night alone marathoning shows on Netflix while shoveling random bits of someone else's culture into your face: it takes you over like you're sitting down to a plate of baked acorn squash and sweet potatos at your parent(s') house and a pumpkin-pecan pie is baking in the oven (it might just be warming up, because it's really store-bought, but who cares? It still stinks up the house like delicious.)
When you first arrived home, your eyes were assaulted by oddly-colored and mysteriously inedible corn placed strategically around the house, and there lurks at least one of those weird wicker horns spilling forth a festive bounty of other things nobody can eat. These things are the legacy of America and serve as a reminder of Ye Olde Days; back when life in the New World was full of danger, mysteriously inedible corn, and weird wicker horns spilling forth a festive bounty of other things nobody can eat lurked hideously around every corner. Also pellagra.
You had to take your shoes off at the door, so you pad around in your nice wool socks (that you wore so your family won't think you're a total poor. They actually know the truth, and you're pretty sure they know the truth, but the charade is pleasant and your feet are ok with this.) You likely also slide about a bit on the hardwood or linoleum for a laugh, and might scoot across the carpet so you can amusingly electrocute a sibling, pet, and/or significant other. You're not used to taking your shoes off, or carpet that's seen a vacuum in the past decade, so walking about in socks is a refreshing novelty and you're determined to take full advantage of the situation while it lasts.
Later, you sit on the couch and loaf by the fireplace for a while before you trundle yourself back to your empty apartment. When you get there you find a leftover box of thai food sitting on the coffee table. Inside is something orange and deep-fried, with a side of peanut sauce. You take a bite, and...
So anyways, all in all not bad for a $6 appetizer, if you ask me.
This evening I revisited my original vision of poultry and actually cooked some chicken in the form of a casserole with rice, but I shall spare you all of my dwellings upon it for another night.