We're only a few days away from arriving in Toronto and settling back into the old apartment. Just in time for garden planning and seed buying... one of the many ways home is tempting us to come back. Of course, I will dearly miss our year of adventure, and apologize in advance if months from now, I still seem worlds-away distant or lost in thought. To be honest, the thing I love mostmostmost about travelling is not marvelling at historic temples, hiking in dense jungles or wandering through grand museums. For me, its doing those basic, everyday things we all normally do without much thought, because when you're in a new place, these tasks are suddenly so different that you immediately feel like you yourself are new, reborn as a child of sorts. Interactions with people, getting from place to place, using currency; it feels familiar, and yet totally fresh and kind of amusing. Food is another thing of wonderment - new produce, dishes, smells and table etiquette. Even the familiar staple foods from back home... seeing them in their raw, living, plant form at their tropical source is a delightful and curious thing. Here I would like to share a few of these moments, of those foods that even a strict Toronto locavore may find hard to resist.
Rice. A staple food to billions of people, and the perfect food when you want to eat a million of something. Owing to my Asian heritage, I've known this little pearl of a grain f
or as long as I can remember; it has been the colourless background to a zillion
meals in my lifetime. When I was sick, rice gave me an easily digestable soup (in the form of congee). When I was dieting, rice gave me a low-calorie, gluten-free snack (in the form of rice cakes and crackers). Rice has always been there for me, like a true pal. Yet only until recently have I touched a living rice plant. Now, rice has given me an unforgettable picture of south Asia: the vivid green colour of endless rice paddies.
Bananas. Everyone's favourite peelable raw fruit actually comes in a ton of varieties. Banana trees grow farmed or wild in the tropics, and fruits develop from the large, singular "flower" which droops from the tree stem and hangs in mid-air. The young flower on its own is edible, say, in a Thai or Lao style salad or soup. But when left to mature on the tree, the flower's outer "petals" wither and fall off, each layer revealing a neat row of curved fruits which grow meaty and green.
Tea and coffee. Two of the world's most popular drinks, source from two of the world's most unremarkable-looking plants. Why or how did someone figure that drying, fermenting and roasting their plant parts would yield such a highly-addictive, flavourful brew is beyond comprehension. I can tell you first-hand that a freshly plucked tea leaf is tough, fibrous and lacks any distinct or pleasant taste. Similarily, the white flesh of a coffee berry smells just like nothing. Unlike any of the aforementioned crops, coffee seems to be the only one that the locals themselves don't consume regularly. Another by-product of our strange global food economy.
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