If you like Asian food...

...get Asian friends!

I work with a crew of mostly Lao and Cambodians. This means that I hear Lao spoken about as often as I hear English (and can say a few words myself,) smell fish sauce or duck head soup or chicken feet or papaya salad in the break room more often than I smell pizza or hamburgers, and (here's the best part) they let me eat some too. They are glad to share with me and I crack them up because I love, love, love Asian food. They say, "Do you want some?" I say, "Sure! Thank you!" Take a bite and say, "Wow, this is really good/hot/fishy/etc. What is it?" So it is that I, with my openness to new foods, endlessly thrill them, and they continue to supply me with new things to try.

Today Pitsana came in with a few Wal-Mart bags full of gallon-size Ziplocs of these peppers. Usually one person will go shopping, buy a massive amount of something, then bring it all to work and divide it out with everyone interested. But these peppers weren't like anything I'd seen in a grocery store, so I asked her where she bought them. She said that her friend's mother grows them, and that these are the peppers they use in just about everything. Oh really? I mused to myself. She must have seen my face light up because at the end of the day, she gave me a handful and told me very seriously to only use one or two at a time. (It felt as much like a fairy tale as it sounded.) And now I have fresh magic peppers.

Also today, but in a completely different corner of the building, Emily gave me crab apples in homemade spicy sauce. I happened to be working by her when she gave one to the new (white) girl. New girl started making the most dramatic of faces and managed to say around a mouthful of crab apple, "Its so sour!" Emily then offered me some. I've never seen a crab apple before today, so I was very curious. I asked her, "How do you eat them?" She pulled out a tupperware full of chunky brown liquid and said, "You dip it in spicy sauce." Okay! I dipped the crab apple in the sauce and popped it in my mouth. It was first spicy, then sour, then a little sweet, then just sour and spicy with a nutty aftertaste. In short, it was unlike anything I've had and it was wonderful. Because I liked them so much, Emily gave me a little baggie already in the sauce. I'm going to save them so Spoot, my fellow food adventurer, can try them too.

Honestly, I dream of the day I live in a country where food I've never eaten before is more plentiful than pizza and hamburgers. I could happily eat rice noodles for the rest of my life and never again have Italian pasta. I only ask that it be spicy. It simply must be spicy. And of course there must be beer.