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   Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 00:47:25 JST Adrianna Tan

   My only options for a rice breakfast in Monterey / Pacific Grove: bring a frozen Trader Joe’s butter chicken, or get the deli sushi at Andronico’s.

   It’s out here for a rice-for-breakfast eater.

   #Monterey #Food

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 00:48:12 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     Back home I would have literal hundreds of rice based breakfast options across multiple cuisines :/

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 00:55:02 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     One time my mum’s friends asked her if she would ever move to SF with me. She was like meh there aren’t enough soup and rice breakfasts there

     (SF already has more than other places but it’s literally like maybe 5 things vs 50, in just one location in SG / MY / TW)

     She was like ‘I can’t live like this’

     I know how she feels

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 00:57:08 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     The last thing she said to me when she left SF to go back to Singapore was

     ‘Girl, I will miss you. But I miss laksa more. Bye’

   • Embed this notice
     Advanced Persistent Teapot (http_error_418@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 01:11:44 JST Advanced Persistent Teapot

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte you can know your child is alive and well across the sea and take comfort in that. But knowing your laksa is across the sea is the opposite 😛

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 01:12:01 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Noodlemaz

     @noodlemaz she would disagree (she thinks all laksa is bad even in singapore except for the 1 stall she grew up eating at. i'm kind of the same lol)

     but yes she is coming to london (and i might try to meet her there)

     she will be packing a lot of instant foods because she gets desperately homesick for food. even with good chinese foods around it's just not enough either.

   • Embed this notice
     Noodlemaz (noodlemaz@med-mastodon.com)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 01:12:03 JST Noodlemaz

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte ooh London has good laksa
     She can come visit us 😅

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 01:22:01 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     boy i'm glad i got my rice breakfast on my own because the catered breakfast is donuts and pastries and

     i still think that much sugar for breakfast is feral

     this whole country is feral

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 01:26:16 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Advanced Persistent Teapot

     @http_error_418 she has this deep existential concern that her laksa guy is going to die before she does. he is the only person who makes laksa in the entire universe who she loves. i think she would rather not eat laksa if he was not alive.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 01:30:23 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Andres

     @Andres4NY i don't love the latter and can't do it everyday but find it at least still edible and enjoyable. i can't even eat 1/4 of an american unglazed donut. it's more sugar than i eat in a month

   • Embed this notice
     Andres (andres4ny@social.ridetrans.it)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 01:30:24 JST Andres

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte when I think of US breakfast, it's one of two modes - either Calvin & Hobbes Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs, or it's Denny's greasy bacon/grits/eggs

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 01:45:05 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     something that is worse than feral...

     fake flavored vanilla almond... half and half..

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 02:00:58 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Noodlemaz

     @noodlemaz i have absolutely no issues eating across california and new york, there's a wide range of foods (LA i think has a food scene as good as bangkok, for me) but yeah some of the rest of the country is a food desert. sometimes literally, sometimes just 'not something i want to eat'.

     i find though that if i consciously seek out immigrant food and Black / Creole / Cajune / Hispanic food, i am as happy eating here as elsewhere.

     the industrialized food here is terrible

   • Embed this notice
     Noodlemaz (noodlemaz@med-mastodon.com)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 02:01:00 JST Noodlemaz

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte well that is fair, I'm sure it is a bit rubbish compared to home!!
     Food is tricky, I certainly struggled with that the most especially while travelling in the US.

     Here, you can just go in almost any pub and probably get a good meal. There, it's fast food chains and some absolutely inedible (to me) stuff. Depends where you are of course, but being on the road in particular I found v stressful. Used to make massive tubs of pasta salad and bake bars to take with!!

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 02:04:44 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Dan Morris

     @coldfish this GF recipe looks like the least whitewashed of all the ones that i saw.

     https://www.mybfisgf.com/recipeindex/laksa

     the soy sauce probably isn't the most important so tamari would work fine. it's the fish stock and coconut cream are more impt i think

     if you want a taste reference for yourself while making it i would suggest ordering the laksa from noodle station in daly city. it's most like what i like.

     using rice noodles is common so it's already celiac friendly but i also like 'shirataki noodles' made from konjac

   • Embed this notice
     Dan Morris (coldfish@sfba.social)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 02:04:45 JST Dan Morris

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte I had to look up what Laska was, and now I need to make it. Unfortunately, the kids have Celiac, so I'm gonna have to make it from scratch with tamari instead of soysauce, but I bet I can do it.

     Any tips?

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 02:13:34 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Dan Morris

     @coldfish vegan recipe

     https://woonheng.com/curry-laksa-mee/

     woonheng is great for vegan malaysian

     also 'kampung vegan' on youtube (most legit). most aussie / british vegan malaysian recipes are.. not good

   • Embed this notice
     Dan Morris (coldfish@sfba.social)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 02:13:35 JST Dan Morris

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte I actually have some Konjac noodles and coconut cream. Going to have to find some decent fish-stock, but it looks like I have just about everything else but lime-leaves and the curry paste. Prob get some down the street in chinatown.

     Unfortunately, I'm going to have to make one for my vegan wife as well. So that's going to be fun, but it think she has some fish-like goop I can use. lol

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 04:44:55 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     we got cold sandwiches for lunch and i had another existential crisis (i don't like any cold food except for things like sichuan spicy cold poached chicken) ahahahah

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 04:51:28 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Tyrone Slothrop

     @slothrop i think i had a cold sandwich just once as a child / teenager, as a 'i want to know how people live' and i had to go to 7-eleven to get one

     the economics of 'outside food' is upside down in southeast and east asia (eating hot food outside is often cheaper than making your own meals)

   • Embed this notice
     Tyrone Slothrop (slothrop@chaos.social)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 04:51:30 JST Tyrone Slothrop

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte I was raised by a working single mum, so I ate a lot of sandwiches that I made myself.

     Now, much later in life, I'm still sometimes surprised that many people expect one or even two warm meals per day as a rule.

     (My mum cared for me well, and I wasn't malnourished by any means. There just wasn't time for cooking every day.)

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 04:54:21 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Tyrone Slothrop
     • Irene Zhang

     @irene @slothrop and the prevalence / practice of selling food outside as a reasonable labor practice for women and less educated people (remarked upon by the dutch when they went to java hundreds of years ago)

   • Embed this notice
     Irene Zhang (irene@discuss.systems)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 04:54:22 JST Irene Zhang

     in reply to

     • Tyrone Slothrop

     @slothrop @skinnylatte I don’t know if it’s because Asia is particularly fertile compared to Europe but I feel like people have much higher expectations for plentiful, cheap food.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 04:54:53 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Tyrone Slothrop

     @slothrop yep, in fact the thing that every singaporean / malaysian says when they move to the us / europe is... 'i can't eat out three times a day sad'

   • Embed this notice
     Tyrone Slothrop (slothrop@chaos.social)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 04:54:54 JST Tyrone Slothrop

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte Yeah! It's funny to see just how strongly our respective upbringing shapes our habits when we're adults.

     We went to restaurants maybe... twice per year? It wasn't even that money was too tight. Eating out just wasn't really done for anything except major occasions.

     For a Singaporean, that must be an utterly alien way to live.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 04:58:40 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Tyrone Slothrop
     • Irene Zhang

     @irene @slothrop when i go to the southeast asian grocery store, i know that the tofu in the unmarked bag filled with water is the best. and that the whole fish on ice which hasn't been processed into fillets is also the best (and also protects from fish fraud, which is an actual thing that happens in large groceries and the fish supply chain)

   • Embed this notice
     Irene Zhang (irene@discuss.systems)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 04:58:41 JST Irene Zhang

     in reply to

     • Tyrone Slothrop

     @skinnylatte @slothrop yeah, I worked in a factory in Beijing as an intern in 2004 and the cafeteria was just two old grannies who cooked whatever they wanted each day and that was great. I don’t know why the US is so keen on industrialized “clean” food.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 05:19:49 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Dan Ports
     • Irene Zhang

     @dan @irene my lunch options in school as a 7 year old:

     - mee rebus, mee soto, malay style omurice with nasi goreng, chicken rice, cheung fan, chicken chop, wanton noodles, beef noodles, char siu rice, etc

     i thought it was terribly limited and i did not like eating at school (i brought my own that i would buy from the vendors i preferred near my home)

     by the time we were in high school we had cheap japanese and korean food at school

     i didn't know what i had until i didn't have it anymore

   • Embed this notice
     Dan Ports (dan@discuss.systems)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 05:19:50 JST Dan Ports

     in reply to

     • Irene Zhang

     @skinnylatte I was just thinking yesterday about how when @irene was in school the kids would bully her for eating Chinese food instead of cold sandwiches, but when I was in school half my class was Asian so they would bully me for eating a Jarlsberg Lite cheese sandwich and in a sense this was worse because *they were right*

   • Embed this notice
     Dan Ports (dan@discuss.systems)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 05:19:51 JST Dan Ports

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte obligatory link: https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/3223088/lunch-suffering-chinese-bloggers-appalled-what-they-call-white-people-food-such-salads-cheese-and

     "'The point of the white people’s meal is to learn what it feels like to be dead, but I’ve taken two bites and it was so bad it made me realise how alive I am,' wrote one poster who tried a serving of plain crackers, cheese and ham."

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 05:29:49 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Tyrone Slothrop

     @slothrop haha, pompeii was set up in that way so in a sense, it's you guys who have changed your food and eating out habits

   • Embed this notice
     Tyrone Slothrop (slothrop@chaos.social)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 05:29:50 JST Tyrone Slothrop

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte Conversely, European media will sometimes run stories about how in Singapore or Hong Kong, they’re building apartments without kitchens.

     Which probably makes sense there, but is utterly absurd to Europeans.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 05:34:16 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     i was looking for evidence to remind me that i wasn't dreaming up hot and plentiful breakfast options back home

     i found it

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 05:52:38 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Patrick Lam :tinoflag:

     @va2lam i feel like chinese boomers are generally skeptical of sushi and raw things because they think they will get salmonella

     my parents can't do sushi either

   • Embed this notice
     Patrick Lam :tinoflag: (va2lam@mastodon.nz)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 05:52:39 JST Patrick Lam :tinoflag:

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte my parents feel that way about sushi in particular.

     Had dim sum for lunch today with them. Definitely not cold sandwiches.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 06:04:26 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Fanua 🌐

     @Fanua mcdonalds breakfast is a big deal in southeast asia!!

   • Embed this notice
     Fanua 🌐 (fanua@mas.to)'s status on Thursday, 14-Aug-2025 06:04:27 JST Fanua 🌐

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte I know it's McDonald's, but at least they serve rice for breakfast in Hawai'i and American Samoa.