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   Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 01-Feb-2026 15:17:41 JST Adrianna Tan

   I was curious about my vinegar aversion and looked up why I didn’t seem to have any vinegar in my southern Chinese (Teochew and Cantonese) coastal cuisines at all. We also have almost no fermentation culture

   Apparently, the climate, widespread availability of fresh food, and centuries of global trade in our ports and regional preference for food caught / prepared on the same day meant we have almost no need for food preservation.

   Back to vinegar. Those cuisines dislike any flavors that overshadow the ‘original’ flavor of meats, seafood and vegetables. So yeah we almost never used any vinegar. I could not even eat northern Chinese food for a long time. Coz of the vinegar. It took me a long time to be able to eat anything that was vinegar heavy.

   Now, my favorite ones are Yucatán foods flavored with citrus.

   The first time I tried Tabasco and Sriracha, I was so mad. Hot sauce should not have vinegar. It should just be straight up chillies, made fresh, daily, at lunch. ;)

   I still don’t like Tabasco or American style sriracha. But I can now have a panucho with cochinita pibil with a lot of zest and acid.

   Most people in my family cannot even deal with a drop of acid or vinegar. That was me, until very recently!

   #Food #ChineseFood

   • GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 01-Feb-2026 15:28:35 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     The Teochew and Cantonese ‘fresh foods’ obsession is so ingrained in me. All of my languages for foods have to do with how knowing how to select fresh fish is a virtue, getting frozen is bad and morally suspect and foolish. Every elder in my life, alive and dead, felt similarly. I never even ate microwaved food until I came to America. I never had hot sauces bought off a shelf until I left Asia. (All of our condiments were freshly made)

     Except for a handful of preserved staples (preserved soy beans, olive vegetables, all of the staples for porridge).

     Sometimes I run up against the realities of where I live now and how my elders ate and how different that is. It’s not possible for me to eat like that all the time. Frozen fish is probably fine, but I still can’t accept it.

     Coming from a culture that taught me that being extremely fussy and bothersome with food is a virtue, it’s fine to care deeply about each meal every single day, that’s what adults do, to.. whatever the hell this is here, I feel very out of place sometimes. I want to eat a certain way but I know I should probably also adapt to some realities. I don’t live in a place where food preservation is unnecessary.

     It feels like a type of culture shock that I don’t know how to explain. And I miss being among people who feel similarly. Not just about the final product, like whether the dish is good or not, but about the whole thing, provenance and all. ‘I bought this fish from this person. They caught it here today. I am going to steam it, with salted plums, for dinner later, but for lunch we will have the taro rice and braised duck.’

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 01-Feb-2026 15:37:40 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • May Likes Toronto

     @mayintoronto also a bit of a ‘we left the old world (China) for the new (southeast Asia) where there is so much more food and we can eat like kings now even though we are poor’

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     May Likes Toronto (mayintoronto@beige.party)'s status on Sunday, 01-Feb-2026 15:37:41 JST May Likes Toronto

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte I wonder how much of that culture stemmed from the great famine. Having fresh food could be a status thing too.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 01-Feb-2026 15:41:17 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     I also learned, on coming to this side of the world, if there were things and flavors I didn’t really like; (like.. vinegar.. potatoes.. yes sorry but I really didn’t like potatoes)

     I should try how Mexicans and Peruvians make those foods and I will probably like them a lot and change my mind about everything I dislike.

     I want to write a cookbook about all the foods I disliked and how I changed my mind

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 01-Feb-2026 16:14:32 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Jenica Lake เหล็ถเลถ

     @MamaLake thanks for sharing! Yes that is much closer to what I am used to. I have often wondered what it would be like for someone to go the other way. You’ve just answered that. :)

   • Embed this notice
     Jenica Lake เหล็ถเลถ (mamalake@beige.party)'s status on Sunday, 01-Feb-2026 16:14:34 JST Jenica Lake เหล็ถเลถ

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte I feel this with you. Growing up in America on an extremely tight budget, my mother had this magical ability to walk into a grocery store with $20 and come out with a week of meals. It was magic and it kept me alive, but none of it was fresh, fresh was expensive and required immediate fixing, something my piano teaching mother couldn’t afford in money or time. I was starving in America, everything fresh was truly too expensive to eat, so I ate small portions and rationed myself. Paying $10 for one dragonfruit wasn’t available to me. People didn’t talk about food often, except to complain about how expensive it was or that they “had to” cook for themselves.

     Then, upon being embraced by a food centered culture here in Thailand… food is king, fresh food is abundant and inexpensive. Dragon fruit is about one dollar. Sauces are made on the daily, some with vinegar, but more for the taste (sweet, sour, spicy coalescence) than for preservation. One of our most used greetings is to ask, “have you had rice yet?” Conversations around food we love or want to eat could carry on through a meal, working up our appetites for the next meal during our current meal. We have “play food,” eating for fun and enjoyment, just to taste together. Now I am no longer starving or rationing, but it’s taken almost three years to break this habit. I don’t know how we will eat if we go back to America.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 02-Feb-2026 00:18:48 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Gator 🐊

     @Gator I think the foods of th Native Americans and Black cultures here (creole food, Gullah Guchee food, American south food) is just as good as any global cuisine. Anglo settler culture definitely has a different relationship with food that I very much struggle with

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     Gator 🐊 (gator@mamot.fr)'s status on Monday, 02-Feb-2026 00:18:50 JST Gator 🐊

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte By "this side of the world" you mean North America, right?
     Well, I'm not sure if there is anything really edible over there (in Canada, maybe?)
     It's not about the ingredients, it's about the place where you ate it. (and while I've never been, I've met a few of them, and yes, people in Central and South America understand the concept of food - It's really an Anglo thing)

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 02-Feb-2026 03:27:24 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     on potatoes: beloved most parts of the world, disdained or perceived as inferior in the parts of the world i have heritage.

     potatoes gained popularity in inland china and in the north, in places with drought and frost, but were always 'insignificant crops' in the southeast, where i have most of my heritage (because caloric sufficiency was already achieved with rice).

     the people of the south largely perceived potato to have 'inferior texture' (and also they just didn't go with our rice-based dishes). they also often caught viruses in our humid climate near a lot of water.

     in fact, 'tu dou' (or 'underground beans') mean 'potato' in mandarin, in northern china, but 'tu dou' in my southern chinese languages mostly mean 'peanut' (which preceded the arrival of potatoes).

     we call all potatos (including sweet) 'fan shu' instead, or 'foreign tubers'. there was very little potato in my life. i still mostly don't love it, but mentioned above, as our climate was the same when my ancestors moved to places like singapore / malaysia / thailand. still rice based primarily, potatoes still caught viruses, rice is still religion.

     in fact, the slightly derogatory (now reclaimed to be cute) term that mandarin speakers from the north had for people from the south, like me, was 'xiao tu dou': little potato. it had to do with how *our* potatoes were actually peanuts. because we were not potato eaters.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 02-Feb-2026 03:29:08 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     other potato-based identity markers:

     after going to the 'new world' (in southeast asia), many southern chinese people continued to not eat potatoes (because viruses, because rice).

     in singapore / malaysia, hokkien and teochew speakers absorbed our local malay language terms and combined it with our words.

     the term 'jiak kentang' (a person who eats potato) refers to someone who is an Anglophile, someone who doesn't like rice, someone who can eat a whole meal made of potatoes instead of rice, which is unthinkable to many of a certain age.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 02-Feb-2026 03:31:25 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • David McMullin

     @mcmullin hah you read my mind

     https://hachyderm.io/@skinnylatte/115996782836458142

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     David McMullin (mcmullin@musicians.today)'s status on Monday, 02-Feb-2026 03:31:27 JST David McMullin

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte
     You must love the northern Chinese way of making potatoes, with tons of vinegar and sugar…

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 02-Feb-2026 03:36:57 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Howard Chu @ Symas

     @hyc edited for clarity

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     Howard Chu @ Symas (hyc@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 02-Feb-2026 03:36:58 JST Howard Chu @ Symas

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte huh. I was taught "ma ling shu" for "potato".

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 02-Feb-2026 03:45:17 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • MidgePhoto

     @Photo55 vietnam's chinese population come from a similar place as i do, and probably cook potatoes the same way we do: in soups, sometimes stirfried, but never the main carb

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     MidgePhoto (photo55@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 02-Feb-2026 03:45:18 JST MidgePhoto

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte
     I gathered Vietnam is good at potatoes?

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 02-Feb-2026 03:45:27 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Alda Vigdís

     @alda if you ask most people with similar eating habits as me what they think of food in germany, they usually say 'too much bread and potato'

     we are usually fine with the pork (that's the best part)

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     Alda Vigdís (alda@topspicy.social)'s status on Monday, 02-Feb-2026 03:45:28 JST Alda Vigdís

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte In a similar way, non-white immigrants in Germany tend to refer to white people as kartoffeln and I don't disagree.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 02-Feb-2026 03:58:02 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     All my life, I never learned a single curse or swear word in my native Teochew language.

     My grandfather only had one: ‘if you don’t stop misbehaving, I will make you eat a potato!’

     It truly struck fear in him. To him, the worse parts of living through a war (the Japanese occupation) was how little rice he had and how many potatoes he had to eat instead. Oh, and his friends being disappeared, but mainly, having to eat potatoes.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 02-Feb-2026 06:44:47 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Axel Gutmann

     @virbonus oh, no wonder I much preferred food in Germany’s south

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     Axel Gutmann (virbonus@sueden.social)'s status on Monday, 02-Feb-2026 06:44:48 JST Axel Gutmann

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte Quite similar in Germany: potatoes are the main staple in the North whereas the South lives from noodles or more specifically spätzle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sp%C3%A4tzle) or dumplings.
     My grandmother used to say the only way to make potatoes edible was feeding them to a pig (a sentiment I still share regarding pumpkins).

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 02-Feb-2026 13:18:16 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • ChookMother 🇦🇺🦘

     @anne_twain i am autistic and so is everyone who follows me here. We make many interesting info dumps

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     ChookMother 🇦🇺🦘 (anne_twain@theblower.au)'s status on Monday, 02-Feb-2026 13:18:18 JST ChookMother 🇦🇺🦘

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte How did we get from swearing in Teochew to recipes for red cabbage in so few posts?

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     ChookMother 🇦🇺🦘 (anne_twain@theblower.au)'s status on Monday, 02-Feb-2026 13:18:21 JST ChookMother 🇦🇺🦘

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte Are you saying you wish you knew more? I find I get a lot of satisfaction out of using profanities in my native language, Australian English( yes, it is a distinct dialect of English).