I don't know if kids in India eat spicy foods or not, but eating food from different cultures seems to be a really pointless way of being culturally expansive. Instead of food, you could expose them to Bollywood movies. Nonstop Bollywood movies in your house all day.
It just seems so very biological that little kids have big, raw taste buds and chemically burning your tongue doesn't feel good until you're a little dead inside.
On the veldt the really spicy antelopes were too fast for kids to run down.
My ex's mom, who is from India, claims she tried to give her first kid Gerber -- we're in America now, and our baby is American! she'll eat American baby food! -- but found it so disgusting that she just started pureeing whatever they were already eating, spice and all.
The kids I grew up with from spicy-food cultures started out with milder versions and built up to the full spicy versions. I dimly recall yogurt being a diluent for south asian spicy foods, but I could be misremembering.
Anecdote #2: My German host father was born in India, to a German father and a half Portuguese, half Goan mother. Mom died before he was one, dad was out in the jungle a lot of the time looking for snakes (he was a herpetologist), so no one was minding the kid that closely. When he was around 2, they noticed he wasn't eating very much at home, though he continued to be a normal weight. Turned out he'd been spending most of his days at the gardener's house on the edge of the property, where the gardener's wife was feeding him super spicy food all day.
Our son will eat tomato soup as well as broccoli. I have no idea why, because I still won't eat the first of those and eat the second only because I start to feel bad if I don't eat vegetables once in a while. So, I'm going to call that the outcome of a successful effort to expose our child to a wide variety of foods and prepare him for a life of healthy eating. I'm going to ignore the fact his favorite food in the whole world is corn dogs.
Most milk products do cut spice perception. And I've seen yogurt in curry recipes.
I would eat basically everything from a very young age. At maybe eight or so I decided it was time to start liking spicy things. By ten or so I was drinking tabasco, a habit that has since lapsed. Which is probably healthy.
It's just got to vary enormously from kid to kid, because everything does. There have got to be plenty of Indian kids eating mostly naan and yogurt.
Yogurt is the key.
I am dead inside so I enjoy spicy foods.
9:
and chick peas and eggplant and cabbage.
It's just got to vary enormously from kid to kid, because everything does.
Number of fingers doesn't vary much.
6. I believe the broccoli thing is a genetic lottery as to whether you inherit a dominant version of some gene that makes dark greens intolerably bitter (to kids, and not much fun to adults), or not. Maybe your son has the other version, as I suppose I do.
AFAIK there's no universal conventional wisdom among South Asian people about when to start spicing up kids' food and how much. Depends on the family, and the kid. Some kids like strong flavours, others don't. But I endorse comment 1.
12: Yes, no one could possibly find the saddest photo ever disputing that charge.
14: The maximum difference is maybe 16 or 18.
My kid went through a very heavy Bollywood phase, and many of the films are wonderful.
Billu is good for adults and kids both. There's definitely changing styles over time-- incongruous fabulous dance numbers seem less common since 2005 or thereabouts. Jaane tu.. Ya Jaane Na was interesting, warm, can't remember if the music was fabulous. Chaiya Chaiya is a great song-and-dance number on youtube, cannot find a version free of a leading ad.
I think thta rickrolling is no longer possible because of the ads, is this true or is there still a way to do that?
Asked a Korean friend this once and she said kids get white kimchi without all the spicy red chilli sauce in it, then slowly work their way up. They probably start that ascent earlier though.
Is white kimchi just sauerkraut? If Koreans and Germans are basically the same, maybe I should buy a Kia.
A friend of mine here claims to have eaten a lot of spicy foods while pregnant and breastfeeding, and now their 18-month-old devours spicy things. I had made some soba noodles with a kind of spicy sriracha dressing to serve cold at a picnic, and before I could warn them that it was too spicy for babies, he was eating them by handfuls.
To be sure, I agree with 1 in that it seems bullshit to raise your kid to love foreign foods as some kind of bourgeois marker of excellence, but it's got to be hella dope not making separate meals for your kid for all eternity because little Jay'denn only eats corn and white toast.
I don't make separate meals for the kids. I just figure we can add the hot stuff individually at the table.
And also, because I'm serially commenting, I don't think people in cultures where spicy foods are normal eat them because they feel dead inside. (Like, they eat panang curry every night because they're so desperate to *feel* something?)
AWB and read are right, you are a huge racist, heebie.
it seems bullshit to raise your kid to love foreign foods as some kind of bourgeois marker of excellence
Are there people who do this outside of the people who themselves eat foreign food as some kind of bourgeios marker of excellence? I can imagine there are, but it seems like a pain. We regularly cook things influenced by various Asian, Indian, and African cuisines, but I'd think it would get transmitted to a kid pretty much the way Italian food (where Italian = pasta) did to us as kids, i.e., as something that had at one time been exotic and markedly foreign, but is now pretty normal.
"You're going to eat that lutefisk and you're going to like it, João."
26: You show so much sooner with pregnancies after the first.
I always felt lucky that we ate things like Thai green curry when I was a kid but it wasn't a bourgeois project of my parents'; rather, just an accident of history: this nowhere town in Oklahoma we lived in (for reasons I've asked my folks about but can never quite remember) got an influx of immigrants/refugees from various places and, because there was no sort of ESL program anywhere, people in the English department including my folks ended up teaching ESL to Thai and Vietnamese and Iranian kids and there was a very friendly relationship between the students and teachers that involved things like them cooking for us.
After Daylight Saving Time, when it is Seasonally Affectively Disordered November in my soul, I do find that spicy food helps me refrain from stepping into the street and knocking men's hats off. Honestly, it feels a little bit like a drug. Also fucks up my stomach but oh well.
Sure, there are people who worry inordinately about what kind of message every action sends to their kids, who take "think of the children" very seriously. It's neurotic and irritating, but common and probably not harmful.
I can't believe AWB called heebie racist in 30.
I don't think people in cultures where spicy foods are normal eat them because they feel dead inside.
Right. That's why they have movies with giant production numbers with hundreds of singing and dancing actors.
(Ok "accident of history" is rather too grand for that little story. Let's say "weird thing that happened.")
I do find that spicy food helps me refrain from stepping into the street and knocking men's hats off.
No more spicy food for Smearcase. For once, let society burn!
My kid is definitely spice-averse but is fortunately otherwise a pretty adventurous eater. Actually she has a bizarre tolerance for extremely sour foods; her dream meal would be anchovies, olives, capers, dill pickles, and a big lemon wedge to suck on. It's been like this before she was 2 and who knows why.
I haven't seen you in ages,
But it's not as bleak as it seems --
We still dance on whirling stages
In my Busby Berkeley dreams
I love that song so much-- probably further evidence that I'm dead inside.
I haven't had Indian food in a while because the place that eveybody tells me is best would take about 30 minutes to get to. That's just too far for my lunch. I think I need to ask specifically about closer places instead of a general question.
I was at Busby Berkeley's house just yesterday. I mean, he wasn't there -- I'm not insane.
Yeah, do not go to Busby Berkeley's house when he's there. That whackjob is Phil Spector times a billion.
A billion Phil Spector specters, for real.
A billion Phil Spectors arranged in a moving circle with kicking legs on an elevated platform.
where does the phrase "call a spade a spade" come from? does anyone know the original context?
Disney's Haunted Phil Spector Mansion Spectacular
her dream meal would be anchovies, olives, capers, dill pickles, and a big lemon wedge to suck on.
Sounds good to me.
Some people were playing bridge and got upset at one guy who kept saying "the black cards that aren't trump this hand."
Don't know the origin, but the full version is "[Someone] who calls a spade a spade and not a bloody shovel".
Also, 5 sounds like Dr. Evil's life story; "I was born in the Andaman isles, the son of a Nazi herpetologist and a Goanese whore. My early life was spent hunting for mongoose and suckling at the teat of a wizened crone ...."
I thought it might be about boring white people who eat bland food.
A couple of different things -- first, spicy hot is a different spectrum from strong-tasting. It's not a flavor, it's a burning sensation, and I think kids can get used to it at about the same rate adults can: our food isn't generally terribly spicy hot, but Sally and Newt aren't behind us in ability to cope with the bits that are.
The second is kid tolerance for strong flavors, and I think there's a real issue with the fact that American kids are almost never hungry, and most American parents get bent out of shape about their kids not eating long before the kids might get hungry. (Note, this includes my family, my kids are fussy about all sorts of stupid foods, I'm not claiming to be a good parent.) If you've got a parenting style, either through rigidity (which is my impression of the French thing around food) or through actual food scarcity, where the adult food is what's available and if the kid doesn't eat it the kid's calorie intake for the day goes down, while that isn't going to absolutely eliminate childhood dislike for stronger flavors, it's going to make it much much much less of a factor.
The real question is at what age should you start your kids on all those exotic Euro foods - strong cheeses, tripe, bone marrow, borscht, herring, foie gras, kidneys, horse meat, fermented milk, etc. They're more likely to pick up a liking for spiciness on their own growing up in texas then they are for this sort of stuff.
18 I believe that the Germans don't add rotten fish juice to their cabbage.
I don't think I could knowing eat horse meat unless it was from a horse that did something bad to me personally. And nobody should eat tripe.
52: that's far from the most interesting or insane part of his life story.
What should everybody eat, Moby? I'm making menus.
I totally love horse meat and ate it ("steak de cheval") a few times weekly when I lived in Genf. Unfortunately it's banned in California thanks to an initiative that passed with like 80% of the vote but not my vote.
It's not a flavor, it's a burning sensation
I hate this construction! It's not a flavor according to a specific technical definition of that term, but, like, "stinky" isn't a flavor either.
Anyone remember when these comment sections contained witticisms?
And nobody should eat tripe.
Agreed. Though callos a la madrilena are OK if you're hungry enough because there's so much other good stuff in there you can't taste the tripe.
and most American parents get bent out of shape about their kids not eating long before the kids might get hungry.
I thought I'd be relaxed about whether or not the kids eat. What I didn't realize is that they get cranky as hell when they don't eat, and so damn right I'm going to force you to ingest something.
The other day Hokey Pokey woke up wailing from his nap. There was a moment when he was seated in front of a plate of little cut up pieces of hot dog, holding a piece in his fingers, and crying so hard that he could not get it inside his mouth. Let me stress that nothing had happened to set him off whatsoever except waking up starving from a nap.
Yeah what the hell tripe is awesome. Maybe I'll get some for lunch today.
tripe
More for me. Tacos tripitas, that excellent tripe-and-jalapeno surprise, tripe in pho, plus a bunch or really good central european soups.
60: What I meant is that even if there's a little-kid oversensitivity to strong flavors qua flavors -- kids are supertasters-- that's not a reason to assume an oversensitivity to spiciness. They may be somewhat more sensitive to hotness than adults as well, but it's probably going to be a somewhat separate mechanism.
61: what, yesterday? I'm sure the lack isn't directly attributable to you showing up.
Why would it be a separate mechanism? I always assumed it was just loud volume, so to speak. I don't actually agree that kids can get used to it at the same rate as adults - I feel like I aged out of finding spicy food painful, not that I just got conditioned to it.
What I didn't realize is that they get cranky as hell when they don't eat, and so damn right I'm going to force you to ingest something.
This is me being a parenting asshole, I'm out of step with the norm here, I'm calling most parents I know (including you) mistaken about something they're perceiving directly, and so there's no reason you should listen to me.
All that said, I think this is mostly superstition (not in the supernatural-causes sense, but in the post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc sense). Little kids are volatile: they get wrecked, they cheer up. If you forcefeed them when they're wrecked, they'll cheer up, but they probably would have done that anyway -- they weren't sad because they were uncomfortably hungry, they were just sad. Every parent in America believes in sugar highs as well, and there's (IIRC) pretty good research showing that that's also nonsense.
I firmly believe that most kids would manage just fine (in the sense that they wouldn't be more emotionally difficult than usual) if allowed to only eat when they wanted to, and even if food were only available at regular times during the day (this last bit limited to kids over eighteen months or so).
kids are supertasters
The They Might Be Giants song about supertasters was a big hit with our household. Fortunately, it eventually got old for everybody.
72: I really liked that album. Sadly, the kids have aged out of it, and I feel silly listening to it on my own.
Is white kimchi just sauerkraut?
I believe it has the other things characteristic of kimchi (seafoody bits, for instance). Just not the red pepper.
Also, there are many kimchis not made with cabbage at all.
You misunderstood me, Tweety. Nobody means to question your intelligence.
Eek, tripe. I had the same reaction to mondongo (brain to mouth: spit it out! immediately!) as I do to a few other things that just do not taste like food to me. Like chicken livers. Yegh.
Yeah, I seriously think you're wrong here, sometimes. I'm not talking about 15 minute mood swings.
If the kid is acting normal-ish, I don't care if they don't eat. But when they go from meltdown to meltdown to meltdown and can't get a handle on it after 30-60 minutes, and when it happens at predictable times like first thing in the morning, and when eating a banana predictably clears it up, then uh, I think it's a blood sugar thing.
neb! I was trying to explain the other day how bears are merely full of honey, not made of it like hippies. Fell on deaf ears.
And I did not believe this until this summer, so we made it 3+ years believing that Hawaiian Punch just gets into these prolonged nasty states that can last indefinitely.
65: that's an interesting story, heebie. I wonder why your children won't eat your food.
And now there's a certain way flavor of string-of-meltdowns which, if it seems like it's happening, I'm going to shut it down with some food.
Also very surprising that your spawn would be ill-tempered. Maybe they have mean friends?
I've never understood why people say they object to the flavor of cooked tripe. A tripe stew is basically an extra rich and flavorful beef broth with very tender meat. And these days they sell it parboiled and thoroughly cleaned so you don't have to go through the rather tiresome and unpleasant initial prep stage. It's like my Polish high school students twenty years ago insisting that lobster must be disgusting because, ick, lobster. These kinds of things are purely cultural prejudices, as opposed to strong flavors that most people will find jarring if they haven't experienced them.
I would suggest some kind of manners expert, not someone from within your family or circle of friends.
84: I think they're just concerned about whether or not you all are being nice to me. It really sets them off.
This is where I will begin my search for a manners expert for heebie's family. I hope I find someone good, otherwise I'll have to volunteer myself!
87: that's too bad. I think I hear them crying.
79: I wasn't expecting to convince you -- that was what all the disclaimers about what a jerk I'm being were about. I still believe (not specifically about your kids, who I haven't met, but about the children of people I know in person) that most parents who think they're managing their children's moods by a combination of forcefeeding and steady availability of desirable snacks (a) haven't actually done the work necessary to establish that the mood swings are about hunger that's not perceptible enough to the kid to impel them to eat and (b) are actually wrong that that's the case.
A friend of mine here claims to have eaten a lot of spicy foods while pregnant and breastfeeding, and now their 18-month-old devours spicy things.
Jane devoured spicy things at 18 months too, and has backed off considerably since, alas.
Unfogged is fun! I missed this place. What do you guys think of the word "crone"?
91: Yeah, mine were completely unfazed by almost anything under two or so, and then got much more conservative.
I'm wondering if your opinions have changed on this. Is it ok to use the word descriptively, if it sincerely applies, or is that being sexist?
Text, do you need a hug? Because this is a safe space for you.
can I call a crone a crone? I don't know, it feels a little icky. Gives me the heebs.
You can get some pretty good tripe tacos on 24th street, and also from a truck on … Harrison?
I am always accepting hugs, LB. Thanks! Hugs all around.
Sadly, the kids have aged out of it, and I feel silly listening to it on my own.
The difference between TMBG kids material and their adult material is so small you shouldn't feel embarrassed about listening to one if you listen to the other.
oh crap, bill. I was afraid so. Can I hug it away? I keep trying to keep it down but there's just something in the way she moves.
Actually maybe those are intestine and not stomach.
100 -- you should think hard about the implications of what you are saying. And then feel shame.
90: I generally agree, and think that kids are fine if snacks aren't available, and that furthermore if you're caught at the park or the library with a starving kid, they'll be just fine until you can get home and make them a sandwich.
I've also seen lots of peers not letting their kids pick at dinner and having to eat small portions of five or six items (say at a potluck) and its seemed like a lot of food to have to force down if you're not hungry.
Anyway, when they really do need food, it takes very little food to get them thinking straight again. A couple bites of a banana. Some juice. Not an entire meal.
I was not this way when I was little, and it sounds like your kids weren't either. So I'm agreeing with your parenting disclaimer at the top of 71.
Yeah, mine were completely unfazed by almost anything under two or so, and then got much more conservative.
Peer pressure?
I thought I recognized the grammar-- dude, you didn't need to go and delete your reddit account
Tweety and I Hawaiian Punch just gets into these prolonged nasty states that can last indefinitely.
If one or both of us is being particularly testy with the other, it is often because we need to eat. If two aware adults can have this happen semi-regularly, I can't imagine it's better in little kids.
Oh hey a relevant bleg. There's some Chinese(I believe, shanghainese, but am not sure) dish that's basically just a bowl of tripe in some sauce, with the tripe tied up to look like bow-tie pasta. I had it once but can't remember its name. And have no idea where to find it. This dish interests me. Help.
I've never understood why people say they object to the flavor of cooked tripe.
For me it's the texture that's objectionable. Like hairs, but made of meat.
Also the kids needing to eat thing is an instance of Heebie being right. Or, at least, it's an effective way to avoid/mitigate meltdowns. There's a reason every other hour is snack time at the preschools; it's not just Big Juice and Cracker.
Technically, wasn't what all those studies showed that children don't get hyper as a result of sugar, as opposed to that sugar doesn't help kids out of crashes / upset periods?
I really really don't buy the "sugar doesn't make you hyper" studies, based on both my own memory and observation of kids. I mean it's possible that the sugar=hyper thing is just a mass delusion but (a) it sure seems to be right and (b) why would we have that delusion? Also fuck sugar.
It could be that both heebie and LB are right: sugar can help kids out of a low-blood-sugar crash (i.e., returning them to more or less normal), without actually making them hyper.
why would we have that delusion?
Because sugar is a treat, which tends to get kids excited, and it often comes at birthday parties, and it's delicious, and they look forward to it, and then when something happens that's great and you've been looking forward to it, it's easy to get rowdy.
115 is right by my experience. It isn't like kids are calm when they get a non-food treat.
Our kids don't seem to get hyper from sugar alone, say a bowl of cereal. And the parents that are really intense about that belief tend to be siblings that I might have mentioned here in passing. So there's external reasons for me to root against the sugar-means-hyper theory.
Hey! I actually have useful information to address this post! I was raised by Indian people! (Of course, they became Americans, like me, at some point, and everyone agrees we're hella weird by any standards, so take my anecdotes with a grain of salt, ymmv, etc.)
The food I ate when I was little but not infantile was not at all as spicy as the food i eat now, and I would describe the introduction of spiciness as being a fairly smooth function that had a low rate of increase till about age 7 or 8 and then an inflection point there, and a much sharper rate of increase after that point, tapering off around 17 when I was pretty much the enjoyer of spicy food I am now. When I was really little (like pre 4 maybe pre 5, not totally sure) my mother fed me dinner in a very particular traditional way: she washed her hands, made a big plate of food (basically rice, dahl, cooked vegetables), sat me on her lap, and aleternated between feeding herself with her hand adult style, and feeding me with her hand kid style, by making what i think are called Grash: basically a rolled up ball with a little bit of rice and some of the other food that was squeezed slightly that she would then pop into my mouth. So I think she actively chose to make the grash's out of less spicy parts of the dinner and kept a close eye on how I reacted.
I was a somewhat picky eater but I also just didn't eat a lot.
I didn't like yogurt at all. .. .that was an aquired taste that was slowly introduced to me. . .first very sweet very thick home made yogurt, then raita, then yogurt wit fruit. .i only started eating plain yogurt South Indian style in the last five years.
Part of it was also *talking* about spicy food--telling stories about how her grandfather used to eat several raw green chillies with his dinner. .or oohing or ahing over mango pickle but not giving me any. .so that it sort of was a sign of growing up. oh, yes, now you can have a little bit of mango pickle. By the time I was ten I was eating a lot of Pathak's mild mango pickle, if that helps calibrate for you, and by the time I was 14 I was putting chilli sauce on many things. There was definitely idea on how very small children should be protected from spicy food, and I was definitely a bit scared of red chilli when I was 5, b/c my sister played a prank on me where she fed me a quesadilla that was totally filled with sweet peppers, let me eat one slice, then opened up another slice, showed me the red powder, and watched me freak out that I *must* need water even though clearly I didn't and it was just paprika.
I believe that Kim Chi and Saurkraut are fermented in different ways and are supposed to involve different classes of bugs, hence different strong flavors.
I think the bigger issue for us was bitter food. My mother very slowly got me to go from hating bitter melon to loving it by slowly feeding me a slightly bigger amount of it fried at a time, and starting with overfried versions. It was a very deliberate program and she was very clear about the purpose---that it was part of getting me to grow up a bit, and she would let me take my time, but I had to keep trying the bitter melon. Now it's one of my favorite foods.
I've heard that the bitter tasting gene is a big function in how kids react to vegetables, and that children who have more copies of it than their parents can be traumatized by their parents overfoisting vegetables on them, and that there are strategies to get children to get used to the bitter taste. I keep meaning to check to see if I have it. In general South Asians have fewer copies of it than Europeans, I've been told, hence a much stronger interest in all kinds of vegetable dishes.
It is, and I probably overstated (what are the odds?) my belief that little kids should be able to handle spicy foods like adults can. I meant more that I think most kids are capable of being acclimatized to food in the hotness range of what they're likely to run into in most American households: a lot of parents seem to protect their kids from any heat at all, and I think this is unnecessary.
I've never understood why people say they object to the flavor of cooked tripe
Not the flavour - the texture. It's furry. I have a major problem with eating stuff that's furry.
Oh thanks. . .now I'm a bit teary eyed b/c I'm remembering how warm and safe and snuggly it was to sit on my mother'a lap and have her feed me grash and talk to me while we ate dinner together. And when I was an adult and awfully sick sometimes she would feed me (not grash but with a spoon) and we would reminisce about that. I really enjoyed eating dinner with her on the couch leaning in to each other whenever I went home.
Once when *she* was deathly ill in India, a few years ago, my great aunt *did* feed her grash again, b/c she didn't really feel like eating but she needed to. She was always in awe and grateful for that.
122 is right. The flavour is unobjectionable because it doesn't taste of anything.
122: So I guess you don't belong to the pop-the-whole-kiwi-in-your-mouth school of thought? Neither do I but I'm fascinated it exists.
I just googled Tripe. ew. :-)
116: All that study shows is that parents are suggestible, which, surprise! It most certainly does not show that they can't recognize an actual effect.
I have a major problem with eating stuff that's furry.
Fruit doesn't hang much lower than this.
126: Sure. It doesn't show that parents are always wrong, just that a widely held belief that parents think is supported by direct observation of their own children can be wrong.
I have a major problem with eating stuff that's furry.
Fruit doesn't hang much lower than this.
Ahem.
I also feel like I've aged out of reacting to hot foods. I remember eating more spicy restaurant foods when I was younger and finding the pain occasionally intense. Now, not so much. Other things I've lost as I became dead inside: fear of heights, injury, being naked in public.
128: But I'd be willing to bet you can manipulate all sorts of parental observations like that and get a statistically significant result.
I have a mild fear of heights that set in for no apparent reason about 10 years ago. Like, I get mildly freaked out and have to calm myself in the chair lift. Never happened before then and seemed to show up out of the blue.
ME TOO. I got scared of heights and easily nauseated by blood and guts in my early 20s. Since having kids the vertigo has gotten waaaay worse. Like it's hard for me to watch any kid (not just my own) hang on a railing of a balcony of a theatre.
So I guess not like 133, because mine has gotten really intense and occasionally problematic.
The flavour is unobjectionable because it doesn't taste of anything.
Try a central European style tripe dish - i.e. tripe cooked with a small amount of basic broth ingredients. Then take the recipe for basic beef broth, take out all the beef and half the other ingredients and compare. The first will taste like a richer, better broth, the second like dirty water.
The 'furriness' is there, but much less so than certain fruits, e.g. mango and not much more then central European style beef shank where the meat fibers have a pretty similar mouth feel to them.
132: I think the issue is that well done studies don't find any relationship between sugar and hyperactivity. If the relationship existed, you might be able to trick parents into thinking their kids were hyped up on sugar when they weren't, but you're right that being able to trick parents wouldn't mean the relationship wasn't generally real. But you would be able to objectively observe differences between sugared-up kids and un-sugared-up kids if there were a real relationship, and the fact that there don't seem to be such differences is strong evidence that the relationship actually isn't real.
46: Not sure of original context, but it goes back as far back as Ben Jonson's Poetaster (1601):
Rampe up, my genius; be not retrograde:
But boldly nominate a ſpade, a ſpade.
What, shall thy lubricall and glibberie Muſe
Liue, as ſhee were defunct, like punke in ſtewes?
Looking at the notes, this section is apparently a satire of John Marston.
126: Sure, in isolation that's all the study would show. But combined with all the double-blind studies failing to find a link between sugar and hyperactivity, it provides a plausible mechanism for the popular perception.
much less so than certain fruits, e.g. mango
Some mangos are fibrous, but that is different than the hair-like quality of tripe.
I have doubts about these other studies, as well. But maybe I'm just cranky because my blood sugar is low.
I should clarify that I would have doubts about any study showing a lack of relationship between low blood sugar and activity levels. Healthy kids are pretty good at regulating away high levels.
Ile, I love your reminiscences. Probably the closest I get to that feeling is what it's like to hold Mara while doing her hair (which can take several hours when she's squirmy) and the way that there's something primal about that level of bodily connectedness. Mara has been not quite jealous but really sad about seeing me do Nia's hair too, because it's clearly something she thought of as special and just for her. (In fact, Mara's mother just offered to do Mara's hair sometime and Mara said no, that it was something special between the two of us.)
The 'furriness' is there, but much less so than certain fruits, e.g. mango
Mangoes aren't furry! What are you talking about? Fibrous, yes, especially if they aren't properly ripe. But tripe is actually covered in little hair like projections - villi - which feels weird.
Fruit doesn't hang much lower than this.
I can't believe I didn't spot that myself. I am unworthy of unfogged.
So I guess you don't belong to the pop-the-whole-kiwi-in-your-mouth school of thought? Neither do I but I'm fascinated it exists.
They are much more delicious that way.
OT: Looking for a reason to hate rich people or campaign finance laws?
147
Do we need more reasons?
More, now I'm looking for a reason to leave the office and get some super spicy kim chi.
I will make an argument in favor of forcing kids (and adults) to eat spicy foods. Last winter my sister and I and her two boys (6 and 8) went to Sri Lanka with my French cousin and her four kids. My French cousins explained that Frenchies don't eat spice, it is not flavor, merely pain and they have no use for it. Which is fine.
Except that we were in Sri Lanka for three weeks and Sri Lankan food is spicy as fuck. Real legit spicy. They couldn't eat anywhere. Even the places that were trying to accommodate white people were too spicy for them, although not spicy for us. Our boys didn't love the spice, but they've eaten salsas and meals spiced to adult preferences and we had about a million times more options for eating than my French cousins, including the street places that cost a fifth of the places my cousins went to. Also, the cousin-kids didn't know that fatty dairy cuts spice, so they couldn't help themselves when their mouths were burning.
Acclimate your kids to spice! The world is big and they might go to places where spice is their only option.
Worrying about how your kids will adjust to the food in Sri Lanka seems like a first world problem. Excepting for Sri Lankans, of course.
Thorn, that's sweet. Untangling my hair was always my Dad's thing too. When I was a teenager he lived in another state and visited us twice a month, and after I went backpacking for a month I made him add an extra day to his trip to help me fix it.
We are first world people and it is conceivable that our children will leave the country. Maybe even directly south from California, where the food is also spicy! Maybe exposing kids to global food is "a pointless way of being culturally expansive", or it could be a way to be sure they aren't helpless if chance (or a semi-obligation like a wedding invitation or work) takes them other places.
When I was living in Chennai, I went on vacation to Kerala with an Assamese family, and they flatly didn't eat spicy food - even mild. Made restaurants a bit of a chore.
I'm not sure I buy the world-is-a-big-place argument for giving your kids spicy food if you don't already eat it. There are a lot of things one could expose children to on the chance that they might want to deal with those a foreign country some day.
Somebody should go to Sri Lanka and teach them about funnel cakes so they don't starve if chance takes them to Iowa during fair season.
Anyway, it appears to be $1,600 to take a kid to Sri Lanka and that is going to be the bigger barrier than the food.
You should definitely make sure your kids like fermented yak butter.
Wouldn't it be much more important that kids enjoy, say, meat, than that they enjoy spicy food?
Do they eat much meat in Sri Lanka?
I guess it's easier to make sure your kids can eat spicy food in case they live somewhere else than it is to make sure your kids can drive a stick shift in case they live somewhere else.
161: The leopards do. So it's important the kids enjoy being meat.
I've found the safest road is to object to any type of food from anyone else's home. There's always some excuse, isn't there?
Is there an argument against broadening your kid's tastes? If nothing else, they will be slightly less likely to act like jerks when invited to their friend $ETHNIC_NAME's house for dinner.
They don't have to enjoy spicy food (although they do like some), but they are able to eat it. Eating moderate salsa at home (not specifically Sri Lankan food) made them able to eat a different kind of spice abroad. On several occasions it was the difference between our kids being able to eat and the cousins being hungry for several more hours. There are lots of different types of ways you could help your kids be ready for the world, but being able to eat is kinda fundamental. They can point at foods if they don't speak the language or pick up other skills in a few days, but in practice, not eating spice was a very big deal. Most times, money could solve that problem (although it was proportionately a lot of money), but on a number of occasions (mostly transit stops like changing trains), their restrictions meant there wasn't food to be had that they could eat at any price.
Are people actually arguing it's too swipple to give your child exotic foods you normally don't eat? Or did I make that up on a hasty read through. Isn't a good portion of the fun of parenting using them as motivation to do things wouldn't normally do?
That is all well and good, but if you are just not a household that eats any kind of spicy food whatsoever, it still seems odd to me to incorporate that just in case the kids go to [spicyfoodcountry]. As the kids get older, they can explore other kinds of foods for themselves if that's something they're interested in. It's not as if you have to eat spicy food as a child or else never ever be able to tolerate it.
I think it's a bogus way of being culturally expansive, but kids should get to eat lots of good tasting things. I had never had Indian or Thai or Vietnamese or Japanese food until grad school. I'd like my hypothetical kid to think of those cuisines like I think of spaghetti; just something you eat that tastes good.
I introduced my mom to Thai food when she was 50, and sushi last year. That's a long time without eating delicious cuisines.
I'd heard what Ile says: there are milder versions for little kids. But, I've also heard that those milder versions are far more spicy than what most Americans would be comfortable eating, or feeding to a small child.
You don't have to eat spicy food; just spend time around it. Tuck a few jolokia peppers into your pillow, or keep some chili paste in a pump dispenser next to the bathroom sink as a good luck charm.
I think it's a bogus way of being culturally expansive
Why is it bogus?
What does 'bogus way of being culturally expansive' mean? If it means, 'you shouldn't preen over the breadth of your tastes, Mr./Ms Privilege-face', certainly, I can see that. But there's no active reason not to eat foreign food, spicy or not, or serve it to your kids, just because you like it or think it's interesting, right?
chili paste in a pump dispenser next to the bathroom sink
It makes a surprisingly stimulating facial scrub.
Maybe the disconnect is that a household that never eats spicy food is also one that isn't like to travel to places with a hot cuisine. But if you are going to go to places with a hot cuisine, not eating spicy foods will be a significant hassle.
I don't really get the arguments against, though, since the solution is to eat delicious foods like salsa and kim chi. There's potential upside for people who might have reason to travel and no downside.
I think it's bogus in the "don't preen too much over it" sense. Obviously, as I just argued that it is good to introduce kids to ethnic food because it is good to eat tasty things, I'm all for "because you like it or think it's interesting."
But as a way to learn about other cultures or to ensure a globally conscious child? I'm skeptical that takeout has that kind of power.
Fair enough, although I think there's something to be said for making social connections by being willing to eat people's food. Sally had a nice moment in Spanish class where a friend of hers told her "Oh, you count as Dominican, you eat mofongo."
Because I am not culturally sensitive, mofongo sounds less like a foodstuff to me and more like something you don't want to say too loud in a bar for fear of starting a fight. But it is good.
I fear that just to read this thread constitutes a hate crime.
"A bogus way of being culturally expansive" is more than just food. I'm struggling again about how awkward it is to go to the black church I take the girls to and yet I feel like I need to do it or do something equivalent, though of course it's different when I'm connecting them to something that is in some ways their own culture rather than someone else's. But to be the one who's the conduit to that is a weird and sometimes uncomfortable thing.
I take them out for pho and Korean and Indian food, too, because I want them to learn what they like and because sometimes, all the time I really want to eat kimchi. I don't think it's giving them deep insights into other cultures or anything, but it's opening them up to grab onto what interests them later, the same way I'm reading them a lot of different cultures' myths and so on. I don't know.
Tuck a few jolokia peppers into your pillow, or keep some chili paste in a pump dispenser next to the bathroom sink as a good luck charm.
Keep some rocotos in a box under your bed to prevent pregnancy.
That depends a lot on the location (here it just gets you weird looks for buying bok choy and despair that there is no noodle shop near by), and I think that it's probably Sally's billingual elementary school and friendships that do a lot more than eating food.
This is just me suspicious about enlightenment-through-consumption.
This is just me suspicious about enlightenment-through-consumption.
Not a Proust fan?
"A bogus way of being culturally expansive"
I've never yet been the person who changes the mouseover, but maybe this is just the tagline to make me do it.
Megan, what I'm reacting to in your proscriptions is the idea that somehow your family did it right and your cousins' family did it wrong. It's not like you sat down and decided to expose the boys to this foreign world of spicy food; it's just something that you already eat, and thus something it is natural to teach the kids around you to eat.
I don't think she was claiming to have planned ahead -- her family did what came naturally, eating spicy food, and so did her cousin's, avoiding it, and then they both ended up in a circumstance where having habitually eaten spicy food left them better off than the spicy food avoiders. Which means that although Megan's family just got lucky rather than planning ahead, someone who can see that they might end up in similar circumstances (traveling in Spicyfoodland) could make themselves better off by intentionally emulating Megan's family rather than her cousin's.
If there's no shot you'll end up traveling in Spicyfoodland with kids, then it's not an issue for you.
I'm still curious about Meatland.
But there surely is something that Megan's family doesn't eat that is an absolute staple in another country, and what if they happened to go to that country? I'm arguing that the "You'll potentially be better off if you teach yourself to eat [fooditem]" suggestion is actually a lot more burdensome than Megan is acknowledging, and one that she herself only followed by chance.
Weren't the French cousins jerks on several different dimensions? Although better behaved at restaurants? I don't remember the details but I think the American cousins came off better all around.
I'm still curious about Meatland.
Is it near the Land of Chocolate? I'm asking for a friend.
188. Texas, Argentina, CZ, I think most of Germany.
I'd buy that there aren't many other things that are plausibly going to affect all the food available on a non-fluky basis. There are a lot of places with meat-heavy cuisine, but there's noplace really where people are obligate carnivores who don't eat anything but meat.
Right and wrong are more loaded than I have any reason to express, but the two ways of eating (that you're right, happened without intentional planning) turned out to work differently in a third setting. One way was fairly handy and the other was a substantial hassle that imposed discomfort on the people who ate that way. That's fine, their way didn't make us hungry, although it did cost us some money when we had to accommodate their restrictions.
Still, I wouldn't bring it up except that this very post asks if there is reason to choose between the two approaches. And I say yes! If you are considering the matter and don't think you'll be confined to your home country your whole life, it is worth making an effort to eat spicy foods that aren't your natural default.
there's noplace really where people are obligate carnivores who don't eat anything but which neither contains nor is cooked with meat
You don't figure?
Sure, but now we're getting into matters of degree. It wasn't the case that the French cousins starved on their trip, they just weren't able to eat as widely as the American cousins. Who themselves were somewhat limited in what they could eat by their own relative spice tolerance.
I could be wrong, but the Meatlands I'm thinking of, I'd think bread-type-stuff would be pretty freely available.
But it's not really the same issue. If you're a principled vegetarian, then you're presumably willing to go hungry for your beliefs up to a point. If you're a not-dogmatically principled vegetarian, a little meat contamination isn't a problem.
Still, I wouldn't bring it up except that this very post asks if there is reason to choose between the two approaches.
This is not in the post.
I don't remember the details but I think the American cousins came off better all around.
Eh. To our eyes, that's how it seemed. But there's a substantial case to be made that we're mannerless barbarians with hooligan children who eat all the time and can't control themselves in formal situations. I can see how the cousins could tell the story very differently.
I'm still curious about Meatland.
I've traveled in somewhat meat-heavy places and had better luck than I observed the cousins having in a heavily spiced cuisine.
I believe that Mongolia at least circa fifteen years ago was a place where you could often expect to encounter meat with meat flavored with meat.
They weren't able to eat literally anywhere but the tourist places that play Bob Marley. We could eat almost everywhere. (Sri Lankan food really is spicy.) It was a substantial constraint for them. Towns that weren't tourist oriented were a food desert for them but not for us.
I'm pretty sure that 202 is RACIST.
In the Philippines, a friend coined the term "the meat that goes without saying". Restaurants would list the other items in the dish, because obviously it had pork in it.
If only Sri Lanka served the kind of testicles the French cousins can get at home. (Also, "small parcels of tripe cooked in Normandy cider". Want.)
So, if they had tried a tablespoon of salsa once a month, do you think that actually would have changed anything? I'm still unclear on how this integration of spicy food into the kids' diet is supposed to work if it's not a part of the parents' diet.
Well, the parents would have to have some spice tolerance as well. It doesn't help if your kids can eat off the street stands but the adults are forced into Bob-Marley-playing-restaurants that serve plain pasta.
What was your adult cousin's take on the whole thing? Was she regretful about not being able to eat the food?
Our kids are around Tex-Mex regularly. I'm going to assume we're doing a sufficient job. (Also, I imagine I'll let the spiciness creep up at dinner time, over time. I mean, they're only almost 2 and 3 right now.)
She didn't perceive herself as being unable to eat the food, she perceived Sri Lanka as being inconvenient. But there were day trips they didn't take (away from more heavily touristed places) because they knew they couldn't get mid-day food.
We eventually got exasperated because we could eat a lunch (bunch of samosa-like dealies) for $2/person, but the sit-down places they frequented would run $8-$10/person for mediocre white-people food. That was hard on our budget for not-great food. But it was cheap compared to sit-down lunch in France, so I don't think they minded.
It sounds like they're different from you in a lot more ways than just spice tolerance.
We were surprised by how much this trip revealed those differences, and by how much we used the same words to described differing parenting practices ("we don't hover over our kids" meant very different things).
Heebie, I think that's plenty. We don't even have a very heavily-spiced diet. But they had had salsa, and they had had spicy foods and knew to eat yogurt after or that a spice burn would fade. Just that was enough that they could acclimate.
French people can be sort of intolerable about spiciness--"it's to cover up rotten meat" is something I've heard a lot.
I really don't get salsa. It doesn't taste bad or anything. It's just that there are so many better things to do with a tomato and so many better things to put on chips.
Which kind of salsa do you mean?
I won't eat the green kind unless somebody can promise me that are no green peppers hiding in it.
("we don't hover over our kids" meant very different things)
The propwash tends to knock them over.
I don't mind the salsa from cooked tomatoes, but the stuff made with fresh ingredients is just horrible. I don't like the texture of raw tomatoes nor the raw leaves (cilanto?).
You're going to be fucked in Sri Lanka, Mobes.
That's a prophesy, not a figure of speech.
I didn't see much of that kind of tourism, but we were traveling with kids, so we weren't looking for it either.
Don't get me started on bell peppers. I don't even see the point. They either taste like nothing or they taste bad. You can get that for much cheaper.
I like them when they're crunchy, but otherwise I agree that they're largely overrated.
First no tripe, now no bell peppers? Just roast them at high heat until they're properly charred, peel, and eat. They're like candy.
Taste like nothing or taste bad. You can get that for much cheaper.
???
There's no outlay of money, exactly, but usually there's a lot of work to let her know you're interested and are not harmful.
Ripe red or yellow bells are very different roasted (sweet, mostly). If you want to have a bell pepper, you might try that. But there's no reason you should want a bell pepper if you don't already.
But there's no reason you should want a bell pepper if you don't already.
What if he travels to Bell, California and that's all they eat?
Roasted red peppers are fantastic! What kind of half-a-wop are you, Mobes??
What if his cousin holds a wedding in Bell, California and he absolutely has to go? THEN WHAT?!
I don't eat tripe regularly, but I like it in pho.
The people endorsing roasted peppers should turn their ire from Mobes to Heebs after her perplexing clarification that bell peppers are only good when crunchy.
What kind of half-a-wop are you, Mobes??
My grandma and mom really, really tried with me on the peppers. It just didn't take.
I was at a farmer's market in the early 90's and the woman next to me was buying about a dozen bell peppers. She was late forties, had a mid-age kid, big curly hair, a little heavy, flowy skirts, wedding ring. I was curious what use one had for a dozen bells, so I asked her. She said "Oh honey. Roast them with some oil and garlic, a little salt and *kiss*, a meal to make love by."
It was the first time I really got that slightly heavy women in their late forties live sensual lives and make love. I also bought some peppers and tried roasting them. She's right; they're tasty.
You could just say nothing, it'd have the same effect.
Drove my heavy to the levee but the levee was dry.
after her perplexing clarification that bell peppers are only good when crunchy.
I just said they're overrated. Anything is good when freshly roasted, but a lot of times cooked bell peppers aren't that good when they've been sitting around and then are dumped on your salad or pasta or pizza or whatever.
. There are a lot of places with meat-heavy cuisine, but there's noplace really where people are obligate carnivores who don't eat anything but meat.
After work, I will be driving to such a place, and going to sleep there.
a meal to make love by
Sort of serious here, what does that mean?
A) A good meal before sex?
B) It will make you want to have sex after you eat it?
C) It is better than sex?
I'm confused.
The people endorsing roasted peppers should turn their ire from Mobes to Heebs after her perplexing clarification that bell peppers are only good when crunchy.
I like fresh bell peppers and generally don't find roasted red peppers that exciting -- they're tasty, and I'll eat them without complaints, but I'd never go to the work of making them myself.
For people who do like roasted red peppers, this looks tasty (it looks close to ketchup, with pureed roasted red peppers replacing tomatoes + sugar) .
244: I know they call it the Saddle Peak "Lodge" but I don't think they'll actually let you take a nap on the table.
245: It means a meal to have adjacent to you while having sex.
A meal that you should put aside and have sex next to.
Pwned, but in my house we try to expose the children from a young age.
I used to find green peppers kind of ugh and then I discovered that when they are lovely and fresh from the farmer's market and then I saute them slowly in olive oil with a little garlic and salt, I think they are great. Also, peppers and onions and potatoes are friends.
I took it to mean (B). But if any of those are accurate, you should get bell peppers to roast.
Maybe if you are planning to have sex but are feeling sort of goofy about being all serious and calling it "making love" they're a good meal to have because then you'll have gas and everybody can laugh at the farts and that'll break the tension?
Also, peppers and onions and potatoes are friends.
Maybe, but peppers are sort of Wormtail to Prongs and Padfoot.
"breaking: wind/tension" is my super arty dance/fart porno.
Thanks for the clarification, Megan. Now to go get some...
I also came to appreciate non-spicy green peppers by way of appreciating poblanos and other green chiles.
I like to have my kid shot at by separatist militants (not all the time, just a little every few weeks), because then we'll feel safe going pretty much anywhere in Sri Lanka.
Frankly that woman seems super gross. I didn't have anything against bell peppers before, but maybe I do now.
We didn't prep the kids for getting shot at (although they do live in Oakland and there was a drive-by on their block so we sort-of did a little?), but where you live, you could start a gentle program of being bitten by mosquitos with maybe-West Nile as a warm up for being bitten by mosquitos with maybe-malaria.
there was a drive-by on their block so we sort-of did a little
Hey, me too! I knew I was good at parenting.
Maybe I conveyed her wrong. She was lovely and expressive in person. I'd like to think she and her partner have lots of sex.
The image of the flowing dress and "making love" talk to strangers puts me in mind of this.
Right, I was kind of imagining a late middle aged berkeley woman in a caftan who is into swinging and oversized Indian jewelry.
A little? I mean, I'm not stopping her or anything, but I don't want to hear about her love life while shopping for vegetables.
Megan, this is Halford. Have you met before?
She just doesn't sound like bro-candy, gnome sayin?
her love life while shopping for consuming vegetables, having purchased them and prepared them simply but carefully.
IMAGINE IT, HALFORD. IMAGINE DEEP.
I was inspired to think that two and a half decades later, I could be slightly heavy and non-conventional and have a kid and still be making meals for the purpose of getting loving. She wasn't even ashamed of being herself and liking sex. Maybe that should be obvious, but at 20 it hadn't crossed my mind before. Nor had I thought of roasting peppers.
Halford is scared to unlock his true erotic potential.
and still be making meals for the purpose of getting loving
Liquor works more reliably and takes less effort.
The lady selling green peppers?
274: YOU ARE SO PWND.
SORRY, I WAS THINKING OF THE ONE ABOUT THE GLASSES.
276: I'M RIGHT HERE, DOT.
I'm gonna make love to you, woman,
Gonna lay you down by the fire,
And caress your womanly body,
Make you moan and prespire.
Gonna keep those juices flowin,
We makin love gravy love gravy
Love love love love love gravy!
One of our cute little courting stories involves a misunderstanding of an English word, and the fact that 30+ years ago, sushi was really new to ordinary WASP Americans. The misunderstanding is still cute, but I don't think our kids can really wrap their minds around the concept that people not only didn't eat sushi but hadn't even heard of it.
(And newer still to educated but living in the provinces Germans.)
someone who can see that they might end up in similar circumstances (traveling in Spicyfoodland) could make themselves better off by intentionally emulating Megan's family rather than her cousin's
Like the Dutch guy I met in New Mexico who told me he'd been driving across the US from Savannah to LA and eating bland food at chain restaurants the whole way. So I insisted that we get some local food, and he practically cried when he had a mouthful of the mildest salsa verde imaginable. I was all apologetic while thinking, You fucking pussy something something World War II something. Then he gave me and my bike a ride to Tucson, and I offered to take him out to dinner at a place of his choice, which turned out to be Red Lobster. Totally disgusting. No good deed something something World War II something.
There are a lot of places with meat-heavy cuisine, but there's noplace really where people are obligate carnivores who don't eat anything but meat.
The traditional Inuit diet was this. Inuits were also one of the few modern hunter-gatherer societies where men, rather than women, provided most of the calories.
re: 285
Meat and fish, no? But yeah, not much [understatement] in the way of veg.
OTOH recent isotope work suggests Neanderthals ate a lot more veg than they thought, so maybe also Inuit, who I believe migrated inland at various times of the year.
The Inuit themselves are relatively recent migrants into the very far north, iirc. Only a thousand years or so. Although, double checking on wiki, they replaced a different Arctic adapted culture [with different technology]. According to wiki the Inuit did gather some tubers, seaweeds, and so on, in the summer.
Yeah, the Dorset culture, no? Immigrants from Lyme Regis...
286: well, meat and fish. And shellfish, maybe. But the flesh of animals, is what I am trying to say.
re: 289
Yes. They largely lived on ice-cream, and tourist income.
I think there is something morally praiseworthy about feeding kids food from other places, as part of a general cosmopolitan outlook.
(And there is something morally blameworthy about not bringing kids up to understand that other people's food is just as good as yours.)
Um! Well, we are too far south for taro, so not that. Lots of game, I think. The hangi is traditional, but I don't know how common it used to be.
At Rotorua, cooking in volcanic springs, which is quite cool.
Well, we are too far south for taro, so not that.
So, better than Samoan food.
It's somewhat difficult for me to really appreciate food that isn't at least a little bit spicy. I mean, I'll eat it, and I might even like it ok, but I'd always rather have something spicy. The only exceptions I can think of are cheese and berries.
Follow-up on Butt-chugging. Apparently, the story is still developing.
It's somewhat difficult for me to really appreciate food that isn't at least a little bit spicy.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5147636284090988855
"Give me the blandest thing on the menu!"
Um! Well, we are too far south for taro, so not that. Lots of game, I think.
What kind of game? I'm guessing after the moas were wiped out it was limited to small birds and sea lions and bats.
184:
"A bogus way of being culturally expansive"
I've never yet been the person who changes the mouseover, but maybe this is just the tagline to make me do it.
Really?
I've never understood why this brilliant sentence didn't get to be a mouseover: "It's literally an identical overall restrung with rest, if they are invested in the rye bums in theatre."
Since I see the thread is still vaguely on-topic:
AB visited her then-BF in Ghana (Peace Corps!), where she witnessed a babe-in-arms literally dipping his arm in a bowl of soup and licking the soup off his arm.
Said soup was pretty much too spicy for AB to eat, and AB has a perfectly respectable spice tolerance.
OTOH, neither of our kids has reacted well to spice (with this anecdote in mind, we were always very open about giving them spicy foods), and in fact Kai (who is incredibly open to trying foods) identifies soda as "spicy", and doesn't like it.
I suspect (and I'm sure this has been said over 300 comments) that it's not mere exposure, but the difference between having tasted spice as a fetus/baby and tasting mostly spicy foods during early development. Our kids were exposed, either by bloodstream, milk, or actual food, to spice maybe once a week on average (actually, Kai probably got more; AB had a ridiculous Mexican craving the second half of her pregnancy with him; she ate it probably 3+ times per week).
the place that eveybody tells me is best would take about 30 minutes to get to
Believe it or not, I've never been there. But People's on Penn is really good (standard North Indian, but excellent and cheap). Tamarind on North Craig is quite good (and a gorgeous old house), although Bing claims that it's closed. Mirchi in Cranberry might be the best Indian we've ever had, but it's much farther than Udipi (which isn't 30 minutes from your house, I don't think).
119 is the best comment ever made on Unfogged (that didn't involve a cock joke).
119 is the best comment ever made on Unfogged (that didn't involve a cock joke).
303: Tamarind is the one. I'm talking about the trip from my office on foot.
In the Philippines [... r]estaurants would list the other items in the dish, because obviously it had pork in it.
Guess what country just moved up my To Visit list?
306: OH.
You should go to Udipi sometime for dinner.
IMO India Garden is at least average, but I haven't been in ~9 years. Never been to Prince, never heard much good (or bad) about it.
Outcry Scuttles Plan to Put Horse on Menu at M. Wells Dinette
Unfortunately museum goers won't be able to eat horse meat at PS1 due to protests including death threats. #MuslimSWPL Rage.