Remembered Recipes and famine in China book--

I am a great fan of "mont" cakes and thayesar "salivating food" snacks.

That Burma snack page has made me remember foods from 3 decades ago.

I made a Chinese new year cake (tee kuay or thee kay) and it tasted good, but did not look so good, as I did not have straight sided pans/molds.

I am going to try and make brown sugar mochi, combining the tee kuay and the mochi recipes.

I still have to make half or 1/3 the boiled kidney beans into bean paste.

Maybe can do it now.

In a state as I saw some poetry presentations and it seems you can't be a poet unless you hold a poetry chair somewhere and had an MFA in poetry

or you were in prison and won a Nobel Prize.

Sometimes it seems you can't win if you write from the heart, from life and from the  grimy street.

Feel like steaming all those establishment poets for 4 hours till they get sticky like tee kuay and well cooked.

Have many tee kuay stories too, and my nanny, whom I disliked, made about 40 in one batch, but my mother forbade her any more of these expensive experiments after my father died.

She had to stoke the fire with old railway sleepers and of course I was reined in to help butter the butter tins--Hammer and Sickle.

All that is in them is ground sticky rice, water and jaggery syrup, and maybe some salt

but a big superstition that one must not be menstruating when preparing this.

--I found mochi is traditionally prepared by pounding steamed sticky rice in a mortar and pestle and I am reminded that Ma Ma B. told me how to make Shan khaw poke

which I also love--"One handful of kauk hnyin, one of sesame seeds, and keep pounding."

I have to find out how to mail order Asian groceries.

Made a pounded fish paste ngapi htaung (kapi htaun? in Thai)

I used Anaheim chillies but even that very hot for me--

and even though I padded it with roasted bean powder, it was still hyper salty.

Had a comida (mid-day Mexican meal) at 3 PM with Burmese (sort of) food--all leftovers, but why should I worry.

This is the first time I have had 4 curries in one meal in a very long time, usually have only 1-2.

1.  chicken and split pea curry made in slow cooker
2.  sour water convolvulus
3.  pounded fish paste with round green small eggplant
4.  stick to the pot eggplant made with dried pork.

Then after the comida, I had a siesta to rest

and now going to have a merida (supper)--maybe the same food, but have to make some rice.

Note:  It is very difficult to eat a salty thing with too little rice, but since I have to manage I ate very little of the fish paste too--just one or two licks, literally.

Also paid my bills (half of the 3-4 regular bills every month), bought a bottle of milk from the convenience store downstairs, looked at his selection--which incld dust masks, wine, Ben and Jerry's ice cream, spaghetti sauce, Immodium AD etc.

I guess he stocks what sells?  Right?

Still reading abt Mao's Great Famine--

just like the Soviet Purges, the way he got rid of Peng Dehua--

and how Zhou (Chou Enlai) was such a stoolie--

so much waste, people starving, The Great Leap Forward (that fell flat on its face)

and Khruschev already in his thaw--

I will write a separate book review when I have finished reading the book.

Just wanted to comment how hard to read about a man made or dictator made famine while cooking all sorts of food in America.

KMKaung
Remembered Recipes--9-4-2014
www.kmkaung.com