Sunday, August 29, 2004

pataks mango relish

i'm addicted to pataks mango relish. the overly expensive albertsons here only sells the medium one, so i've been looking for the hot one lately. it's still tasty though. strange that it's called "relish" since this stuff is usually referred to as "pickles". indian pickles. i also bought a jar of ashika's garlic relish (pretyt much cloves of garlic pickled in oil and other spices) but it really sucks. the garlic taste is good and strong, but it's waaaay too salty. i've tried cooking with it, or eating it with bread and other things to tone down the taste, but it's still too salty. not good. i don't have a jar here, but at QQQ's there's a jar of pataks ginger lime marinade paste that tastes pretty good on everything, especially chicken and fried rice. lately, i've been cooking a lot of cabbage b/c it's cheap, and i've found the best way to cook/season it. no amount of sauces or fancy cooking will ever top it being stir-fried plain with a little bit of salt. comes out crunchy with just a little salty to mix with its natural sweetness. using soy sauce and garlic chili paste would come in second. real corned beef with cabbage would probably be somwhere near the top of the list too.. but i haven't really cooked that here. one corned beef brisket for one person would be just a little bit much. i'd be eating it for a week. which wouldn't be that bad, come to think of it. but cabbage is definately not myf avorite vegetable. i think zuchini is currently on the top of my list, over gai lan now. so tender and savory, so hard to mess up. all it needs is to be sliced up, tossed in a pan with some olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper and it's done. and maybe a litle rosemary too for special occasions. hah.. i'm dreaming of food.. but i haven't relaly been cooking much in the past few days. just.. been.. too lazy. with my sleeping patterns going back to normalcy again, it's hard to tell when i'm eating breakfast, lunch or dinner. should i count the cereal i had at noon after sleeping 4 hours as breakfast? or the meal i had after sleeping for 5 hours int he afternoon as breakfast?

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