Eating like a local

I'm amazed at how my eating habits change when I'm in different places.

Nashville was where I learned to eat (and love) sushi and Indian food.  Biryani was definitely a thing.  I also ate a ton of chicken noodle soup because it was cheap, and I was a poor college student.  Somehow, I avoided ramen.

In State College, I developed my love of spicy food, as we would order hot sauces off the internet and eat drops of them on tortilla chips.  What can I say, sometimes rural Pennsylvania was a slow-moving place.  I'd say it was at this point of my life in grad school where I really learned to cook, especially as I started wanting to get healthier and lose weight.  A good set of knives was, and still is, invaluable.  So was Food Network.  I definitely had my share of East Asian noodle dishes, and I learned about the wonder that is yuk gae jang, and also Korean food in general.  State College is also where I learned to drink and love copious amounts of coffee.

Toronto was where I developed an intense love for pho.  I really liked it but didn't eat it often.  Canada also has a few foods that are much more prevalent there than here, such as persimmons and beets.  And we cannot forget the wonders that are back bacon and Timbits.  Canada was, ironically enough, where I discovered avocados, and I realized that a quarter avocado sliced up on toast was really good.  This was years before the avocado toast revolution.  I like to think I was ahead of the times.

I learned to embrace the winter by cooking and eating lots of hearty soups and stews in Michigan.  Pho and various Korean dishes were super prevalent, and I really developed a love for local sandwich joints.  The farmers markets had all sorts of great stuff in the summer, but the winters definitely proved a bit sparse.

Now that I'm in California, I find myself trying to eat local things.  The farmers markets are filling up with citrus, and the mandarin oranges are fantastic.  I'm eating olives (!) and eggs (!!), two things of which I've never been very fond.  I incorporate lots of lime juice and Mexican flavors into my cooking, and I take full advantage of the spoils of my adopted basil plant, which has been growing like a weed.

I cook a lot more pescatarian/vegetarian/vegan than I ever have before.  Probably some of that is me being lazy, but I know some of it is because it's so hot here, I don't really want to use a lot of heat for prolonged periods to cook.  I'll order things with meat in them if I'm going out, but I don't know.... a slab of steak doesn't seem all that appetizing most of the time.

However, I have no problem eating pho on the hottest days of the year.  I have a separate stomach for pho, and having about ten pho places in my immediate vicinity doesn't at all hurt!