Don Tai (Canada) Blog

Yangrou chuanr, mutton kebobs, Chinese street meat

It takes very little for me to have flashbacks of eating street meat in places I’ve lived or visited, namely China, HK and Japan. The mere whiff of an exotic spice can easily send me off to places past, transforming me from here to where I’ve been. I literally lose track of what I am doing and will walk off to chase a scent down. Now that I live in Toronto, Canada, where multiculturalism has evolved to mind expanding lengths, I become easily impatient with our city politicians as they dither about what is acceptable street food offerings to Torontonians. Here’s a novel idea: Let anyone offer food on the street and let the general public decide what they want to eat. Make it easy to get a licenses, enforce strict health rules, and punish those that are unclean. That, however, would be too easy.

Female cochineal beetle, 5mm long, ground up is used as a red dye in food and cosmetics

Interesting. Here’s an organic additive that creates deep and rich reds for your food or cosmetics. Ground up female cochineal beetles. I’ll be looking for these 5mm critters the next time I go shopping and begin reading packaging ingredients.

On a recent airline flight we ordered kosher meals, but only for one person in our family. The stewardess looked at us quizzically, but gave us our kosher meal anyway. She double checked to ensure we had indeed ordered it. There was no mistake; we were the ones that ticked the kosher box when booking our tickets. As the long flight progressed the stewardess, now quite curious, asked us why we would order the kosher meal. On this trans Pacific flight, of the 500 or so passengers, we were the only ones that ordered a kosher meal.