Good salads should never be hard find. But its increasingly becoming more and more difficult to find a salad at any fast casual restaurant that isn’t at some ridiculous price for a few leaves, a few nuts, a protein, and dressing. I should never have to chose between being able to get two hamburgers for the price of one salad. The current meteoric rise of inflation hasn’t helped. Because of the Great Salad Dilemma™, we tend to make our own salads at home and at camp.
Read MoreFew things hit harder than a bowl of hot soup at a chilly camp night. A bowl of chili is fine. But it doesn’t get the body temperature up. Chili is a hot dish that is best enjoyed when its much cooler to make it much more shovel-able (the act of taking a spoon of food to shove into your mouth without worry of burning your whole mouth). Asians LOVE soups that take time tested techniques to enjoy when they’re face melting-ly hot. You know, soups that are so hot that they fog up your glasses as you go into for a bite. That’s the kind of hot soups we’re talking about here.
Read MoreOn our month long trip in Baja, improvisation was key. We couldn’t depend on our usual “things to buy” whenever we’re in the States. We were at the whim of what the markets had to offer. We lived the gentrified millennial dream: eating locally and seasonally. We travel with a fairly wide selection of spices and seasoning so we can whip together basically anything we want. We can throw together American, Indian, Korean, Mexican, or Vietnamese pretty easily. This salad was inspired a traditional Vietnamese chicken salad, gỏi ga, then fused with our love of grill seafood from the streets of Vietnam.
Read MoreThe most American I ever felt as an immigrant kid growing up in America was when I was 18 and I ordered my first French dip at Applebee’s. Nothing felt as far removed from home-cooked Vietnamese food than, to me, a decadent meat filled sandwich where you dip the whole contraption into its own juices. In those few moments of enjoying the sandwich, the feeling of being included and accepted as just another American kid, and not an immigrant kid with strange cultural traditions and stinky food, was incredibly powerful.
Read More
