Food and Drink

I enjoyed a delicious lunch of smørrebrød on a recent visit to Denmark, followed by a dessert of rødgrød med fløde. The Wikipedia entry for rødgrød cautions that “the name of the dish in Danish features many of the elements that make Danish pronunciation difficult for non-native speakers.

I’m not very good at the Thai language, but I know a good place when I see it. There is a branch of this shop in the provincial capital, serving delicious coconut ice cream with an assortment of condiments.

The 15th International Turfgrass Research Conference is this month in Karuizawa, Japan. A few delegates have asked if I have some advice about foods to try for those making their first visit to Japan.

I can still remember a profound disappointment with an ice cream flavor I chose once, and only once, as a child. We had gone to the grocery store, and I’d seen a new flavor of ice cream—a granola flavor.

It’s fruit season in Thailand. One can get fruit at any time of year, but a check of orchards and markets shows that mango season starts in April; after that come durian and rambutan, and mangosteens mark the end of it.

Swensen’s Ice Cream has a salted watermelon flavor this summer. The salted watermelon ice cream is superb. It pairs especially well with a scoop of coconut milk ice cream.1

The new flavors have been coming so quickly that I just can’t keep up. There was the cheese pizza flavor—I called it the gateway chip—and I’ve been think about it ever since.

Funny how I happened to be in 7-11 again the other day. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw some unfamiliar packaging, and took a closer look to find the details of this new flavor.

I took a long train ride across 6 degrees of latitude. Bangkok is about 13 degrees north, so I’ll call this a narrow road to the slightly north. When I got to Bangkok, I went straight to the snack aisle.

On the Fourth of July weekend, I might normally have a barbeque. Perhaps some potato chips too. This year I decided to mix up the menu a bit, so I skipped the potato chips and went for snacks with a higher protein content.