Eating our Summer Away

Low Country Boil
Photo Credit: www.unclebubbas.com

As May comes every year, we start dreaming of all the things we can get in the US.  Things we miss from our childhood or just from the past few years.
Living in Japan is different than when we lived in Peru.  In Japan, we can get almost anything we want, at a price.  In Peru, there were things we just couldn't get and shipping was not reliable, even packages from our family.  Over the years, we have learned how to make many of our favorites from scratch - pork barbecue, Tex Mex, and many others.

Here are a few foods and dishes we crave from the US.  Most of them we've ate while we were home, some of them will have to wait another year.

In the South:

• Pork Barbecue at Johnny Harris, at Papas, Blowin' Smoke and anywhere else we could get our hands on it!
• Peaches!  Blueberries!  The kids ate their weight in fruit this summer.
• Boiled Peanuts
• Key Lime Pie
• Cuban Food at Rancho Alegre, specifically for me - Lechon Asada
• (Tex) Mexican - at Jalapeños and at Carlitos. 
• Shrimp - in a low country boil or peel and eat with hush puppies

In the North:

• Grinders (sub sandwiches, but somehow better)
• Sweet pizza from the Pizza Lady, although I miss it from Guilinos Bakery.
• Iced Coffees at Dunkin Donuts - I had at least one a day.  I miss Bess Eaton's crushed iced, but the iced coffee is still good.
• Soupy (local cured sausage - appropriately called Supri Soupressata)
• Portuguese Sweet Bread
• Lobster
• Fried Clam Strips
• Steamers
• Clam Chowder

Others:

• Mango salsa -spicy and sweet!
• Peanut Buster Parfait from Dairy Queen
• Rye toast

And a few of our new favorites...

We had a wonderful date night at the fairly (this means anything that opened in the past 7 years) Local restaurant near Forsyth Park, which was delicious! We then went to Lulu's Chocolate Bar for dessert and drinks.  Another night, we went to Sol which was a great treat too - we had a yummy dish of 4 different kinds of salsas and I had a great shrimp taco with Thai chili sauce. 

But, now we're back in Japan... luckily not too much heavier after eating all this food!  Soon enough we'll start dreaming about this food again, but for now, we're happy to be cooking more and eating great food here!