Tag: faux

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Crab Rangoon: No It’s Not Authentic Chinese Food

I knew the history growing up around crab rangoon. It wasn’t a very easy to find appetizer, but suddenly I started hearing people talk about it again on YouTube when I suddenly noticed Asian vloggers telling you that it’s not authentic Chinese food. They’re right, it’s authentic San Franciscan food.

I never saw crab rangoon offered at any of the Chinese restaurants in the City and I even started trying to find it on the menus and finally found it at one restaurant in the Outer Sunset. Oddly enough it’s easier to find at the Hawaiian restaurants you’ll find around the Bay Area, but it’s rare at Chinese restaurants.

So here’s the funny thing about all this. While crab rangoon was invented and first served at Trader Vic’s in Emeryville before moving on their locations it’s nearly impossible to find today in San Francisco. Yet when I moved back east to Northampton, Massachusetts every Chinese restaurant sells it. The grocery stores even sell frozen packages of it.

If you have no idea what crab rangoon is [and you’ll quickly see why it’s not authentic Chinese] it’s a fried appetizer that consists of a won-ton skin filled with crab, green onions and…cream cheese. Tastes great in my opinion, but definitely not Chinese. Vic Bergeron took a few liberties when he built his Tiki Bar empire with some of the recipes he introduced.

If you can find it in San Francisco you should try it. I rather like it and you can point out as I do that it’s an authentic San Franciscan dish. 

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Faux Rain

I had forgotten about this until today. We had heavy fog that to people from Los Angeles would refer to as…rain. You can’t see more than 20 ft in front of you in the afternoon while you can see farther the air is so thick with humidity that if you stand around outside for a half hour you look like you walked into a rain storm.

This is always something you have to be careful of especially when you’re driving as the water will build up on your windshield fast and if you don’t have intermittent wipers you have to be quick with your fingers or you’ll run into something or worse, someone.

Heavy fog also tends to be brighter with the tiny water droplets diffusing the light making you at times wonder if you’d see better by putting on sunglasses. I guess the faux rain of heavy fog is kind of like weather that can’t make up it’s mind.

I can remember walking the few blocks to school in this kind of weather and looking like I had been hosed down. Umbrellas don’t help, but you can try. They mind at least keep the top of your head a little drier, but not much. It’s also barely enough to keep you from having to water your garden if you have one and there’s almost nothing worse than seeing your neighbor out in their garden with a raincoat watering. I guess that falls into the same category as putting on your winter coat to go out to barbecue in July. It’s a Sunset thang.

Checking my handy dandy iPhone it tells me that we’ll have to deal with this until Sunday when it will stop. Until then, stay dry my friends.

 

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