Last year, my work team had to spend a week working in NJ!-- and since commute was a killer, the company actually put us up in a local hotel.. 10 minutes from the office.. It was a mini-vacation, so i bought my self a book.. The Professor and Madman, and started reading..

Since were staying in a motel, we need to find someplace to eat.

the first night, we ended up in Applebee's-- a outlet of a chain of "Family Restaurants"-- boring..

by the next night, i had found Pandang-- an Indonesian restaurant... actually, its a chain too, but very small. And the food is not boring!

For dessert, we had an Indonesian style dishes..Both started with a base of shaved ice, and were served with thing like, red bean paste, corn (kernel of sweet maize!) green pea threads (sweet peas, dried, ground into flour, moistened, and made into noodles.) fruit jellies (a cross between gelatin and gummy bears in texture).. and other interesting stuff.. but mostly, it was just plain ice.

but of course, it was the base of shaved ice that caught our attention. we speculated-- how could a Indonesian cuisines come up with such a dish?
That night, as read about W. C. Minor, Winchester related how, Minor, as child (1830's)had gone to the tropics with his parents, on boat leaving Boston, bring ice to the tropics.. And i realized, how a dessert, based on and primarily of ice could have developed.. If Boston was shipping ice to Sri Lanka-- i bet it was shipping ice all over the south pacific. and shaved ice, with just a little bit of anything sweet-- was a treat! So my book serendipitiously answered my question..

it's pretty plain, that i have some sort of weird synesthesia -- and food and words overlap!



my other obsession