C. sapidus

Understood. We ate in a "Mexican" restaurant in Siberia. The menu included tacos, pizza, and borscht.

Plenty of Mexican food has neither. A comparison would be Chinese food in China vs. Chinese restaurant food elsewhere.

Connecticut lobster rolls, with melted butter and warm lobstah, are ridiculous. Accompanied by good beer at Allagash Tasting Room in Portland, Maine. There was another place in the Northern Neck of VA, but apparently it closed recently. Never tried beef tartare. I have eaten Ethiopian kitfo, which is a spiced up version of beef tartare. I alternated between "Hey, this is good" and "Ew, I am chewing on raw beef."

The only time I ate insects voluntarily was chocolate-covered cicadas during one of their 17-year emergences. Not bad, although the wings tend to stick on the way down. Perhaps we were supposed to remove the wings, I dunno. I later read that cicadas can build up a fairly high concentration of heavy metals during their 17 years underground, depending on the local soil. Eh, I'm not worried about the toxic effects of eating one cicada every 17 years. 🙄

Thai coconut chicken soup (tom kha gai, with various spelling variants) is amazing stuff, and easy to make if you can find the ingredients. David Thompson's recipe is a good starting point - definitely add nam prik pao (chile jam) at the end to taste - it leaves lovely sweet red chile-flavored globules of goodness on the surface of the soup. And best to you and your husband, of course.

Looks good! What are "Red Weapons"? Mrs. C did a semi-homemade tortilla soup last night, jazzed up with rotisserie chicken and lots of frozen vegetables. Cooked-down tortilla soup breakfast tacos. The first rule of breakfast tacos is that looks do not necessarily correlate with taste. 🙄

A friend's Dad used to homebrew hard cider. That stuff definitely sneaks up on you. Aftermath looked like a neutron bomb had gone off, with bodies scattered everywhere. 😜

Haha. Perhaps "overated" is a neologism, meaning "eaten too much, past tense". 🙄

Welcome! I have visited the UK but not the southwest. Besides the pirate accent, I would love to hear more about your location - local food specialties, availability of ingredients, etc.

Shrimp with tamarind, fish sauce, Sriracha, garlic, and ginger. Broccoli with garlic and anchovies. Jasmine rice. Not my best effort - everything tasted good, but textures on the broccoli and shrimp were a miss. Oh well.

Mrs. C is not a recipe person. If she makes something particularly delicious the conversation typically goes like this: Me: "Is there any possibility that you could make this again?" Her: "Not a chance." Me: 😔

Zucchini-yellow squash-kielbasa-chile concoction, repurposed as breakfast tacos

Oh, you want a chemically plausible explanation? "The taste of whisky is primarily linked to so-called amphipathic molecules, which are made up of hydrophobic and hydrophilic parts. One such molecule is guaiacol, a substance that develops when the grain is dried over peat smoke when making malt whisky, providing the smoky flavour to the whisky," Karlsson explains. Karlsson and Friedman carried out computer simulations of water/ethanol mixtures in the presence of guaiacol to study its interactions. They found that guaiacol was preferentially associated with ethanol molecules and that in mixtures with concentrations of ethanol up to 45% guaiacol was more likely to be present at the liquid-air interface than in the bulk of the liquid. "This suggests that, in a glass of whisky, guaiacol will therefore be found near the surface of the liquid, where it contributes to both the smell and taste of the spirit. Interestingly, a continued dilution down to 27% resulted in an increase of guaiacol at the liquid-air interface. An increased percentage, over 59%, had the opposite effect, that is to say, the ethanol interacted more strongly with the guaiacol, driving the molecule into the solution away from the surface," Science Daily: Why whiskey tastes better diluted with water

My understanding is that aromatic components of whiskey are more soluble in ethanol than water, so adding water may take these aromatics out of solution where they are available to your olfactory cells. That said, I prefer whiskey neat. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Leftovers from dinner: potatoes, zucchini, yellow squash, and kielbasa in chile sauce, jazzed up with feta and hot sauce.

One of our friends is from Trinidad. She described Caribbean food as flavorful but not chile-hot. That was pretty much our experience. Have fun!

Had some zucchini, yellow squash and kielbasa to use up. Sauce was reconstituted guajillo, pasilla, and mulato chiles, garlic, and white onion, blended and fried before mixing with chicken stock, cumin, nutmeg, etc. Sautéed the squash and meat separately to maintain texture. Calabaza con Colorado? Braised baby potatoes with garlic and bay leaves.

Russian neighbors dropped off borscht, always a special treat. Dollop of yogurt.

Thanks for doing this, and thanks for all the chorizo and chile photos. If _________ and Mexican chorizo is not a food group, it should be.

Chicken in southern Thai red curry, with added green beans and zucchini that needed using up. Made the lazy way – Panang curry paste jazzed up with garlic, ginger, green and dried red chiles, and turmeric. Southern Thai curries are like a mash-up of Thai and Indian curry ingredients, and quite delicious. Jasmine rice, and green beans with olive oil and lemon.

Agreed, tuna salad sandwich with something green and leafy makes a satisfying quick meal. I usually use chopped up dill pickles because I can never find our little jar of capers. Hot pickles or pickled jalapenos are fun, too. Lots of ways to jazz up tuna salad. Hot sauce, mustard, curry powder, etc. Never a dull moment . . .

Keema with coconut milk, spinach and cilantro, seasoned with lots of onion, chiles, garlic, ginger, and a cabinet full of spices (most notably ground fenugreek seeds, which impart a lovely aroma). Cumin rice with ghee, and green chutney with cilantro and fresh coconut. Younger son is home for the weekend - mostly for a better internet connection - but he does seem to appreciate home cooking more than before.

Kielbasa with yellow squash and zucchini, flavored with white onion, garlic, chipotle in adobo, jalapeno, and cooked down tomatillo salsa, and then finished with Mexican oregano and feta cheese. Polish tacos, maybe?

Very interesting, thanks for posting this @Smithy. I have an aunt who lived to 100 years old and followed a somewhat similar path. Her family fled Armenian genocide in Turkey when she was an infant, and then she lived under Nazi occupation in France before coming to the US. Her cooking though, was 100% French, and she imparted a love of food to all of her children. We have wonderful meals whenever we visit. 😃

Nice to meet you, too! Can you tell us about yourself and your food interests?