I guess it shouldn’t come as any surprise to you that living in the Far East for a number of years, we ate a lot of rice. If we had a meal with potatoes, it was a real treat, and it rarely happened.
I’m not complaining ‚ I like rice and have it often, even today.
I think I’ve mentioned before that my maid/cook in Vietnam was a very good cook. But in all honesty, she was much better when she was making native dishes — she didn’t cook “western” dishes that often, but when she did, they were good. Maybe not as good as when she stuck to the Vietnamese traditional menu, but very tasty.
Anyhow, after things had settled down from the Tet uprising, one 4th of July, a co-worker came over one afternoon to have a drink. Unless I told her otherwise, the maid usually left shortly afternoon. But when we came in that afternoon/evening she was still there and asked if we wanted to eat. We said, sure — why not? She served us a traditional American meal, complete with a big bowl of mashed potatoes — with red, white and blue stripes. I think we were amazed, and she had the biggest smile you could imagine. I always thought that was pretty cool that she stayed late and prepared a special meal to celebrate a traditional American holiday.
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