Dream Sequence: Culinary Delights

Violet had always enjoyed trying food from a variety of different cultures. New Year's Day celebrations often featured either a rack of ribs or bratwurst with german sauerkraut. Meanwhile, St. Patrick's Day celebrations would mean corned beef, potatoes, carrots, and onions being served for dinner with potato pancakes with eggs for breakfast. Of course, her culinary exploits were hardly reserved just for the holidays.

Lee and she often spent their free time looking up new restaurants around the city to try on their date nights. They had a favorite Japanese bento box and sushi style restaurant nearby that was one of their top favorites. They had two primary categories for the bento box: teriyaki and fried. You would get to choose a meat option, which ranged from fried fish to teriyaki sukiyaki-style steak and shrimp to a vegetarian tofu option. Then you got to choose a side, which could be onion soup made with a clarified broth before adding fried onions and thinly sliced mushrooms, sushi, or even wontons. A free side salad was also always automatically included alongside steamed edamame beans.

Violet wasn't really into sushi and her husband disliked the seaweed and raw fish elements of sushi, but he still enjoyed a few varieties at the restaurant. There was a cooked eel one that tasted extremely fishy to Violet with an eel sauce on top. There was also a California roll with avocado, crab stick, and some sort of spicy sauce. Violet couldn't really remember the other options all that well since she usually didn't ask her husband about what they were since she didn't like them all that well.

There were also other restaurants near where they lived since they lived in a city. However, that was a story for another time. The reason Violet was thinking about the Japanese restaurant now was that this was their first time trying out a new Asian market they had found that just so happened to be within five miles of their house. As for why it was called an Asian market when it didn't have food items from India or many other countries in Asia, Violet wasn't sure.

Lee carried the basket for Violet as she happily stared at all the various foods in the store. Despite this particular Asian market being a small mom-and-pop one, there was quite a bit of variety to choose from. Near the door, they had dried nuts and shelf-stable produce to the left side alongside a see-through freezer and a refrigerator full of various types of ice cream.

Violet couldn't help but get excited as she looked at the ones with a fish-shaped waffle-like exterior. It came in a lot of different flavors including brown sugar boba, match and chocolate, and chocolate with a chocolate sauce layer. There were also popsicles and push-pop ones, but these were the ones that Violet wanted to try the most. Chuckling, Lee suggested

"Why don't we wait to get ice cream for last? We don't want it to melt before we even get to checkout."

Violet frowned a bit, but knew he was right so she nodded her agreement. They were likely to spend quite a while here and the ice cream would taste better if it was still frozen properly. Turning around, she saw that the right side had a refrigerated produce section. The portion closest to the door had jellies, mochi, and various drinks. However, most of these didn't really hold her interest. Violet enjoyed milk teas and would often get them at the bento restaurant with popping boba that was filled with fruit juice, but she wasn't really a fan of the tapioca kind of boba pearls. The yogurt-flavored drinks also seemed a bit strange so she was a bit hesitant to try it.

Well, Violet had grown up a picky eater in the first place. It wasn't until she became an adult that she realized that much of the problem had stemmed from the fact that her parents were not only bad cooks, but also had vastly different tastes in food than she did. At Chinese restaurants, they would often get things like lo mein noodles whereas Violet preferred fried rice, karaage, stir fries, fried wontons, etc. Why all of the restaurants her parents brought her to seemed to have bland, brown-looking American Chinese food that always featured lo mein in all the pictures, she'd never know, but it certainly hadn't helped things.

This was also the case for other cuisines as well and it had led her to think that she disliked most types of cuisines. She didn't like the one "authentic" Italian restaurant her parents had brought her to as their pastas included everything but the kitchen sink in them. However, she did like a number of pasta-based dishes, pizza, garlic bread, etc. She had even enjoyed an upscale Italian restaurant her and her friends had enjoyed after winning a graphic design state competition in high school. The idea of dipping bread in balsamic vinegar and olive oil was a novel one she had never experienced before, yet it was so good!

As such, Violet still tended to be a bit hesitant to try things too far out of her comfort zone. At least, that was the case at first. As she tried cooking dishes at home, tried more new foods within a cuisine and found things she liked, etc. she started to get more adventurous and willing to try more new things. A lot of the times the things he didn't think she would like, she'd end up not liking, but there were a few times she had been surprised.

In fact, that was a large part of the reason they were here today. The goal was to pick up a few snacks she wanted to try, for Lee to pick a few things he wanted to try that she might not otherwise pick, and then for them to pick up some things to cook for dinner together. Violet always loved having a variety of foods. So, she couldn't help but ask to try a bite of Lee's food whenever he ordered something different from her. Lee never seemed to mind and even enjoyed sharing their food with one another. He even felt proud to watch his wife branch out and try new things over time.

The next area they came to was full of frozen things as well as a rack for discounted produce. There were pints of matcha and ube ice cream as well as tons of frozen meats. Some things sounded particularly strange to Violet like shrimp or fish meatballs while other things she felt curious about like the huge variety of sprouts and kimchi they had at the end of the frozen aisle. She had never tried radish sprouts before and hadn't really given much thought to what other kinds of sprouts there might be outside of bean sprouts. Deciding to try making some homemade ramen she said

"I'll be right back!"

She had just remembered there were some neat-looking beech mushrooms in the produce aisle, which would be a good addition alongside the radish sprouts for the ramen. The end cap as they turned had discounted snacks and shelf-stable goods. Things like moon cakes and jellies, which they bought some of. Violet didn't like the texture of puddings and jellos, but Lee did. So, she was much more interested in the marshmallow and chocolate layered treats.

Next, they came across a huge aisle full of instant ramens and dried varieties of noodles from ramen to udon. There was also a meat freezer with some rather unusual options like chicken feet and cow calves. While she knew that these were not as strange in Asian countries, they certainly weren't something one could find in your typical American grocery store. There was one thing that stood out, though, that Violet couldn't help but point out

"Ooh! Look, honey, they have pork belly! That would be really good in some ramen alongside these mushrooms and radish sprouts."

Lee nodded before joking

"Here I thought you were trying to make a salad or something. Do you want to make some homemade broth or try one of these imported ramens with it? There seems to be a lot of different flavors here."

Violet made a sour expression before straightening her expression back out and replying

"I'd like to try making some from scratch, but we can get some instant ones to try as well. Most of them look pretty cheap, even if they are a bit more than the kind in the other grocery stores."

Violet had made homemade ramen before, she just hadn't used the proper ingredients for it. She stole the noodles from some instant ramen, discarding the seasoning packet before making a homemade broth. It was basically just bouillon or stock cooked with vinegar, soy sauce, a bit of sugar, and some seasonings to make a well-balanced broth. There were, of course, a variety of different ramen styles and toppings that one could use, but she wasn't trying to make anything fancy, just something quick and easy. Shredded carrots, thinly sliced cabbage, radish, eggs, and some seasoned steak rounded things out quite nicely.

Of course, it wasn't uncommon to also have a side with one's ramen, even in places like Japan. So, they checked out the next freezer section, which was much smaller this time, that held many different premade items. There were scallion pancakes, brown sugar pancakes, a variety of dumplings, shumai, etc. It was hard to just pick a few items, but Violet restricted herself to just a small handful of options. They were hardly hurting for money since they both had quite successful careers, but their freezers hardly had the space for too many new things to be stuffed into.

Violet loved a good sale, so she tended to stock up on vegetables and meat, which she broke down before vacuum-sealing it, and placing them in their downstairs deep freezer. The freezer that was part of their refrigerator was reserved for quick and easy meal options like the dumplings or snacks like ice cream, but it wasn't really that big. A few loaves of bread and two tubs of ice cream would fill up the majority of the freezer space since it was so small. However, it worked well for their needs and it prevented Violet from going too crazy about hoarding food.

They spent a few minutes perusing the cooking equipment aisle, even picking up a nice set of stainless steel chopsticks, and then moved onto the spices aisle. There were some nice bottles of pre-made dipping sauces and Japanese mayonnaise, but they didn't really need any of that right now. Some soy sauce, vinegar, minced garlic, pepper flakes, and a sprinkle of sugar would work well enough for a quick homemade dipping sauce for their wontons and the other items would be more suitable at the beginning of the month when they did their actual grocery shopping. This was just meant to be a fun date night that they would round out by cooking dinner at home together and then watching some anime.

Of course, no trip to the asian market would be complete without snacks. This time Violet really splurged. She had a long black crate where she kept her snacks in the pantry, and it was nearly empty, so she could afford to stock up on everything she was interested in. Fancy fruit flavored gummies, puchao, grapefruit earl gray cookies, pepero, traditional korean cookies, mixed rice crackers, wasabi rice crackers, and more went into the cart. Then, of course, there was the ice cream which they had saved for last. There was no way Violet could forget the ice cream.