This afternoon, Jodi and I ate our first home-cooked meal since her mom went back home. We've been doing a lot of cleaning and rearranging since she left, getting things back to how we like them. Lunch was a simple meal of omelets, left-over pizza and cheesecake pudding. The potatoes were a little salty, but overall I was surprised to find that my cooking intuition hadn't regressed too much since Jodi's mom took over. Maybe it's a good time to restart the food weblog.

Anyhow, reason I'm sitting down at the computer to write this up is that while we were eating Jodi and I had a good conversation about nutrition, where people learn how to cook, and what foods she and I like to eat. Jodi said that her parents used to cook a lot more varied foods, and that when she was young they would make some very traditional foods of which she singled out four as being her favorites:

• 猫鱼 (a pink, spicy fermented tofu with ginger)
• 辣椒萝卜 (a crunchy, wet mixture of hot peppers and dried radish)
• 烟熏腊肉 (Hunanese cured meats, smoked in a drum barrel downstairs)
• 甜酒 (a sweet rice wine, brewed by Jodi's dad)

And that's all I wanted to say. Maybe someday we can try to bring back and perfect these homemade goodies, making them a part of our "family culture".