@skinnylatte@hachyderm.io
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skinnylatte

@skinnylatte@hachyderm.io

Queer Southeast Asian in California working on #civictech. I lead the product team at San Francisco Digital Services.

I write about food, immigrant life, pets, steel bikes, photography and other analog hobbies.

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skinnylatte, to animals
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Cookie, in spite of her name, also loves all fruit

skinnylatte, to random
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I have a really good friend who is Syrian. I love the Syrian sense of humor.

I was telling him about how I feel as though in a world of super specialized people at this stage in my career, I feel like an oddball. He says, ‘you’re like fusion food. But you have to have a clear and easily understood story. Who you are, what you’re selling. Otherwise, you will be confusion food.’

skinnylatte,
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@sunscream I also think of it less as ‘the story to sell to corporations for work or personal branding’ and more of ‘also the same story I tell myself about who I am and what I care for’, that I can then use to guide me in all of my ‘am I on the right path? Is this fun and impactful?’ sort of questions I might ask myself.

The food parallel helps me (because I used to sell food)

skinnylatte, to random
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Interesting public service role based in the Bay Area, working with the government of Flanders to promote links between American and Flemish companies (college friend of mine works here!)

Could be interesting for someone tech-adjacent looking for a more international role without necessarily relocating (I think the salary estimates are based on EU salaries, but this role might be different)

https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/1643002722/

skinnylatte, to food
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15 years ago I was making travel / food videos for fun. I want to do it again, but I’m scared of becoming a ‘YouTube creator’

https://youtu.be/ACjIDnX8rPo

skinnylatte,
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@GeePawHill I think I’d like to do it just for fun and to teach and share but I would be afraid of relying on it for income

skinnylatte, to random
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Even though I never cooked when I was living in Southeast Asia (you.. really don’t need to), paying attention to food procurement and techniques helped me level up when I started cooking when I left that region.

(Eating street food there is often cheaper than buying ingredients and cooking yourself. In almost all SEA cities)

There’s a lot of stuff I felt I just ‘knew’ because I was around people who dealt with food all the time

skinnylatte,
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How to pick fish, vegetables, where to get them. I think that’s the missing piece of information in a lot of English language books about food. There’s a lot you learn when your source of food procurement isn’t a supermarket, too. When stuff isn’t just in styrofoam and plastic and you can talk to an expert about what to get. I 100% credit my time in wet markets for my food knowledge and hate that they are maligned so much (wet markets aren’t what the racist covid coverage tell you they are)

skinnylatte,
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Sometimes I read racist people talk about ‘how can Chinatown veggies be so cheap, must be bad’ as though Chinese aunties won’t also throw carrots and cabbages at you for going to a supermarket and getting inferior product that was much more expensive than Chinatown

skinnylatte,
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They used to also say it was because of labor exploitation, but then Jeff Bezos bought Whole Foods and I haven’t heard that since

skinnylatte,
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@carrideen Chinatown veggies also have their own supply networks that supply just Chinatowns, and focuses only on veggies Chinese / SE Asian people eat

skinnylatte,
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@crzwdjk Chinese aunties will not go there unless it’s to get a deal. Most aunties I know are finicky about quality

skinnylatte,
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@Natalie yeah in California our farmer markets are great. I can get a whole weeks of veggies for $10 or less and still have enough to pickle / do something with it

skinnylatte,
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@meganL this looks so good! Will order

skinnylatte,
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@meganL send anything like that to me please!!

skinnylatte,
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@libroraptor ahahaha

skinnylatte,
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@alysondecker yeah definitely a question of density, which is also why I like where I am in spite of many other issues (I never have to get into a car, or even transit, to shop at multiple places)

skinnylatte, to random
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Annoyed that all the Indian and Malaysian and Thai and Singaporean and Indonesian aunties in my life who refused to give exact measurements and times and said ‘it’s done when it’s done’ actually had the best cooking advice

skinnylatte,
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I think it speaks to being mindful about food and the cooking process. That it’s not just a thing to output, but a process to think about. Not all spices are the same. No two ingredients are always 100% the same. Especially in that part of the world where ingredients are rarely super processed. When a grandma says a cup or a spoon it’s often her particular cup and spoon. Not your spoon. But the spoon she used forever.

skinnylatte,
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Though I think this only really works if you know what you are trying to make and have had it a lot. When I cook Thai or Chinese food now I’m just like ‘it’s done when it’s done’. It just smells and tastes.. ‘right’ (which is also what the aunties used to say)

But if you haven’t had a lot of a cuisine before then it’s perfectly fine to use a good recipe or cookbook with measurements. It’s just a map, though. You can get there any way you want.

skinnylatte,
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Thinking of this as I manifest making a Yemeni mandi from some corner of my brain where some auntie showed me a pinch of this and a bit of that, but it’s somehow coming together

skinnylatte, to random
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I guess the internet is full of ‘15 min easy recipes’ for a reason, but I want ‘15 hours difficult recipes’ because that’s how I enjoy cooking

skinnylatte,
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@fuzzychef I find that for many traditional Asian foods with long prep times, there is a much more interesting oral tradition and many cookbooks published in English don’t fully capture the essence. Many YouTube channels are better, especially the ones not in English!

skinnylatte,
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@arestelle haha, there are some rendang recipes that require an entire village to take turns stirring and processing spices and meat. It takes at least 12 hours as it goes through different stages of cooking, and requires different things.

skinnylatte, to Bread
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I struggled to find spelt bread recipes that weren’t boules (fun to make, but I personally don’t love making, eating or shaping boules)

Made a spelt flour pain de mie, which turned out excellent! Kind of just winged it with the King Arthur whole wheat pain de mie recipe, and it’s now something I’ll write up and make regularly

#Bread #Food #Baking

skinnylatte,
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@jf_718 prepare to eat your weight in butter. Daily.

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