tofu bánh mì and bubble tea

i have finally perfected one of my favorite meals and am so excited to share it with you! i work in a part of portland where there is are myriad asian restaurants and grocery stores. at least once a week i make the short trek with co-workers to best baguette for a sandwich and some bubble tea. i will leave that job with a healthy (?) addiction to bubble tea and after about five attempts making it in my kitchen and i think i’ve nailed it.

when i first heard of bánh mì i was very skeptical. asian food on a baguette. what?! how can those two foods be put together and make sense? but the origins offer an obvious explanation; vietnam was colonized by the french. for over a century france is there shoving its moral and religious values on the native people, taxing them, profiting from opium and alcohol trading, and eventually exploiting the natural resources of the area. only to leave once they’ve created the conditions that will lead to the vietnam war and the arguable genocide of a people.

this sandwich, like many others, is a legacy of colonialism. it makes me wonder what a free exchange of cultures would look like rather than the dominant culture appropriating things (and selling things like the “navajo hipster panty”). this sandwich is also so damn good. it’s a bit conflicting when prefaced with that history.

roasted beet sandwich with goat cheese, peach relish, and spinach pesto

that spinach pesto i told you about last post was just a tease. i created it for this sandwich and i finally have the time to share this with you after a college reunion of sorts with some of my favorite people.

this roasted beet sandwich was inspired by a cafe i worked at awhile ago. i received catered sandwiches, a daily soup, and a daily hot entree to cook. with my dairy intolerance and meat aversion there was often not much to choose from. this beet sandwich was all that i could eat one day and i was very apprehensive; hunger got the best of me and i ended up saving the leftovers and eating them until they were gone.

basic tuna salad with dill

this is one of the easiest yet most delicious ways to prepare tuna for sandwiches, crackers, melts, salads (i never quite understood that, but why not?). the key is the fresh dill, do not substitute that dry flavorless stuff for fresh dill.