chả giò
Quite a few people have asked me what chả giò is. The best I could manage was a type of Vietnamese spam -- it's pork stuff with some other things. Who knows. I ate it all the time as a kid and, well, you don't really question what you were given. Since I'm not a kid anymore (utter lies), I asked my mom recently what the heck was in it. I was surprised to find that chả giò, like all meats, was pretty expensive to buy back in the day. Not only that, it isn't just a mixture of crappy meats -- it used quality cuts from a pig! Around the time of the Vietnam war, meat was an expensive item. You rarely bought meat and mostly ate vegetables. It wasn't often that people could afford meat at all, much less good cuts of meat like Americans prize in the US. You would buy chả giò by weight, often not much, whereas in the states you'd probably buy two or three whole rolls at a time. As some of you might know, ground pork or sausage is made from leftover bits, so it's a little backwards when you think about it. Vietnamese spam is superior ham!