The Thanksgiving Song

Because we just bought our last Thanksgiving turkey abroad...

Because I love Adam Sandler...

Because everyone here skips Thanksgiving and goes right into Christmas...

Because I really needed some American festivities.

Keep your shoes on!

In Asia, it is the custom for every person entering your home to first remove their shoes before walking through the door.

Simple, right? Ha, no. Aaron and I have a ridiculously hard time adhering to this one.

Yet everyone does it. EVERYONE.

The guys that moved our stuff into our apartment even removed their shoes. They would get a box from the truck, carry it up several flights of stairs, remove their shoes at our front door and then carry it to the desired room. Then on the way out the door, they'd put their shoes back on to grab the next box. It was a maddening thing to watch. How much of their day is wasted messing with their shoes? So after watching them fumble to remove their shoes while holding our heavy bedroom mattress, I finally had to stop the madness.

"Please just leave them on! I'll have to clean the floor anyway! It's fine, I swear."

They were very reluctant, but finally agreed that it'd be easier.

Yet, every maintenance guy that comes to our place refuses to keep his on. It's just not something they are equipped to do.

So fine. We got used to that part. And we got used to having to remove our shoes when we went to Simon's house or any other local's house.

What we do still have trouble with is our American friends.

It seems that every single American person we know in Singapore immediately picked up this Asian custom as soon as they stepped off the plane.

I cannot remember going to a single person's house in America where they made me take off my shoes before I was allowed to come inside. (That is, unless it was raining, snowing or muddy outside, but that's common decency.)

Seriously though. Why the flip as soon as we enter Asia? Are there shoe police somewhere that I don't know about? When did all of my American friends adopt this?

I have a real problem being barefoot in a stranger's house. It makes me feel very vulnerable. I even feel hesitant to remove my shoes when I'm getting a pedicure. I'm always thinking:

"Is their floor clean?"

"When was the last time they cleaned it?"

"Does anyone in this house have athlete's foot?" (call me crazy, but I got this once as a child from a gymnastics studio and that is a road that I NEVER want to travel down again)

"Am I going to step on anything?"

"Is my pedicure chipping?"

I know I have issues. I just don't feel comfortable being barefoot in someone's house that I don't know that well.

Aaron has issues with it as well, only his worries a different. He says that he's always thinking:

"Are my toenails dirty?"

"Do my socks match?"

"Are there holes in my socks?"

"Do my feet stink?"

Yeah, we're both a bunch of anxiety-ridden weirdos, I guess. Sometimes we just keep them on to see if we can avoid the whole thing and then feel like goobers when people send us back out to remove our shoes.

Not fun.

I've never told anyone this, but each time I remove my shoes, the scene from SATC always plays through my head.

I too, always want to exclaim "But this is an outfit!"

But really, if my shoes ever get stolen, I will never take them off again.

Not that I have any worthy of stealing, but still.

An Incredible Halloween

Thanks to my super sweet sister, we were the Incredibles this past Halloween. Of course, we came without a Dash, Violet and Jack Jack (like my sis' family last year), but we were Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl: The Early Years.

My sis mailed us the costumes for our superhero themed party and we had so much fun with them, that we just wore them to everything, all weekend.

Don't worry Sis, they're still in one piece and unscathed. :)

One thing that surprised us though was just how many people asked to have their pictures taken with us. I'm not even talking about at the parties we went to, we kept getting stopped by Singaporeans walking along the street. We probably got stopped by at least eight random strangers to have our pictures taken as we were walking to our numerous destinations.

The conversations usually went as such:

"Uh sah, can I take a photo?"

"Sure. Why not."

"Oh great. Mr. and Mrs. Superman."

"Uh no, but sure. Whatever you wanna call us."


Several people said this. Now, I know The Incredibles is an American movie, but come onnnnn people. I know Singapore has at least been exposed to it.

For the locals that were this clueless, I'm sure they didn't even know we were celebrating Halloween. To them we're just the freaks walking around like super heroes.

I'm alright with that.

American MSG meet Asian MSG

This is MSG.

The one on the left was bought in the United States. The one on the right was bought in Singapore.

There is a lot of controversy surrounding this food additive and I'll be honest and say that I never really paid that much attention...

Until I moved to Asia.

Ever since we moved to Singapore, I get frequent headaches that seem to come out of nowhere. It's not because I don't drink enough water and it's not because I'm outside in the heat. I get them while typing at my desk in my air conditioned office while drinking a liter of water. I also get them while riding on the MRT in the middle of the day. I could not find a common link to solve the headache puzzle.

After months of this, someone told me that it's probably all of the MSG I'm eating in the food over here.

Interesting.

Like every paranoid American, I hopped on the Internet to Google it.

There, I found this website called MSGtruth.org. It's full of information about what it is, why it's used, what it does to your body and what it could potentially do. It was enough to make me uneasy.

Here's some snippets:

• MSG tricks your tongue into making you think a certain food is high in protein and thus nutritious. It is not a "meat tenderizer". It is not a "preservative". The food industry is trying to confuse the issue by focusing on the "fifth" taste sense they call umami. Free glutamic acid is detected by the taste buds as a simple way to signal the presence of protein in a food, just as there are fat receptors to detect fats and receptors that sense carbohydrate or sweet flavors. The purpose is to help us discern real food from inedible matter. It changes your perception of not simply taste but the nutritious qualities of what you put into your mouth. However, and here is the main problem with free glutamic acid - It is the very same neurotransmitter that your brain and many organs including your ears, eyes, nervous system and pancreas in your body use to initiate certain processes in your body.

• MSG stimulates the pancreas to produce insulin. So many diets these days are concerned about the Glycemic Index of foods and yet none of them address the fact that MSG and free glutamic acid stimulate the pancreas to release insulin when there doesn't even have to be carbohydrates in the food for that insulin to act on. The food industry has found their own "anti-appetite suppressant". It's a convenient way to keep consumers coming back for more. The blood sugar drops because of the insulin flood. And you are hungry an hour later. Sound familiar?

Um yeah. Everytime I eat Chinese food, I want a friggin' Big Mac like an hour later. I always thought it was the rice that did it.

But seriously, food shouldn't make you feel that way. Food is supposed to be filling. It's supposed to satisfy hunger, not antagonize it!

So after all this research is when I decided to search our cabinets and found the container of Accent. I had no idea that it was straight MSG. That makes me feel really good about all of those dinners of canned green beans that we douse in chemicals.

Aaron and I didn't stop the search there though. We rummaged through our entire pantry. You know what we found?

ALL OF OUR FAVORITE FOODS HAVE MSG.

Every bottle of Ranch dressing. Every package of Jalapeno Ranch Chips. Every granule of Parmesan cheese. Every Dorito chip. Every container of Lawry's Seasoning Salt.

It was one of the saddest and most guilt-ridden days of my life.

That is when it dawned on me.

I've been eating these MSG laced foods my ENTIRE life. Nothing bad has happened to me yet (that I know of). How can they prove that MSG is the thing making my head hurt?

I lived on Doritos and Ranch dressing for the entirety of high school. I don't ever remember getting a head ache. (A stomach ache and huge love handles is what I should've had. Yet, those gems did finally arrive later.)

So I think I'm over it. I do still think that they put a lot more MSG in Chinese-style foods and I am going to make a conscious effort to not to eat those as much. But really, it'd be near impossible to avoid it all the time.

Plus, I really like Ranch dressing too much to let it go.

We're still pretending it's Fall

Because we apparently live in a constant state of denial, we decided to make another Fall themed dish at our house tonight. It is not Fall in Singapore. Nor has it ever been.

But it is at our house.

Aaron's (aka my newly adopted) Aunt Debbie sent us a yummy sounding recipe for pumpkin soup the other day and we just couldn't get it out of our heads.

So a week and four ransacked grocery stores later, I finally had all of the ingredients to make it. I'm getting better at this. When all other grocery stores fail, always go to Jason's Marketplace. They always have crazy expat stuff like canned pumpkin puree. I grabbed two big cans...because that's all they had. Go big or go home. So I figured I have one for our upcoming, mandatory Thanksgiving pies and one big can for our soup.

Have you ever had pumpkin soup? I know it sounds weird at first, but give it a go. It's surprisingly delicious. We had ours with sour cream and bacon on top.

Bippity boppity BACON. Just cuz it goes with everything.

Yes it does. Don't argue with me.

Oh and the Shiner Bock? It's just there because it needed it's picture taken. We never see Texas beer 'round these parts.

We always get pretty excited when Midwestern things find us in Asia.