St. Tammany farmer., 1903-05-02

food" continued the veteran customs
inspector. ''They import guayada
and guayabada, which are made
from the guava fruit alone, or are
mixed with other fruit and boiled
| down so hard as to justify the use of
served upon the table. They also
bring in the red and green peppers
which have been canned in 10 or 20
pound tin boxes. Then there is their
Andalusian cheese. It's favor can
only be accounted for on the good
on garlic and onions.
'But it makes my mouth water to
think of their preserves of cocoanut,
pineapple, orange, banana and guava,
made by boiling the fruit and then
adding to it brandy or strong wine
to keep it from fermenting; and their
beef, air dried, which resembles SO
much the smoked meat of our own
smokehouses, but which differs from
it altogether in taste and tender
ness; and to think of their Spanish
sardines, smoked or dried, and their
various forms of anchovies, the most
pungent of all the finny tribes; and,
say, it makes me forget Lent and all
of my Catholic ancestors when I
think of these good things which are
imported from Spain by these mis-
chievous devils whom we recently
fired out of our hemisphere. 1 wish
we could shoot lot of their good
foods, and whole heap of the good
qualities of their best men across the
ocean into our midst"
''The Japanese have practical mo-
nopoly of the nests used in making
soup. And whole lot of our people
have yet to learn that bird d's-nest
soup, prepared by an American chef,
is the most delicious dish Of it's class
in the world. From Japan come all
of the armies Of dried devil fish: also
tree mushrooms and sea mushrooms,
which are deliciously favored too.
The sea mushrooms boil away like
marine glue, and the tree mushroom
has flavor of wood bark-the COM
bination making thickening for soups
and stews. We get from Japan every
eatable dried fish from minnows to
surgeons and sword fish. Their dry
ing processes are peculiar, and are
applied to the lower forms of sea life,
and they desiccAte clans, mussels,
oysters, prawns, shrimps, crabs and
crawfish until they resemble stone.
Thus their foods endure all climates.
"The Chinese are deeply interest
ed in American markets, for they
send to us long list of de.icacies.
such as crystallized lines, dates, figs,
watermelon rind, preserved water
melon seed, dried chickens and ducks.
which are cleaned and fattened out
until they resemble hemlock shin
giles; tremendous sardines in oil, each
fish foot long, and the boxes each
more than cubic foot in dinen-
sion; salted cabbage. of which the
leaves are an inch wide and three or
four feet long; sugared flowers. lai-
chez nuts, matais, sweet pumpkins,
and all sorts of sweetmeats, made
upon the plan of the Canton ginger,
being the fruit, cleaned, prepared
and boiled for hours in strained
honey In August and September
they send us countless numbers of
moon cakes. curious little pieces of
pastry used in celebration of the
harvest moon festival. They look
like small pork pie, stuffed with
quaint mixtures of almonds, raisi4s,
watermelon seeds, lard ginger, sugar,
rice, flour and Spices
This customs house raconteur told
a lot more about the imported things,
making ones mouth water with hope
less greediness for goodies unobtain-
able. Some day, when all of US have
plenty of sixteen-to-ones, we may
buy these importations and fully
realize all of the pleasures of intel
ligently conceived gluttony.
SMITH D. FRY