Of food and conflict...
Photos by Donna Campbell
It’s become a regular practice around Thanksgiving—making a pilgrimage to H Mart in Cary, North Carolina. Nearly 100 of these giant grocery stores--self-proclaimed “the largest Asian supermarket chain in America”--have been established to satisfy connoisseurs of Korean cuisine, although Indian, Japanese, Middle Eastern, and other Asian and American products are included in their glorious and eclectic offerings.
This year, just inside the main entrance, where boxes of ramen noodles rose in stacks far higher than my head, Donna snagged a cart, and we rolled through a second pair of doors into the produce section. The briny smell of fresh seafood—everything from squid to octopus to giant crabs and lobster—wafted forward from the back reaches of the store. Then, that scent mixed with closer notes of citrus and the sulfurous odor of cruciferous veggies. Harris Teeter this is not.
We were looking to load up the cart with “Little Sweeties,” a seedless cross between a white grapefruit and an acid-less, no-pucker pomelo. Smaller than softballs, Sweeties in previous years have always been mounded up near the door in deep cardboard crates big enough to house a washer/dryer combo or a team of fort-building first-graders. But there were no Sweeties this year. I did a quick second tour through all the produce aisles to make sure.
As it turns out, Israeli growers first developed this delicious hybrid in 1984 and called it the “Jaffra™ Sweetie,” now reminding us of the long reach of that disastrous war, at the moment on pause. What’s more, even though Turkey also exports these grapefruits, it seems that citrus is under siege worldwide by other forces—namely, global warming and the spread of a deadly bacteria. According to an NPR report, even Florida is down to a 16 million box crop from 220 million boxes of citrus this year. The damage is the result of hurricanes and the cruel march of a twenty-year blight originally called yellow dragon disease, also known as citrus greening disease, or huanglongbing (HLB).
As the Center for Invasive Species Research reports, the American form of HLB bacteria likely originated in China and is now found “in Florida, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas, and Hawaii, and recently arrived in Southern California from Mexico.” Accordingly, the Florida grapefruits that H Mart had in stock were even smaller than softballs. Only the pomelos from China—nearly the size of volleyballs and individually wrapped in orange netting, pictured below—seemed generous and promising. (They turned out to be juiceless and hard.)
Despairing the citrus deficit and its causes, we foraged further into H Mart, grabbing some golf-ball sized eggplants to roast, some slim Korean peppers, and a couple of jars of authentic Kimchee for a friend in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Such edible profusion persists in the midst of far-away crises, I thought, sorrow dogging me through the store.
We made our way among boxes of fresh, frozen, canned, and aseptically packaged foods, along with specialized pots, pans, rice cookers, and other imported utensils for preparing them. It was further evidence of how large our planet has become in the prosperous variety of fruits and vegetables available—including jujubes, ugly fruit, rambutans, and durians—all grown on other continents and shipped here for sharing.
The intimacy of our connections around the globe was also in evidence on the H Mart shelves—how the blending and exchanges across cultures have moved us so much closer. I’ve marveled before at the variety of SPAM sold here—that very salty, very American potted pork, developed by Hormel during the 1950s and sliced by U.S. “homemakers” for white bread sandwiches tucked into blue-collar lunchboxes. This product became outrageously popular here before scientists came to understand the full impact of cholesterol on human hearts.
Koreans also developed a taste for SPAM during the 1950s war that devastated and divided their peninsula into North and South and left families yearning for the taste of protein. U.S. soldiers (my father among them) shared SPAM with Korean cooks eager to add back the flavor of meat to their traditionally spicy stews and rich soups. Today, Korea is the second largest consumer of SPAM on the planet (after the U.S.), which apparently has resulted in the manufacturer’s continuing effort to devise new flavors. Gift boxes of SPAM during the Korean harvest season account for more than half the annual sales of the product in the country.
Still pondering these paradoxes and feeling a mixture of thankfulness and discomfort, we opted to stock up on sweets. Frozen Mochi are Japanese sticky rice buns stuffed with flavorful ice cream. And now, looking this dish up, I find a BBC report warning that Mochi can pose a choking hazard: “The buns are chewy and sticky. Given they are far bigger than bite-sized, they need to be laboriously chewed before swallowing. Anyone who can't chew properly—like children, or the elderly—will be likely to find them hard to eat.” The answer, the story says, is to cut them into smaller pieces. Okaaay.
On the way to checkout I couldn’t resist a second source of sweets. I first tasted Pocky in upstate New York at Wegman’s years ago. I hope these crispy little biscuit sticks dipped in chocolate are safe to eat, but you probably shouldn’t run with them sticking out of your mouth! This Japanese treat, dating from 1966, has now circled the globe and inspired a phalanx of competitors. The original manufacturer boasts gourmet flavorings that include matcha, almond, strawberry (with freeze dried fruit), white chocolate, and caramel. By now some fifty flavors have been offered seasonally, according to the Pocky website, including red bean, orange peel, and adults-only Pocky sticks designed to be paired with whiskey and wine.
I left H-Mart reflecting on how our human appetites for culinary amusement and diversity seem unbounded, and how so many barriers for sharing across cultures have fallen. Yet, in drawing closer to one another, we still find reasons to fight and violently disagree. The romantic story of that first Thanksgiving—how the indigenous people on this continent showed the uncertain newcomers what and how to prepare a local feast—was a myth of peace and mutuality that does not include the rest of the story.
“I know we are all here for the same reason,” wrote Michelle Zauner, the contemporary American pop musician with Korean roots. In the essay that preceded her bestselling memoir, Crying in H Mart, Zauner continued: “We’re all searching for a piece of home, or a piece of ourselves. We look for a taste of it in the food we order and the ingredients we buy. Then we separate. We bring the haul back to our dorm rooms or suburban kitchens, and we re-create a dish that couldn’t be made without that journey, because what we’re looking for isn’t accessible at a Trader Joe’s. H Mart is where you can find your people under one odorous roof, where you can have faith that you’ll find something you can’t find anywhere else.”
She’s right, but what we haven’t found yet is the recipe for peace—in Korea, the Middle East, or the United States. Food at least helps us to bear the grief of the civil wars that still divide us. Blessings and peace to you at thanksgiving, friends!
Wonderful article Georgann and Donna! An interesting mix of food and other appropriate Thanksgiving topics. You two are very special!
Vaughn Morrison
I can almost see, smell, and taste H Mart from your description, though I’ve never been there. Really appreciate your insights and beautiful writing on this and so many other topics.