Fish sauce

[YOhio]

I just knocked over and broke a full bottle in my pantry. It's everywhere and it smells horrible. Dry heave horrible. It's on the walls, canned foods and even a package of Oreos. I shut the pantry door and don't want to clean it up. My wife is out of town and doesn't get back until Friday so it has to be done before then.

[Babs]

I just knocked over and broke a full bottle in my pantry. It's everywhere and it smells horrible. Dry heave horrible. It's on the walls, canned foods and even a package of Oreos. I shut the pantry door and don't want to clean it up. My wife is out of town and doesn't get back until Friday so it has to be done before then.

Ask TD to do it. He likes that kind of thing.

[YOhio]

Ask TD to do it. He likes that kind of thing.

He still has a stopped up sink to deal with. I don't want to burden him.

[OhioBlue]

That sucks dude. But that doesn't stop it from being really, really, really funny.

I mean, seriously....fish sauce?? You could spend 10 minutes looking through your pantry and not find something worse to have had splattered all over the place. Hilarious.

I mean, good luck with the cleanup.

[Babs]

That sucks dude. But that doesn't stop it from being really, really, really funny.

I mean, seriously....fish sauce?? You could spend 10 minutes looking through your pantry and not find something worse to have had splattered all over the place.

Red wine. I dropped a bottle on the kitchen floor. It splattered from wall to wall and all the way to the ceiling. It's been two years and I still keep finding spots I missed. It's been quite the conversation piece when marketing the house. "Why no, this house wasn't the scene of a gruesome murder. Why do you ask?"

[OhioBlue]

Red wine. I dropped a bottle on the kitchen floor. It splattered from wall to wall and all the way to the ceiling. It's been two years and I still keep finding spots I missed. It's been quite the conversation piece when marketing the house. "Why no, this house wasn't the scene of a gruesome murder. Why do you ask?"

That's funny. In our place in Cedar City (a rental) I was making some grape julius-type stuff (with frozen, concentrated grape juice in the cans, you know) one day, and dropped a full glass of the stuff. I to this day don't understand 1) the physics of seeing a glass of purple stuff explode straight upwards upon hitting the ground, with force enough to put splatters on our vaulted ceilings and high up on the walls and, 2) how it is that we kept finding grape julius spots until the day we moved. Stuff was everywhere.

So I can empathize with you a bit on that one. Still, I've got to go with fish sauce as worst thing to spill everywhere due to, well, the fish part of it. I can't even type about it without gagging.

[YOhio]

I think I'll go and spill some white vinegar in there to neutralize the smell.

[Babs]

Still, I've got to go with fish sauce as worst thing to spill everywhere due to, well, the fish part of it. I can't even type about it without gagging.

wait. there's fish *in* fish sauce? And if it's so gaggaliciously abhorrent, why do people use it?

[OhioBlue]

wait. there's fish *in* fish sauce? And if it's so gaggaliciously abhorrent, why do people use it?

The answer to your first question is: not only is there fish in fish sauce, it's fermented fish.

Which makes it harder to answer the second question.

But basically, in many dishes the addition of fish sauce is to season, or to add to an overall flavor. As far as I know, you never expect to actually taste fermented fish when you use fish sauce, but it's one of those things you have to use to get the taste just right. Kind of like when recipes might call for a couple spoons of dijon mustard, but you never actually taste mustard in the final product.

[YOhio]

wait. there's fish *in* fish sauce? And if it's so gaggaliciously abhorrent, why do people use it?

It's used in Thai food so if you don't want to appear like some jingoistic American xenophobe then cut it out right now.

[TripletDaddy]

That is what you deserve for having fish sauce in your home.

I'm actually not sorry for you at all.

[Pheidippides]

wait. there's fish *in* fish sauce? And if it's so gaggaliciously abhorrent, why do people use it?

For your reading pleasure:
http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/fea...ishsauce1.html

[YOhio]

For your reading pleasure:
http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/fea...ishsauce1.html

Uh, oh. I don't want to see how Babs reacts to someone suggesting that she hasn't done her research. She's probably at the library right now reading a history of fish sauce.

[Babs]

Uh, oh. I don't want to see how Babs reacts to someone suggesting that she hasn't done her research. She's probably at the library right now reading a history of fish sauce.

No, but I did get the jar out of the fridge to see what's in it.

[New Mexican Disaster]

Uh, oh. I don't want to see how Babs reacts to someone suggesting that she hasn't done her research. She's probably at the library right now reading a history of fish sauce.

I remember a story I once read about Ho Chi Minh in the biography of Vo Nguyen Giap the military leader of North Vietnam. Ho was from a very poor province in Vietnam, so poor that the residents were called "spoon lickers" because they were to poor to afford rice to put their fish sauce over, but they liked it so much that they would just use wooden spoons to get their fish sauce fix. The area was also famous for its radical politics and was the source of much of the early communist movement.

Ho did love the fish sauce and was very upset at the names he and his compatriots were called, and this resentment(and the concomittant will of iron) is, in part what helped Ho and the Vietnamese ultimately succeed.

Since ol' red Ho was also a confirmed fish sauce lover I am not surprised to see that YOhio is also a fan since he has often expressed communist sympathies and he also comes from a bastion of radical politics that is often the butt of jokes from other Utahns (Carbon County).

YOhio, your kitchen does not stink just because of the fish...it is also the decaying ideology that you so blithely espouse. It is time to give it up and join the free market, comrade.