I have Jupiter in aspect to my Moon so with Jupiter in Sagittarius it follows I would expand via FOOD and sure enough this has occurred. I have learned to cook Asian, something that previously seemed out of reach and I can manage chopsticks now… fluently, thanks to HQ (1/2 Japanese) and his wife (Korean) who insisted I try when I visited them in New York.

Today I was back shopping Har-Mart, the Asian grocery superstore. Remember the Asian gal who quizzed me over the spaghetti squash in my cart? She wanted to try something new. She wanted to learn to cook something exotic to her and hitchhiking on this, since meeting here, every time I hit this store I try to leave with something new (to me).

So today the jackfruit caught my eye. They sell cut into chunks and I’m very curious about it. There is an international audience her so can someone tell me how to cook and/or consume jackfruit?

Tell me and we’ll all know - Thanks.

I was in New York this weekend to visit my editor, HQ and his wife who is Korean. Though I met her at their wedding, I’d never spent time with her otherwise and the weekend was an ultra-pleasurable education on many levels. And perhaps I’ll have a chance to write about some of the subtleties… she’s a Scorpio with five planets in the sign but this blog is going to be a cilantro.

We went out for Korean BBQ… she took the time to find a restaurant that still uses wood-burning grill. She likes to cook and so do I. Italians use a lot garlic and I was surprised to learn Koreans do as well… as we chatted over dinner both of us crunching on whole cloves of garlic I had to pick up with chopsticks, which is a challenge for me.

I told her I could cook anything but Asian and had become committed to learning, so after dinner we went to a Korean grocery in K-Town so she could show me around and pick up a few things she needed… this, that and cilantro, but guess what? No cilantro. The store was sold out.

The next day we walked to brunch and then to various places around the city before stopping in another grocery store to get the cilantro and various other sundries. I followed her through the produce section… watching her carefully select a few apples. She peels and sections them before she eats them… I’d just chomp, I had noticed this the night I got into town. Her apple-peeling actually looked artful to me, but anyway she went for the cilantro but no luck. There was only one bunch and it was wilted.

She shook her head and looked dejected. “I need cilantro,” she said. “I need cilantro.”

I followed her down the aisles wondering if I should speak up because watching her was painful and since I am me, obviously I did.

“Um… do you ever… did you ever… do you know you can just ask the produce guy to look in the back for some cilantro that is fresh? They probably have it. Chances are.”

She just looked at me.

“Koreans don’t do that.” HQ explained. He was there, pushing the cart.

“They don’t? You don’t?”

“I wouldn’t do that,” she said. “I would never ask something like that.”

“You wouldn’t? Well I would. I do it all the time. Look, produce people know their produce. And they know when it’s lousy and actually appreciate someone who appreciates good produce. Seriously. You can get to know them. They just know you are someone who doesn’t like to eat junk.”

She seemed interested. Like I made sense.

“I can ask, if you want. Would that bother you? Would you mind if I as because you can’t use what they’ve got out there and you’ve got to have some.”

She said she didn’t mind. I made a beeline for the produce man.

“Hey there, hi,” I said smiling. “We need some cilantro and the bunch you have out there looks pretty sorry. Do you have any more in the back? Would you mind looking for us?”

A couple minutes later, he came back with several bunches of cilantro.

“Thank you,” I said, as she shopped them and picked the finest. “Thank you very much for that.”

Later that evening we talked about this. She reiterated she would have never asked something like this. She said she’d have walked 6 blocks to the next store and hoped they had some.

“But would you ask now?” I wondered.

“Yes.”

“Good. Well that’s good. You can just pretend you’re Italian, get away with stuff like this and save yourself all kinds of time!”

And I felt so good about this. I hope she easy access to fresh produce for the rest of life. Wouldn’t that be cool? Meantime I’m going to make some soybean paste…

Would you have asked for the cilantro or walked the six blocks?