Quoting Michael Loo to Jim Weller <=-

Szechuan pepper isn't available locally and I
haven't been shopping in Edmonton for quite a while. I guess if
I wanted some bad enough I could hit Amazon or send Neekha to
Edmonton's Chinatown

We might be able to get you some of the watered-down (anyhow,
irradiated) stuff that we have available to us.

Please don't bother; with just a little effort I can secure my own.
And since we don't have citrus crops here to protect, ours need not
be irradiated.

there any prohibition against sending it across the border?

There shouldn't be in theory as long as it's in its original
packaging and still sealed. Home grown materials or baggies full of
things scooped out of a bulk bin wouldn't get across. But it's all
very mysterious as I have had two packages of things I've mailed to
the USA not arrive at their destination in the past.

Raisins and olives in a meat dish again ,,,

Commoner than most gringos think.

This gringo has liked it since he first encountered it. I have
mentioned this before, years ago, but there used to be a hot dog
shack near the beach in Hay River that was open from May 24th (Queen
Victoria Day and the first three day weekend of the summer) to
Labour Day weekend. It was run by a Chilean lady who had another
beach shack in Miami that she ran in the winter months. Carmen had
Chilean dishes on the menu but you had to order ahead as she didn't
stock all the ingredients all the time. One of her standards was a
meatloaf with layers of sliced potatoes and onions and another of
pimento and corn between three layers of ground beef with diced
onion and peppers, cumin, chilies, raisins and chopped green olives.
And as I recall just a hint of brown sugar in the meat mixture. It
was delicious and I make a similar version here at the house once in
a while.

El Trapiche, a restaurant I had been looking
forward to returning to.

You were in Panama, right? I found several restaurants with the same
name on the net, from all over Latin America.



Cheers

Jim


... Minor surgery is when they do the operation on someone else, not you.

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