Educational dining experiences

Before their recent visit, my son’s wife said, “you cook Thanksgiving day and I will fix the meals the rest of the time.”
We ended up sharing the cooking, but she came prepared to cook her specialties.
They walked in Wednesday evening carrying grocery sacks filled with packages of rice, crisp, pristine white wrappers for spring rolls, noodles, ginger, teriyaki sauce, ban sprouts and such a package of greens, leaf lettuce, scallions, parsley and mint leaves.
Before coming from Austin, she had spent hours preparing something she called calamari for the spring rolls, only to leave it cooling in their freezer. We found some at the first grocery store w checked … at a much higher price than she was used to paying, but cheaper than an eight-hour drive to their refrigerator.
She brought enough food fro several oriental dishes. We ended up eating two bu’n (pronounced boone) and spring rolls: Fresh vegetables, cooked beef and calamari laid on wrappers similar to egg rolls without the deep fat frying.
I didn’t ask questions. Calamari or kalamahari as I mispronounced it. I wasn’t worried. I’ve added several foreign dishes to our diet over the years. I’m always ready to try new foods. So while my daughter and daughter-in-law cleaned the calamari, I took a nap did some typing and went shopping. I did not see what we were eating until I sat down to eat.
Two huge bowls of water sat at ether end of the table. “You quickly dip the spring rolls in the water to moisten them,” she showed us. “Then take a leaf or two of lettuce, some parsley, a scallion, mint leaves and top it with meats from the platter.” I thought I was read for this eating experience. After all I’ve enjoyed mutton stew at a POW wow in New Mexico, buffalo burgers in the Black Hills of Montana and alligator hors de’oeuvre in the swamps of Louisiana.
But all those experiences were different, none of them looked like the original creature.
Calamari is a fancy name for squid. As the meat platter came my way, I saw tiny, dusty, pink tentacles frozen in a friendly wave nestled among the thin slices of beef and innocuous rolls of meat from the squid body. All prepared for me to eat.
Taking a deep breath, I tossed one on top of my pile of greens and beef, rolled up the damp spring roll, dipped it in ginger sauce and commenced eating.
Not bad. I should have gone easy on that ginger sauce though. It’s powerful stuff.
The next day’s preparations looked like we were having chicken soup. We did, sort of, but what a bowl of chicken soup. At each place was a small serving owl filled with bu’n. It was half filled with broth ad topped off with bamboo, chicken and noodles. I took a deep breath and began eating. Too late, I was told “we only eat the noodles, chicken and bamboo.” I floated away from the table.
I liked it. I’m adding bamboo to my shopping list so I can make bu’n myself. But, I’ll wait til we visit Austin for seconds on the calamari.