Gail: Good heart - but no breast!

Well, another food experience tonight! Phil and I went out to my favorite "family" restaurant. I eat there several times a week and call it "family" because the people who run the place know me and treat me like family.

Since Phil is now here, it makes it easier to eat. Instead of ordering only one dish, we can now order several and share. So tonight we decided to have a double order of spring rolls...and they were really good. I also wanted rice and some chicken to go along with it. We also had morning glory cooked with lots of garlic. This vegetable seems to be something people eat every day. The rice turned out to be regular white rice with vegetables--which was fine. When I tried to order something with ga (chicken) in it, the waitress pointed at her breast! Wow....I thought white breast chicken!!! Yum. You see, every time I order chicken, I get the back, the tail, the feet and maybe if I am lucky a piece of thigh meat. What the heck do they do with the white meat?

So when she pointed at her breast I got excited because FINALLY good chicken! So off she went to the kitchen. About 10 minutes later the spring rolls come out--excellent! The white rice and veggies come out. Ok... still good. Next came the morning glory and that was really tasty. Finally I saw her walking with my plate of white chicken meat! Yum. But wait! Why was this meat in a bowl? Hmmmmmmm.

Well, to get right to the point. What I thought was white BREAST meat really was chicken HEARTS in soup!!! Why the heck couldn't she draw an heart or something? But no, she pointed at her breast. I looked at those little things floating in soup and just rolled my eyes. But Phil was a good sport and started eating them. He actually said they were not bad. I hate liver, chicken gizzards and anything to do with innards. But being a good sport and shamed into trying them by my husband, I fished one of those little things out of the juice and put it in my mouth. It was somewhat chewy...but really didn't have any of the nasty gritty type of taste liver or gizzards do. So I had a few more--just to show my bravery...and Phil ate the rest of them.

Just another "food experience" in Vietnam! Because we are living in an area far from the typical tourist haunts, the menus typically are in Vietnamese with little, if any, English. So we just go with the flow....and now we can say we have tasted chicken hearts. I am still keeping away from dog and snake head (both on menus everywhere) and hope that I can learn a bit more Vietnamese so that ordering food isn't such a challenge. But....life is not dull! I just want to find out what the white breast meat is being used for! Stay tuned...maybe I will find out!