I wrote multiple drafts of this post, all trying to be a little funny, a little witty, a little ha ha ha. But the fact is I don’t particularly feel like any of those things today; I just feel tired, but also very much relieved.

After only a few months in my beautiful apartment, I packed all my things up again and hauled it upstairs to the top floor into yet another new beautiful apartment — this time with a view and without a disruptive upstairs neighbor who had made it impossible for me to sleep for the last four months. Best of all, Disruptive Neighbor proved disruptive to his own roommate and got kicked out anyway.

But moving twice in one year — nay, in one season — is a bit much, and I am spent. I speed-unpacked just to get things feeling like home right away, but I’m still very much in new surroundings and very much craving some comfort in the form of foodstuffs that I can stuff into my maw as I melt my exhausted carcass onto the couch and fire up Hawaii Five-0 on the ol’ Netflix.

My mom grew up in Vietnam,* which means that when she craved comfort food, it was typically some kind of Vietnamese fare from her own youth. As she was the primary Provider of Food for our family, my siblings and I grew up eating a lot of these things with her. This means despite being surrounded by the cafeteria pizzas, pot roasts, and mac and cheeses of my Texas upbringing, a lot of my comfort foods are actually Vietnamese too. Funny how that works.

Most weekends, we’d go visit a tiny Vietnamese bakery next to the Asian grocer, and she’d pick up a bag of bánh tiêu, or Vietnamese hollow fried bread. They are shamelessly greasy because they’re deep-fried, though it’s no worse than a donut. They’re also just a little sweet, though not dessert-sweet by any means. In any case, they make a satisfying midday snack.

I remember eating one while playing with Legos, while paging through A Wrinkle In Time, and later, while frantically texting friends, probably about how that cute guy Miguel totally smiled at me in the hallways that day, so that means something, right?? There could be a montage of me growing up with a bánh tiêu, probably set to a Puddle of Mudd song because I had terrible taste in music as an adolescent.

Until now, I have not had a bánh tiêu since moving to Seattle. Now seems to be an appropriate time to break that streak. And as you fry them, it is so satisfying watching them go from a flat disc to a bloated balloon! Magic.

* My family is ethnically Chinese, but both of my parents grew up in Vietnam. It makes for some excellent family food.