And it's perfectly normal to snack on fried insects in Thailand, where fried giant water bugs, crickets, bamboo worms and grasshoppers are ubiquitous and served in scoops for snacking whole.

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The infrastructure that connected these homes to the most basic of services was severed when hurricane-force winds brought trees down across power lines and transformers were fried in a deluge of salt water.

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What brings me back is a collection of specifically New England sensations that I associate with the place: free-wheeling a bicycle down a sandy beach road, the tang of lemon on fried clams, the clear green water of the north Atlantic and the pure maritime light.

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For oysters with a water view, award-winning clam chowder and classic fried seafood, Claudio's Clam Bar has a celebratory feel for no apparent reason except that life is good in the North Fork.

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The most popular gift is mithai (Indian sweets), and shops are filled with a spectacular array specially prepared for this festival, from thickly cut squares of barfi (a fudge-like sweet, often coated with a thin film of edible silver leaf) , to soft syrupy gulab jamuns (deep-fried balls of dough) and spongy rasgullas (sweetened cream cheese balls flavoured with rose water).

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