Something zany April 6, 2009

It’s been a little over a week since I started my contract gig, and I’ve enjoyed my return to the working world.  Every morning I log in, and every evening I log out.  It’s nice.

But it’s temporary, so still I crawl on my odyssey of employment.  There’s been some movement on my inquiry at the Commerce Department, and today I got word that the Office of Personnel Management did, in fact, receive that fat envelope I sent them five weeks ago.  Nearly two months into the Quest, however, I wonder if I should shake things up a bit.  The Department of Agriculture announced today an Attorney position at one of its food safety divisions, and I’ve already drafted my cover letter.   I wonder, though, if I should add just a little bit more about how much I love food, how much I care about its origins…and how much I revel in the splendor of a good chili dog.

Yogurt, granola, and scallion pancakes November 29, 2008

…is what I had for breakfast this morning.

I’ve been visiting family for the holidays so I’ve been away from my kitchen.  I’ve also been celebrating nearly nonstop since I passed the California bar last Friday, so I haven’t been tuned into anything else.  Thus I’ve decided to chronicle what I’ve eaten, rather than cooked, since I’ve been visiting my Chinese family.  Today’s breakfast just about sums it up.

Thanksgiving is a bicultural celebration in my family.  My second aunt – who married a Jew, my Uncle Lew – is responsible for cooking all the American dishes.  Turkey, stuffing, butternut squash soup – she and my uncle do it all.  My third aunt does all the Chinese dishes: fried dumplings, flowering chives, scallion pancakes.  The result, then, is a table groaning with food and a blogger bemoaning she has but one stomach.

Lucky for me my stomach can take a beating so I can eat cranberry sauce alongside stir-fried shrimp.  Even luckier for me, I get to eat cranberry sauce alongside stir-fried shrimp.

God bless America.

Locavore September 24, 2008

Mr. Fortune has forcibly removed me from the kitchen so he can make some necessary repairs.  While I wait for the paint to dry, literally, a little bit about why I buy local.

This is why I buy local.  Look at those colors.  Look at how crisp the basil, how juicy the tomatoes.  When I quartered the tomatoes, my knife slipped right through each one as if it were, well, butter.  Many an argument can be made for the environmental and economic benefits of buying local.  And for those of us who participate in CSAs, there’s a certain comfort in knowing the person who picks our vegetables, an element of trust between farmer and consumer.  The farmer knows his labors are not for ungrateful consumers, the consumer knows his food is not made in deplorable conditions.

All these arguments are sound and have merit.  To me, however, no argument can trump the sheer beauty and pleasure of eating food that is immediately fresh and clean.  Of showing my children (someday) to take notice of the color, texture, taste, and aroma of a tomato at its best, or basil at its height.  To delight in the simplest, most basic of creations.

This is why I buy local.

Love Letter to Taipei September 22, 2008

In yesterday’s Times, the Frugal Traveler penned a culinary love letter to Taipei.[FN1]  He took a delicious tour of the city, describing his food in such detail I could taste it myself.  Beef noodle soup, mian xian, you tiao…

I used to live in Taipei, and one of the few good things I can say about the experience was that the food was superb.  The summer after I graduated from college I boarded a flight for the other side of the world and discovered that adulthood can be really, really awful.  Fortunately for me the Taiwanese are extremely committed to their food so I had something to distract me.  Every morning I bought breakfast from one of two roadside stands; I had either a supremely doughy, slightly sweet steamed bun or a freshly made scallion pancake topped with a fried egg.  That my breakfast came from street vendors never was a problem.  Vendors kept their carts supremely clean, not for safety but for taste.  Businesses just wouldn’t survive if customers thought the food unsavory.

Even more than the food itself, though, was the great variety of it.  The Traveler made note of this in his article, pointing out that every major region of mainland China – nay, Asia itself – is represented in Taiwan.  Sichuan, Hong Kong, Shanghai, even Japan – they all have a place at the Taiwanese table.  Cooks who are decades removed from their families’ origins still create the food of their ancestors and they do so with ferocity.  I find this extremely comforting.  Not only because of the food itself, but because of its reminder that authenticity is only as important as we want it to be.  It is on the tongue of the beholder.

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FN1.  The print edition boasts a provocative title, “Feasting at the Table of the Other China.”  The online edition, sadly, takes a more placatory heading.

Lists May 2, 2008

This blog is supposed to document my efforts to teach myself to cook “Chinese.” My parents didn’t cook, but my sister and I had a Shanghainese ayi, so she cooked for us. I still remember how my ayi would pull her own noodles and make scallion pancakes by hand. I have tried recreating these feats, but with little success.

What’s really driving this blog, though, is my continued confusion about identity. I was born in the U.S. but my parents are Chinese, so I’ve often wondered what exactly that makes me. In fact, I wonder if my parents are even technically Chinese, because they both were raised in Taiwan and then became U.S. citizens. It’s a whole big mess. The New York Times says I’m not alone, and that race is an ever-shifting concept. The message I’m supposed take from articles such as these, I suppose, is that I should stop worrying.

Now and again, however, I worry. This spring, Stuff White People Like became a huge success in the blogosphere. My friends and I had a good old laugh reading the list the first time we saw it. But then I noticed I shared many of the tastes mentioned on the site. Farmers’ markets, the Sunday New York Times, scarves. The list represents my tastes so accurately that my boyfriend, who is white, says I am whiter than he is. This disturbs me.

It disturbs me because I wonder if I’ve been complicit in the cultivation of my tastes. My parents moved to leafy, suburban New Jersey so my sister and I would have access to the best public schools. Somewhere around middle school one of my friends invited me to sing with her in her church choir, and I went along. Never did she ask me to attend worship or even Sunday school with her; I just went by myself. And I loved it. In fact I ended up much more involved with that community of faith than she. I remain deeply attached to the church and I consider its many members the village that raised me.

That village had a deep impact on my preferences, however. Imagine an upper-middle class WASP: private school, private music lessons, advanced degrees. Now change your image into someone of Chinese descent, and that’s me. I never aimed to be white, but I so wanted to fit in, and now I have more in common with a list of stuff white people like than a list of stuff Asian people like. And there does, in fact, exist such a list. Rather than laughing when I read it, I felt instead felt a profound sense of loss. I was supposed belong this list, not the white list. What happened to me?