Mid-Autumn Moon Picnic

Posted on by
Reply

Kaia’s current school does an annual Mid-Autumn Moon Family Picnic, which, weather permitting, is usually held outside at a nearby school’s playground. This year, they had to move it indoors into the school gym. They used the downstairs classrooms surrounding the gym for activities like face painting, moon cake making, beading, arts and crafts, visor making, ballon artistry, and temporary tattoos. While pizza is provided for all the kids, all the families are asked to bring food that can serve at least 12 other people, and they specifically asked for the food to be bite-sized.

My initial thought when I read this was the “bite-sized” restriction. I originally wanted to do something savory, but what could possibly be “bite sized” I could make easily that would be savory? Then, I moved into the idea of an autumn bake (double baking weekend!), something simple like a mini pumpkin “donut” (really a mini muffin) rolled in cinnamon sugar. Our buddy family told us that last year, everyone over indexed on desserts, so there were too many desserts and not enough savories. I understood that completely given the “bite sized” description. But I figured it would be better to come with the homemade mini pumpkin donuts so I wouldn’t have to overthink things.

Something that I need to learn from, a mistake I make over and over again, is multitasking too much in the kitchen. Chris gets mad at me whenever I multi task while double boiling chai, as chai boils over very quickly because of the milk. Today, I was doing the ultimate multi-tasking: I was making three different savory dishes for this week’s dinners, while at the same time trying to measure out all my wet and dry ingredients for these mini pumpkin muffins. When I popped the mini muffin tin into the oven, I couldn’t figure out why the batter wasn’t “evening” itself out the way it normally does given the high temperature bake. The batter can look a bit bumpy and not smooth on top, but that usually solves itself within the first five minutes in the oven. This didn’t happen. The muffins rose, but they didn’t rise the way I expected and still looped bumpy and lumpy when I took them out.

I went back to the recipe and scanned over every ingredient… and it immediately dawned on me that I NEVER ADDED THE BROWN SUGAR. I never even took out the brown sugar bag to measure it out! I essentially ended up making a pumpkin spiced whole wheat mini bun, not a real donut or muffin because there wasn’t even a granule of sugar in this!

I ate it, and it tasted fine, but nothing to get excited about. You could definitely taste the pumpkin spice. It has egg and whole wheat, so it’s not like it’s nutritionally void. Kaia ate one and said she liked it (bless her heart, as they say). So I guess I’ll be packing these for her school snacks this week to prevent waste. I ended up re-making the entire recipe all over again — this time, with the brown sugar. I went over the full ingredient list one more time before I finished the batter, re-filled the mini muffin tin, and baked. Then I rolled each in butter and cinnamon sugar and packed them away to take to the indoor picnic. These tasted good, and they were fasty and easy… well, easy as long as you read the damn recipe and measure out every ingredient properly and do not multitask.

Well, once again, the food spread definitely had more desserts than savories. And the savories were definitely not all bite-sized: people brought everything from empanadas to platters of dumplings to various noodles. There was even fried chicken! As we all know, “noodle” dishes are certainly not “bite-sized.” I guess I took the “bite sized” suggestion too seriously. Maybe next year, I’ll do what I originally wanted to make and bring a savory dish. I could make a sticky rice, a tossed noodle, or if I am feeling really fancy, a scallion milk bread bao.

Autumn baking for friends

Posted on by
Reply

I am always looking for an excuse to bake. I have an endless list of desserts ranging from muffins to cakes to tarts to custards to mousses to brownies I want to make that it’s nearly impossible to keep track of. They are in OneNote, my phone’s notebook, in my browser “favorites,” bookmarked in my New York Times Cooking app, saved in my Instagram posts; the whole situation is unruly and totally out of control. With just the three of us at home, it’s hard to justify baking regularly. Plus, as someone who is working on body recomposition, I think it’s just a bit too self-indulgent.

So when a friend invited us over for brunch today, I immediately knew I wanted to bake something autumnal. So I chose these spiced apple muffins and got Sweet Tango apples from the local farmers market for them. I wanted to perfect these muffins and ensure they got a good muffin top, especially after my blueberry muffin fiasco from the spring when Chris’s parents came. I was so excited to make them fruit muffins for breakfast, but I really messed up: not only did the muffins stick to the tin (which I ended up tossing), but they didn’t rise that high. So I read more about what causes muffins to rise and get a proper “muffin top.” After some research, these are the secrets: 1) after mixing dry and wet ingredients, allow the batter to rest for at least 30-45 minutes, and 2) blast the muffins in the oven with 425 F heat for the first five minutes, then lower the temperature to about 350 for the remaining time to evenly bake. The resting allows full hydration of the batter and the rising agents to work their magic to the fullest extent. This lets the flour’s starch molecules absorb liquid to create a thicker batter that holds a taller shape. The initial high heat blast in the oven “shocks” the batter into an initial rapid rise and sets the crust into a dome. And well, this time, it worked! I also didn’t make the same mistake twice, and I got proper muffin liners for my muffin pan. I felt quite happy when my friend’s husband looked at the muffins on the brunch table when I laid them out and asked where we bought them from. 🙂

Now that I got this right, I feel more empowered to keep the muffin momentum going. What’s the next muffin I am going to make?

The babysitter bearing gifts… again

Posted on by
Reply

We had our babysitter from a couple weeks ago come back to take care of Kaia this evening, as Chris got us tickets to see Mo Amer at Radio City Music Hall tonight. Last time, I wasn’t that happy that this babysitter allowed Kaia to sleep at 9:15; in fact, I was so annoyed that when we got back, I had to give her a mini lecture (and then followed up with a text message to reinforce this) about why Kaia needs to sleep earlier. I gave very clear instructions both verbally and written in a notebook for her. Before this babysitter, I’d never had any issue having Kaia in bed, lights out, by 7:30pm, if not earlier. All the other babysitters were good about this, and she was always asleep for quite some time by the time we got home (usually around 10pm). This babysitter, while well meaning and very sweet, just isn’t as strict, and Kaia clearly picked up on this quickly.

Tonight when we got out of the show and I checked my phone, the babysitter messaged to let me know Kaia went to sleep at 8:45, which is still an hour and 15 minutes AFTER the time I said she had to be in bed by. So while I was annoyed, I was a little less annoyed. When we got back, she told me that Kaia kept tossing and turning in the bed, then finally got out and told her she was not that sleepy and asked if they could play hide-and-seek for a little. And so the babysitter relented. I was annoyed and had to repeat myself again that she really needs to be in bed by 7:30, no stalling, no questions, no nothing.

Again, even after I told her not to bring gifts, this time she said she just wanted to share and knew Kaia would like these things. In addition to more bilingual English/Chinese kid library books, she also brought a couple coloring books (she claims she has “lots” of these at home), as well as two packs of ready-to-eat chestnuts, and even a little Taiwanese pineapple cake. She insisted that these were for belated good wishes for Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. It was very hard for me to fault her for this kindness and generosity in thinking of Kaia with this recent Chinese holiday, so I thanked her and let it go.

So I still feel conflicted. I know this babysitter means well, and she is clearly very kind, warm, sweet, generous, and thoughtful. But I need a babysitter who can set boundaries better and instill discipline. The next time she comes will be a Thursday, which means it will be a school night, and so she absolutely needs to sleep by 7:30pm.

There is no such thing as a perfect babysitter or caregiver. I don’t totally mind that she gets these random one-offs to sleep later while having fun and building a relationship with a different trusted adult, especially as she is close to turning five now. But I need my instructions to be followed. So, we shall see how this works out.

Okara crackers: a cooking experiment with leftovers

Posted on by
Reply

After making my soybean milk, I had the okara left over, which is the soybean pulp remaining from straining all the soy milk out. With soy beans because they are water soluble, the majority of the protein goes into the milk; the leftover pulp just has a little residual protein and a lot of leftover fiber. So I didn’t want to let this go to waste. Culturally in China and Japan, nothing goes to waste, so this leftover okara is usually blended into soups, stews, or even made into a batter or dough to make fritters or pancakes. I personally hate waste, so I wanted to use this up: so much good dietary fiber! I took some of the leftover okara and blended it into my breakfast smoothie one day. Another day, I spooned some into my yogurt with a little black sesame paste and fruit for a mid-afternoon treat. I still had about half a cup left, so I decided to try using it for homemade okara crackers. I initially thought it would be a good school snack to pack for Kaia.

The base recipe I put together based on a ChatGPT suggestion was the okara, a little whole wheat flour, corn meal, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, freshly grated parmesan, a tablespoon of olive oil, and black pepper. I mixed and then kneaded it into a pliable dough, let it rest for 20 minutes. Then I rolled it out and cut it into 2mm thick 1.5-inch rounds (love my biscuit cutters!). I relied on ChatGPT too much, though, to put the recipe together for me; I didn’t really love the final result, as it needs a ton of tweaking. it told me not to add more salt on top of my grated parmesan, but the crackers were definitely under seasoned. I probably also under baked the crackers because Chris said that after cooling, the texture was more stale than crunchy. When I tried it fresh out of the oven, the texture was nice and crisp. But three hours later, they definitely seemed stale. I’m not sure if Kaia will like these, but I will pack them anyway and see what she thinks.

She saw them on the counter when she came home from school today and got excited. It was as though she was a little puppy with her ears perking up. Her eyes immediately went to it and she asked if she could smell them.

“Is this for me?” she asked me, her eyes sparkling. “Is this a special treat for me?”

Well… I hope she likes them, at least a little. I hope she isn’t too disappointed when she takes her first bite and thinks they are stale. But… she doesn’t even know what “stale” means, right, at least… not yet?

Parenthood: the ultimate test of patience and perseverance

Posted on by
Reply

As I sat there with Kaia yesterday evening, struggling through getting her to complete a single page of Chinese strokes, specifically, the “na” (捺) stroke—the sweeping downward-right stroke, I thought about my mom and all the work she put in for me before I even got to kindergarten. Before I entered kindergarten and during my preschool years, my mom had taught me the entire English alphabet. She taught me all the letters, both lower and upper case. She made me write them over and over and over again. Before kindergarten began, I knew how to write all of them on my own, and in relatively good form. In addition to that, she taught me all the numbers and had me do basic addition and subtraction in hopes that I’d be more advanced than my peers. While I was initially more advanced than the majority of them, that quickly ended by the time I reached third grade. Multiplication and division did not come naturally to me; it was a painful and miserable process before I finally understood it. I do not think I was the slowest of the pack, but I was most certainly not the quickest in that realm. The concept of “carrying over” numbers was a true struggle. To this day, my mom can do quicker and better mental math than I could even dream of.

When Kaia started 3K, I did momentarily think that maybe I could model my mom and proactively teach Kaia these things in her 3-4K years. But I thought to myself: she has a real curriculum she is following in her two years of preschool. She’ll be fine! They’re going to teach all of that to her, right?

Wrong. They taught her recognition and sounds. We all know that recognition is not the same thing as applying and writing it all yourself.

We are still struggling with writing the date on each page of homework. I wonder when we will get over this hump. She still does her “9” and “6” backwards. She doesn’t do a real “8” that has two circles on top of each other. She also does not like to do the same thing more than three times, apparently, and then has a total melt down. I have to let her cry it out. Then, I myself have to take a deep breath and try not to yell.

I wonder how much whining, screaming, and crying I did when my mom started the alphabet and numbers with me when I was just three years old. I suppose next time I can ask. But whenever I ask her questions about my childhood, she has only vague recollections and does not remember the details. I cannot blame her for that; that would be 37 years ago now. So maybe through this blog, I can preserve some of these “fun” and truthfully painful memories so that one day when Kaia gets older and she asks me, I can simply reference this blog and tell her what a total brat she was and give very clear, concrete examples. I can also share how many times we had to insist to her that she did not have the option of giving up, that she “can do hard things” about a million times.

Massive kudos to my mom, though, for getting me through all that before formal schooling kicked in for me. I just knew I wouldn’t have the patience to do it with my own kid even though my mom did it with me.

Homemade soybean milk: a bit of labor, a lot of love, and an unexpected crap ton of cleanup

Posted on by
Reply

I wasn’t really that thorough when researching how to make soy milk. I gave ChatGPT and Claude a few general prompts and decided I’d make the soy milk with the Instant Pot method. For traditional Chinese (or Asian) style soy milk, the process goes like this: soak the dried soybeans overnight, strain and rinse the beans the next day; then add the beans to a blender and grind with water until smooth. Then, you add this mixture into a big pot with some additional water, bring to a boil, then simmer for about 15-20 minutes. You strain it again, and voila! You have fresh soy milk. At this stage, you can choose to add some sugar to it if you’d like, but it’s pretty much done.

What is not written in this general instruction set is that during the boiling and simmering process, you have to stir the pot constantly. If you do not do this, the bean solids will stick to the bottom of the pan and burn. This could cause your soy milk to have an off or burnt flavor, which you don’t want. I thought I could avoid the need to stir constantly if I did this process in the Instant Pot. Well, I was wrong: I got the dreaded “burn” error, so I ended up having to boil it in the Instant Pot on the “saute” setting and let it simmer there. Sadly, no AI tool warned me that soy milk foams and boils over even quicker and more vigorously than cow milk. When I thought the soy milk was just heating up in the Instant Pot, it actually started bubbling over and onto my kitchen counter! It got everywhere, even inside the inner pot of my Instant Pot. This worried me because if too much liquid gets into the inner pot, it could actually malfunction. So I spent over an hour cleaning up this whole beany mess all over the inside and outside of my poor Instant Pot after the soy milk was finished cooking. I had to whip out sponges, towels of various sizes, chopsticks, brushes, Q-tips, and even toothpicks to get it all out! That was a lot more manual work than I had originally planned for. The Instant Pot base is now air drying, sitting on its side. This will remain until I am definitely in the clear two days from now.

I am quite proud of my final product, though: I ended up with about 5.5 cups of super fresh, thick, luscious, beany soy milk. I added a pinch of sea salt during the boiling process and a little less than 4 teaspoons of sugar at the end. The flavor was even beanier than I had imagined! The entire kitchen was so fragrant of fresh, hot soybean milk when it was cooking; I really enjoyed that smell and found it so comforting. When I smelled the milk, I knew it was successful. But I had another visible sign of success: when I let the hot soy milk sit after straining, it created this beautiful, thick layer of yuba on the top, the “skin” of the soy milk. This is a positive sign that the heat has caused the proteins and fats in the milk to rise to the surface and bind together into that delicious, cohesive layer of what is essentially paper-thin tofu!

There’s so much magic in just soybeans, water, and a pinch of salt. I have also learned my lessons for next time: use the steamer basket to hold the soybean solids during pressure cooking and keep them from the bottom of the pot. If this works, this will mean there will be no reason to worry about anything boiling over since the “saute” function would not be used.

I am looking forward to making this again and again. The process was so satisfying. I still have over 4.5 lb. of dried soybeans left!

Buy-Nothing strikes again with non-GMO dried soybeans!

Posted on by
Reply

I haven’t been very active on Buy-Nothing this year. Earlier in the year, I gave away a bunch of things on it. A handful of things I posted shockingly had zero interest, so I ended gathering a bunch of things to donate to some charity who was willing to pick up. But in terms of finding things to take, I haven’t seen much that would be relevant for us. Well, that was until two days ago, when a neighbor posted that she mistakenly got sent a 5-lb. bag of dried soybeans, though the label said “soybean seeds.” She said that if there was no interest by the end of the weekend, she would toss them.

I balked at this: she was planning to throw these out?! I could make quite a number of batches of fresh soy milk or tofu out of this! I raised my hand immediately! Only one other person was interested (also Asian), but she wasn’t able to pick up this weekend. So, I was the winner! Within hours, the original poster messaged me to say I could come pick it up on Sunday. So I walked out Sunday morning during this “Nor’easter” aka light drizzle and picked up my free dried soy bean haul. I was so, so excited. I have thought about making my own soy milk because I love it so much, but I wasn’t really sure if it would really be that cost effective if I bought organic / non-GMO dried soybeans. These beans are not organic, but they’re non-GMO, and that’s good enough for me for now. While I have settled on some western store-bought brands like the Trader Joe’s carton version (the ingredients are pure, just soybeans, water, and a little sea salt), I use them only for morning protein smoothies, not for their flavor or pure drinking. If I am drinking a soy milk straight, I want it to be Chinese style: luscious, smooth, creamy, a little thick, and beany. I strongly dislike that the western palate thinks “beany” is bad for soy milk. Soy is a bean, guys!! Plus, it’s a delicious one! Get with the program!

So, on my list of things to do this week is to make real, fresh, soybean milk from scratch in my Instant Pot. The first step is to soak the beans overnight. This will be my first time, and I’m really looking forward to it!

The beginning of… HOMEWORK

Posted on by
Reply

Looking back at my school days, I had a love/hate relationship with homework, as most kids do. We know it’s necessary to reinforce learning, but it can be a real drag to do. Sometimes when it’s on a subject we like, it can be fun. Other times, it can feel like pure torture. I do not remember having homework until I got to first grade, but at Kaia’s school, homework begins in kindergarten. I appreciate the rigor because what earlier homework also does is that it forces self discipline a lot earlier. And I think in today’s society, kids really do need to learn self discipline and have it reinforced more often.

Kaia gets two sets of homework each week: one is for ELA (English language arts), and one is for Mandarin Chinese. The ELA one is about the things you might expect: daily reading with a caregiver, practicing writing one’s name (first AND last), as well as letters. For Chinese, some of it is just drawing pictures that resemble Chinese strokes, while others are actually stroke practice to begin. For Chinese, Kaia is required to complete eight pages of Chinese homework each week for this term; we shall see how it progresses and accelerates.

Chris coached Kaia through her English homework; I watched over and encouraged her Chinese homework. The most ridiculous thing that I never got warned about becoming a parent is what a true pain in the the ass the transition from “no homework” to “homework every day” is. To be honest, it wasn’t even the homework itself that was painful; she was actually pretty decent about completing the basic Chinese strokes (we are entering week 3, after all). The worst part of the homework… WAS GETTING HER TO WRITE THE DATE ON THE TOP OF EACH PAGE. She still gets the number “9” backwards. Sometimes, she forgets to add the straight horizontal line at the bottom of the number “2.” On her homework pages, she’s expected to write her name and the full date at the top corner of each page. She hated this so, so much. She whined, whinged, screamed, cried, jumped up and down, ran from the table, and got boogery over this whole process. I eventually had to sit down with her and coax her through… each date.

We finally finished after what felt like an eternity. This was a true, true test of my freaking patience. I gave her some apple sauce (from Trader Joe’s, since she said my homemade apple sauce is not good…) as a “treat” for finishing. And then we still have… tomorrow, and every next day of her academic life for more homework. What joy awaits!

Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) Mid-Autumn Moon Festival family event

Posted on by
Reply

Chris and I visited the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) once many years ago pre-Kaia. back then, it was still a pretty new museum, but it was quite extensive in its story telling and artifacts from Chinese people all over the world making a path into the U.S. I follow MOCA on social media, and I started thinking about visiting them again after Kaia was born, as they hold a number of family/kid-centered events throughout the year for holidays like Mid-Autumn Moon Festival and Lunar New Year. This year, I finally took Kaia to MOCA for their Mid-Autumn Moon Festival family event; it helped that a handful of her classmates from kindergarten and their families were also there. All the adults tag-teamed on watching the kids to make sure we knew where they were and were playing nicely and safely. I got to meet some new parents for the first time there, so it was a great mix of socializing, cultural immersion, and pure kid fun.

I was really happy with how the event turned out: it helps that MOCA had a lot of corporate sponsors, so on top of having their own staff, they had a whole army of corporate volunteers helping out with everything from ticketing to manning all the various kids’ activities. I lost track of the number of hands-on activities there were: it spanned from fake “play” clay mooncake making, real snow mooncake making (fillings included red bean, lotus paste, and green bean paste), Chinese calligraphy, drawing, painting, Chinese potion making (out of different colored sand), card making, and glitter wand making. They also had a well-known Chinese kids’ book author come and do a reading while marketing and selling her books, generous samples of (uncaffeinated) Asian-inspired tisanes/teas and mooncakes, several professional musicians play traditional Chinese instruments like the guzheng, and even a very well done shadow puppet show depicting the story behind the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival in China, which was run by a Chinese shadow puppet company that hand makes all their puppets. I am honestly not sure what Kaia loved more: all the endless activities and things to touch and see, or the together-time with some of her very favorite school friends.

While the parents all tag-teamed with watching over the kids to ensure everyone was looked after, one of the parents told me she’d proactively save us all seats for the much-awaited shadow puppet show — in the front row, no less. So as she did this and I kept track of time, I was watching Kaia and her two kids interact and play. One of them was curious about another library section that had lots of toys, so she proactively came up to me to ask my permission if she could go check out the books. I was shocked: she barely knew me, but she was already asking me for my permission. Then when all three went to the library area, they studiously read the books until I told them (in Chinese) that it was time to get ready to clean up and go to the performance. As if on cue, they all cleaned up, neatly put the books back on the shelf, and then walked with me, in a straight line across, into the little theater; there wasn’t a peep of objection or protest. I thought to myself; this is freaking amazing. WHO ARE THESE KIDS?!

They say that once school starts, peers play a huge influence on a child, far more than a parent does. As someone who was obviously once a kid, I am very, very aware of this. So, it’s important for us as parents to be aware of who our kids are spending time with and considering their friends. All I have to say is: these are the types of friends I need Kaia to have!

Kaia and her bed full of stuffies, aka her “siblings”

Posted on by
Reply

Since Kaia was very little, I could tell she was very nurturing. She’s always shown care and concern for others. When she was just over two years old, there was a new little girl in her 2s class at daycare. This girl was terrified and scared of everyone, actively avoiding interaction with anyone. But Kaia managed to take this kid under her wing and make her feel welcome, doing activities with her and making her feel included. Kaia’s vocabulary was quite limited, then; she never told me what she did. She simply mentioned the name of her new friend in class. I found out via this girl’s mom when we ran into each other at pickup. The mom shared that her daughter kept mentioning Kaia’s name and how much she liked her. In the mornings, drop offs became less painful because she said she was going to see Kaia again, and that made her excited for the day at school.

Kaia is now the youngest kid in her kindergarten class. She doesn’t get much interaction time with the 2s, 3s, or 4s classes at this school. So I suppose her only time to “take care” of others is with her “siblings” at home. She claimed my work chair the other day, insisting I couldn’t use it for work anymore because she needed it to push all her little brothers and sisters around. Then tonight when I tucked her in for bed, she gave me a disapproving look and said, “I also need to tuck Irene and Maddie and Flora and (keep naming the 10 other “siblings”) so that they are super comfy, too, Mama!” So we gave each of these siblings a little spot on the bed beside her, tucked each of them in together, and then I kissed her good night.

This doesn’t sound like a truly significant moment, does it? It sounds like an everyday thing with a child of Kaia’s age. But that’s the thing, though: the things that are seemingly everyday to us now will eventually fade from the front of our minds to the back of our minds…. into a distant memory, and then potentially be long forgotten. And then we’ll move on to the next thing that will occupy our minds and follow the same process of disappearance. So I thought about this as I closed her door to a crack and thought to myself: this is such a beautiful little moment of my little kindergartener, wanting to care for and nurture her “little siblings,” also known as her endless collection of stuffies. And I should write it down now so that in the event that I do forget, when this becomes the past, that I can always look back to this and remember.