Category Archives: Contemplations on New York Life

Cooking for my new mama friend in Staten Island

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When my best friend told me she was pregnant earlier this year, I told her that after she gave birth, I would come over to cook for her. She expressed interest in all the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) foods, the Chinese postpartum confinement meals, and I immediately got excited, thinking that I could come cook these things for her. When I gave birth and was recovering, I didn’t have anyone come cook for me. At that time, there was another COVID outbreak. My mom didn’t want to travel, and my aunt apologized to me multiple times for not being there to take care of me and cook for me, even though she’s not even my mother and not even my blood-related aunt. What my aunt did do, which I am still grateful for to this day, is she went out and bought and labeled all the ingredients for the Chinese chicken wine soup (ji jiu tang) she would have made for me. She bought the ingredients in quantities so large that I’d just run out of most of them just recently. She sent me instructions for how to make the soup. And since then I’ve made it a number of times and love it; it doesn’t even matter if you’re recovering from childbirth or not, but the soup itself is so soothing and comforting. It’s like a Chinese hug in a bowl. As I made this soup numerous times, I thought to myself — I’d love to make these types of dishes for a postpartum friend so that they can also have a hug in multiple bowls.

So, after taking a regular subway train, an express bus (for the first time ever — and I also just learned it’s not covered by my OMNY card; I had to pay $7 extra just to board this damn bus!), and then a quick $15 Uber ride, I was at my friend’s house in Staten Island. I had prepped a number of things leading up to this day to streamline cooking at her place. In her kitchen, I quickly made myself at home and made these dishes: multigrain congee (purple long grain rice, brown long grain jasmine, white short grain, and yellow mung beans, sweetened with a hint of rock sugar and flavored with a touch of ginger), pork rib and fig soup, braised “eggs hugging tofu” (jidan bao doufu), dang shen herbal tea, and hawthorn berry, longan, and cinnamon herbal tea. Yesterday night, I made stir-fried water spinach/morning glory/ong choy/kong xin cai with shrimp paste and packed it in a glassware. I also made a batch of lactation cookies with galactagogues; after my own breastfeeding journey, I honestly don’t believe in “galactagogues,” but who is going to say no to cookies?! I used the same recipe I used for myself that has oats, flaxseed, butter, coconut oil, and 70 percent Valrhona chocolate feves; this time I didn’t have brewer’s yeast, but I did throw in a handful of sliced almonds for extra protein. In Chinatown, I also picked up some “spongies,” or “paper wrapped sponge cakes” for her since I know she likes them.

It was a pain in the ass to get to her house in Staten Island to say the least. Her fiance had the stomach flu, so he wasn’t able to pick me up or drop me off at the ferry. I ended up having to take the express bus (on a tight schedule) and two Ubers (more money than I would have liked) to get there. I was also carrying quite a load of things on my back. So by the end of the day, I was pretty tired, and my shoulders were sore and tight from the weight I carried. All of that was annoying, but in the end, I didn’t mind it because it meant I got to cook for my friend. And I find meaning in helping her, in cooking for her, in nourishing her, and in making sure she feels loved and supported. There is meaning and purpose in doing all that to me. And while most people would never do something like this for a friend, even a close one, or someone who was not blood related, I think that most people in general want to do the easiest, laziest thing just to have more time for themselves to do things that are completely and utterly meaningless. It is so easy to send a baby gift, to attend a baby shower (it’s a party where you get free food!), to even send a DoorDash gift card or pay for someone else’s food delivery. All of the above acts, other than attending a shower, can be achieved in minutes and with just a few clicks of a keyboard or taps on your smartphone. What is not easy is traveling to your friend, who lives over 1.5 hours away from you by public transport, cleaning her kitchen, making her several home-cooked dishes and teas that you know she will like and savor, and cleaning all that up so she doesn’t have a mess left behind.

I think we really show the people in our lives we genuinely love and care for them when we do the things that are not easy, that actually require real thought, time, and effort. I was chatting with some colleagues about doing this for my friend this week, and they all commented and expressed how amazed they were that I’d do something like this; it’s odd to me because most of them know I love cooking, so it’s really not a strenuous effort on my part. I kind of shrugged. For me, as I stated above, this is meaningful. I want to spend time doing things that make me feel like I’m fulfilling a purpose and giving my life meaning. What do they spend time on that they find meaningful?

Ube pandesal at home does not resemble ube pandesal at the Filipino bakery

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Earlier this year on a Saturday, we went back to my original New York City neighborhood, Elmhurst, and stopped by a Filipino bakery called Kape’t Torta. They opened in 2019 just blocks away from my old apartment on Queens Boulevard. They’re known for their ube desserts, such as their ube layered cake, ube custard layered cake, and of course, their halo halo crushed ice drink/dessert. We picked up a couple of their ube pandesals, which I had heard of before but had never tried. I’d previously made a plain sweet pandesal bread roll before, but I’d never had an ube one. This was was extremely electric purple with a light, melty cheese filling on the inside. I figured I could try to make it at home at some point, so I made a mental note of it and moved on.

In May, I stopped by a Filipino grocery store in Staten Island, and I finally stumbled across 100 percent dehydrated ube powder imported from the Philippines – no artificial coloring, flavorings, or preservatives. I knew this was my opportunity to finally make ube pandesal, so I bought the packet.

Fast forward to this last week, and I was testing to see if a packet of dry active yeast was still active. Luckily for me, it was, so I decided this was my week to finally try making ube pandesal. I picked a random food blog and used their recipe, but unfortunately, my result was nothing like the photo. For one, the recipe blogger says that ube extract is “optional,” but when I see the color of my dough, it’s clear that the ube extract was needed for that electric purple color. My pale purple tinted dough didn’t come close to the blog pictures or the ube pandesal from Kape’t Torta. Plus, when I did some searches, I found out that ube extract did not just have artificial coloring, but it also had an enhanced “ube” flavor from artificial and “natural” flavorings, meaning that it wasn’t 100 pure, natural ube flavor. What I perceive to be “ube flavor” may in reality just be a bunch of artificial flavors made up in a lab. Then, my dough was much softer and wetter than it was supposed to be, so to compensate, I had to keep adding flour until the dough was kneadable. This resulted to a watering down of the overall ube and sweet flavor. So in the end, while the rise of the dough was beautiful, and while the pandesal rolls were light, fluffy, airy, and spongy, they did not have a bright electric purple color. They were also not filled with kaya jam as I originally hoped because the dough was just too soft to withstand a filling.

I’ve been cutting the ube “pandesal” rolls in half this week, warming them up lightly, and then filling them with kaya jam. I have grown to like these slightly yeasted, spongy glorified and enriched “pandesal” bread rolls that are lightly tinted purple. They are definitely light, airy, and fluffy. But they lack that “ube” flavor I know… from that ube extract that I never realized was always used. I thought about it and realized that what I romanticize as authentic “ube pandesal” may actually be authentic with dehydrated ube powder AND ube extract. The artificial coloring and flavoring from ube extract may be artificial, but that’s probably what contributes to the “authenticity” of these types of rolls in the Philippines. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing — it just is what it is.

When is “regular” dinner time?

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When I think of dinner time, I generally think of the hours between 5-7:30pm. Growing up, dinner time was always around 6:30pm, as my parents usually got home between 5:30-6pm to start preparing dinner for us. In college, I usually ate dinner between 6-7pm. And once I started living on my own, whenever I’d make dinner plans with friends, we’d typically meet between 6-7pm. This became earlier once Chris and I got together (he has stated multiple times that his preferred eating time would be… 4:30pm!), and then now with Kaia with us, we usually eat between 5:30-6pm.

All the above dinner windows assume that you wake up at a reasonable hour in the morning, so between 5-8:30am. If you are waking up later than that, it’s likely that a 5-6:30pm dinner will be far too early for you. So when I started hanging out with my very nocturnal friend who typically wakes up around 11am-12pm and works into the wee hours of the night, I realized that the way I define “dinner” time is not at all what she considers an actual dinner time. She typically has dinner between 9-11pm. And so when I had previously suggested a 6pm dinner, she said that was “like lunch” for her. Granted, we had never met for “dinner” before tonight, so when we went out for a 7:15pm dinner this evening, she did consider it not lunch, but yes, an “early dinner” for her.

It would be nearly impossible for me to operate on her dinner schedule, though, with a typical 9-5 job as well as a young child at home. And well, I also like to give my body time to digest food before I sleep. So given this, I am happy that we typically meet for her breakfast/my lunch or coffee/tea in the mid afternoon. This seems to be the most winning combination for both of us.

Indo-Java Groceries store lunch on a random summer Tuesday

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Ever since we visited Indo-Java Groceries in Elmhurst earlier this year, which is just a short walk away from my former apartment in the neighborhood, I’ve been thinking about how I could come back on a Tuesday to have an authentic Indonesian lunch prepared by a very famous, local Indonesian auntie. The Tuesday auntie is the most famous for having home-style, regional Indonesian cooking readily available to locals in the ‘hood for the last 10-plus years. When I told my friend about this, she got really excited, as she used to live in Amsterdam for many years. In Amsterdam, given the history of Dutch colonization of Indonesia, she had easy access to Indonesian food everywhere. But she had forgotten about the mega Indonesian population right in her backyard of Elmhurst! So we decided that this summer, we’d go on a Tuesday and have lunch in the middle of workday… in the back of a tiny Indonesian grocery store.

The yellow folding table was teeny tiny, but enough for two plates and utensils to comfortably sit on top. We sat on blue and red plastic stools. My friend and I shared fish balado, beef rendang, curry egg and tofu, mixed kale, spicy green chili, spicy potatoes in chili sauce, and freshly fried shrimp crackers. The spice was not burn-your-mouth-hot like in Jakarta as I remember, but it was definitely enough to wake you up if you were sleepy! We chatted about work, travel, and our kids as we dug into our little Indonesian feast. This was such a New York city experience, an “if you know, you know” type situation. As we ate, we saw many other people coming in for their to-go lunch orders, as well as a few others who wanted to sit outside and eat. The grocery store owner graciously pulled out additional folding tables and chairs to allow the other diners to sit outside and eat, overlooking the traffic of Queens Boulevard at Grand Avenue. This was truly an authentic New York City experience right in my old neighborhood of Elmhurst, Queens. I loved every second of it, and not just the eating and friends catch-up time. I also enjoyed watching all the in-the-know people coming and going, picking up their pre-ordered food, enjoying homemade Indonesian auntie cooking. This was a real locals experience.

As my friend and I wrapped up our delicious lunch and I had to run to the nearest cafe to take a work call, all I could think of was: I just LOVE New York City. I am thrilled that spaces like this exist, and I love that I have such easy access to it. And I also love that I have friends who can appreciate these types of experiences with,.

Sunday pool and hot tub time with the Kaia Pookie

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On Sundays when we’ve been in town and haven’t had Sunday plans, I will usually do yoga and cook in the morning while Chris takes Kaia to the playground. Then in the afternoon if she wants, I will either take her to ride her scooter at Lincoln Center, or more often than not, I’ll take her upstairs to our rooftop pool for some puddle jumper time. While she usually has Sunday swim classes, this summer, a wrench kind of got thrown into that schedule, as the pool where her swim classes are is closed for construction/maintenance. So while occasionally she has had double pool time at her lesson, which as we all know, is more “work” and learning, her afternoon time with me is all fun and play. Here, she gets to wear her puddle jumper, which is essentially a toddler “floatie” that has loops for her arms to go through and clips on the back. With this, she can be in the pool without anyone holding her, and she’s pretty self sufficient. We usually have her jump into the pool over and over. She also loves to be twirled and bounced in the water. And of course like all kids, she loves to splash and get water everywhere.

After about forty minutes in the pool, it looked like we were going to have a crowd. We already had two male friends in the pool just chatting and hanging out in one corner. A woman came complete with flippers for both her feet and hands, so she was clearly planning to swim some serious laps. Two other men came looking like they wanted to do laps, but the pool was getting too crowded. Eventually the two chatty guys left, and it was just the female swimmer plus Pookster and me. So after about another ten more minutes, I told Pookster that we had to get out of the pool and would go somewhere else fun.

Pookster wasn’t sure where I’d take her, and she was definitely suspicious, whining and saying she didn’t want to leave. But when I led her to the hot tub and turned on the bubbles, she got really excited. We stepped into the warmth together, and immediately I could see she was happy. She loved the warmth, the bubbles, and all the strong jets shooting water at her from different angles. Kaia giggled and shrieked with delight. And then out of nowhere, she declared, “Ooooh, this is so fun! I want to stay here forever!” She insisted on alternating between sitting in my lap and sitting on her own and trying to “catch” the water from the jets.

These are those moments when I see her experience something new, fun, and exciting that I just want to bottle up. The joy and excitement on her face was so palpable, so innocent and pure and untainted. I just love watching her experience her childhood — it’s almost like I am reliving mine — or rather, living the experiences I never even got to have.

Mosaics across the NYC subway stations – Avenue U at Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn

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It’s a bit hard to appreciate when you are in the daily grind of commuting to and from work on a tight schedule, but one of the things I love the most about the New York City subway, other than the fact that it runs 24/7 and allows me the privilege of not needing to drive or own a car here, is the gorgeous artwork across many of its stations. To be honest, I’ve really only taken more time to appreciate it once the pandemic hit, and ever since I started working remotely and never went back into an office. I remember thinking about it a bit during one of Chris’s parents’ visits pre-pandemic, when he set them up with a NYC walking tour that had them look at subway art across many stations. Since then, when we transit through stations I go to rarely, I take more time to look at the artwork inside. The subway stations in Manhattan that I’ve always enjoyed include the random brass-colored figurines placed in conspicuous (and semi-hidden!) spots at the 14th Street A/C/E subway station, the hat mosaics at 23rd Street N/R/W, the mosaic portholes of different New York City-specific scenes at 8th Street / NYU / N/R/W, the vibrant blue glass mosaic called “Queens of the Night” at the First Avenue subway station, and the many scenes of Harlem history, music, and people across the many uptown subway stops from 125th Street up to 145th Streets.

Today, we spent the day in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, and the subway station from which we exited was Avenue U. As soon as we got out, I noticed the beautiful mosaic flowers that led up to the subway exit. There are multiple pink, red and yellow flowers all made up of glass mosaic pieces, and they are constructed in such a way that they actually look realistic. The flowers appear to be almost climbing up the wall of the subway station. The collection of flower mosaics is called Brooklyn Seeds. After further investigation, it looks like it even won awards for public art back in 2012. You could have fooled me quite easily that it was already 13 years old, as to me, the mosaics were in such pristine condition that I would have thought they were newly put up! This is the free public art across New York City that most people never take the time to appreciate or even notice, but I think it’s a great way to brighten up the stations and make it seem like a fun place to go through.

Family estrangement and how much more common it is than we think

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An article I read years ago stated that in the U.S., family estrangement is actually more common than we think. It affects approximately 27 percent of adults in the U.S. It could mean you no longer have contact with a sibling, parent, uncle, aunt — anyone who is considered “family.” Since my wedding in March 2016 and after I sent a thank-you email to my dad’s younger sister for coming, I haven’t heard from her at all, nor do I have any desire to reach out to her. My aunt tried to bring her fuck-buddy to my wedding, and I blocked it. So she tried to “get back” at me by showing up to my wedding not only late, but also in jeans. It was clear what she was doing and what kind of message she was trying to send to me and my parents. She wasn’t deserving of an actual thank-you card, so I emailed her a brief thank-you note and decided that would be the end of our connection. I knew she wouldn’t respond, and she’s too stupid and proud to reach out herself. She’s already estranged from her only child, his wife, and their two children, so she was just furthering the family estrangement for herself. She has zero contact with either of her two living siblings, and pretty much all of her blood relatives.

While I was at lunch today with a friend, I found out that she is completely estranged from her biological father. She hasn’t had any contact with him since she was about five years old; the person she refers to as “dad” now is actually her mom’s second husband, who legally adopted her after they got married. She said she doesn’t think much of it since it was so long ago, and her dad now is essentially the only dad she’s ever known, and that’s all that mattered. What it made me realize is that the stat from that article is so true: far more of us have family estrangement than we’d believe to be true. I have a friend who was basically abandoned by both her biological parents as a baby and then again by her dad when she was a teen. Another friend of mine only sees her mom about twice a year even though they live within short driving distance of each other because “she really fucked me up when I was a kid,” my friend said. Her mom was physically and verbally abusive towards her and her brother, and they still have whiplash from this from violent dreams they wake up from to this day.

“Family” is being redefined by boundaries that we are all setting to protect our mental and physical health. It is definitely a step towards aiding in our own well-being.

New York City in the summer time

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People in New York love to hate on summertime in New York. They love to talk about how hot, humid, and sticky the city gets, how the summer heat exacerbates the rotting smell of trash and causes the foul odors to spread everywhere. People complain about how hot the underground is when waiting for the subway. They love to say that “everyone” (with lots of money) leaves the concrete of the city for the summer to go off to the Hamptons, the Jersey Shore, or Europe. Not that many people who live in New York have that level of flexibility in their jobs to actually leave the city for an entire quarter of the year, but who wants to question it when someone makes a sweeping statement like that?

I actually love New York City in the summer time. I love all the summer programming that happens that is accessible for people of varying budget levels, like the Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City festival. I’ve enjoyed the free performances that have happened in the park during the summer, like the NY Philharmonic. I love that certain areas feel a lot less crowded, that there are endless nice cafes and ice cream shops that we can go to for enjoying a cold, sweet treat. While we do tend to go away for a couple weeks around Independence Day and to San Francisco, we spend the majority of the summer here. I think summer in New York City is definitely under appreciated and under rated. Why else would so many tourists come during the summer time to enjoy everything we have to offer?

Strolling through the Greenmarket with a cooking friend

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There are a lot of generalizations I can make about all the people I’ve come to call friends over the course of my last 39.5 years. But one thing that I can say, with almost certainty, is that oddly enough, pretty much none of them love cooking and think about food as much as I do. I have plenty of friends who cook out of necessity. I have friends who try new recipes when I use them because they don’t want the mental load of coming up with things on their own, so they use recipes or do dishes that I think are easy or tried-and-true hits. I also have friends who are either horrible cooks or leave all their cooking to their partners…. or just eat most of their meals at restaurants or via takeout/delivery.

Then I met this friend at a Hot Thai Kitchen event late in 2023, and I realized I had finally made a real life cooking friend. We hang out about once a month, and she is hardcore into all things health and wellness, including an extremely regimented exercise routine that includes heavy weight lifting, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (even competitions). She’s obsessed with food and cooking and loves shopping for produce and local, fresh ingredients. So after we met for lunch today, we strolled through the Union Square Greenmarket, and we browsed endless in-season, local fruits and vegetables. We pointed out things that looked really good or interesting. We touched and evaluated some really beautiful, fragrant herbs, tomatoes, and at least half a dozen different types of summer squash in sizes ranging from our thumbs to half the length of a baseball bat. My friend bought a large haul of three bags worth of fresh produce home.

And then something fun happened while we were there. She told me she had recently gotten really into kohlrabi, and I admitted that I had often thought about buying it, but I wasn’t sure what to do with it.

“Okay, well, we’re solving that problem today!” she exclaimed.

She bought four fat kohlrabi and set one aside for me, along with two ears of corn. She advised me to wash and peel it, then slice it thinly or across a mandoline, and dress it simply in white vinegar, high quality EVOO, and a little salt and pepper.

“It’s so simple and so good!” my friend insisted to me. She said it was a really good, healthy snack, and it didn’t take much for its full flavor to shine through.

And as this all unfolded and I neatly tucked my very first kohlrabi into my canvas bag along with my local ears of corn, I thought to myself… Wow. This was so much fun. This is what it’s like to have a friend who is super passionate about food and cooking, and what it’s like to go to a farmers’ market with her! She not only declared something is delicious that she loves, but once she heard I hadn’t eaten it, she bought it for me and instructed me on how to cook it. I need more people in my life like this!

Toddler birthday parties and “playing together”

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Kaia was talking all about Seneca’s birthday party all week. She was so excited to go to a birthday party, to see Seneca again, and to play with her and her friends. This was likely the biggest kids’ birthday party I’d been to, or that Kaia’s been to other than the school ones (which frankly, do not really count). Seneca had 11 classmates and three siblings, plus their parents, come join the party in Prospect Park. My friend’s friend brought his human-sized bubble tubs and made endless bubbles for the kids, and the kids played with ribbon wands and balls, amongst other gadgets.

So, we arrived at the party, and while Kaia eagerly gave Seneca her birthday present, after that, they didn’t seem to want anything to do with each other. Kaia wanted to play with the ribbons and some other more outgoing friends. Seneca wanted to hide away from everyone and kept running away. And when Kaia saw Seneca run away, she decided she would run, too…. along with three other kids. I definitely got my step count up today with all this running around and making sure a bunch of 2- and 3-year-olds didn’t get lost or leave the park.

When it was time to leave, Kaia was happy to hug and give Seneca a high-five, but while Seneca reluctantly engaged, she still wasn’t really into the company and was pretty shy. So, I came to this conclusion that maybe toddlers actually act out the way adults act out, but in a cuter way: we want the attention, affection, and love of others, and we want to know they are around… we just don’t want them all that close to us and in our faces. I get it. I get it.