Category Archives: family

Chris’s parents go back Down Under after a month-plus in North America

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Chris’s parents left this afternoon for their long flight back to Melbourne after just over a month of traipsing around North America, with several days or week-long stints at our place. It’s always fun in the lead-up to their arrival, and then there’s some sadness at the end when Kaia realizes that her beloved Sumi and Topi are not going to cater to her demands every evening forever and ever because they will leave. Even I feel a little sad when they go. There’s less people and thus less chatter and noise in the house. There are fewer mouths to feed, which is sad for me because I enjoy feeding those I love. And then there is also just less energy in the house. I even miss the things that can at times be annoying, like Chris’s dad constantly trying to eat everything with a fork and knife (even things like… muffins or french fries…) because he hates getting his hands dirty, or Chris’s mom asking for the millionth time if we are going to run yet another wash. I miss the classist conversations of Chris yelling at his parents about how pretentious they are, and even the one-sided talks about how marriages of today don’t last simply because people of my generation have unreasonably high standards and inflexibility (said by people who would most likely be seen as inflexible and stubborn, but hey, who needs self-awareness today?). The banter is fun because I know it will all eventually go out the door with them. So it’s all temporal and good entertainment for me.

As I left the building, our handyman friend asked us what was new, and I told him that Chris’s parents just left to go back to Melbourne. “Oh, you can breathe a sigh of relief then!” he said to me, patting me on my back.

“No, I actually am sad they are leaving,” I smiled. “The more, the merrier!”

“Well, isn’t that unusual!” he responded back, surprised.

He says this to me pretty much every year they come, and he forgets that I genuinely like my in-laws. I like spending time with them. And every visit when they come and tolerate their eldest son’s ridiculous demands and our much smaller, cozier living space versus what they have, I am reminded again and again how, relatively speaking, they actually are quite easy-going, far more so than almost any other parent or in-law I have known or heard of, of their generation. And for that, I am always grateful.

Morning corn muffins gone awry

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This June will officially mark 18 years that I’ve been living in New York City. I have lived more of my life now on the East Coast than the West, and that feels kind of strange to acknowledge out loud. When people think of things that mark their new lives in a new place, especially in a concrete jungle like New York where tiny apartments and even tinier kitchens are the norm, most of them probably do not think about the kitchen gear they started with.

But I do. I still remember when I had to build my original kitchen from scratch, I slowly but surely made visits to the Kmart (RIP — one at Astor Place in Manhattan, which has since been replaced by the massive Wegman’s) and to Target at Queens Center Mall in Elmhurst, Queens. I remember some of my very first kitchen purchases quite fondly: my two tempered glass Anchor brand lasagna/casserole pans, my cheap $8 nonstick cookie sheets that lasted over 10 years, my Corelle dining set (with a design that I really dislike, but I was cheap at the time, so I got it since it was the cheapest option), and my standard sized metal 12-muffin tin.

I don’t have all those kitchen items anymore. Many I gave away, like some Corelle pieces that were duplicates of things Chris had when I moved in with him, or the smaller Anchor casserole pan that I rarely used (gifted to another friendly Buy-Nothing member!). The cookie sheets actually failed, warped, and somehow managed to snap in the oven — they literally went out with a bang — a pretty terrifying one! The muffin tin was heavily used when I lived in Elmhurst, but only sporadically since I moved to Manhattan. And then today, this 18-year-old muffin tin unfortunately saw its demise.

I got inspired to make muffins again during our recent May weekend up in the Finger Lakes/Ithaca with Chris’s parents. Along the way, we made a quick breakfast stop at this delicious, popular spot called Dottie Audrey’s Bakery + Kitchen. There, we ordered two perfectly made breakfast sandwiches, a walnut sticky bun, a sour cream coffee cake slice, and a huge, fat corn muffin stuffed with strawberry jam. While I loved everything we got from here, I will say that immediately, my first thought was that I wanted to try replicating the super crunchy corn top of the corn muffin. I loved the crunchy muffin top texture so much contrasted with the gritty, coarse, yet fluffy, not-too-sweet muffin innards. I remembered that a friend told me she used a blueberry corn muffin recipe she liked a lot from NYT Cooking, so I decided to go with that. The only swap I made was replacing half the all-purpose flour with whole wheat flour for extra whole grains.

Well, I didn’t have muffin liners, so I generously oiled the muffin tin and filled them with batter, then baked it. Unfortunately, the muffins didn’t beautifully dome the way I was hoping. Instead, they kind of flattened on top of the tin, and I realized immediately that I was going to have a frustrating (and messy!) time popping these muffins out. And it was super annoying: several of them broke apart as I removed them from the tin. One almost completely disintegrated into a pile of massive crumbs, and I ended up eating the crumbs by the handful. They were tasty, but they didn’t have a beautiful dome, and they were nowhere as crunchy as Dottie Audrey’s Bakery + Kitchen.

If we didn’t have Chris’s parents over as guests (or any guests for that matter), I’d never make muffins because Chris isn’t that into them, and I can’t bring myself to eat this many muffins. And then Kaia prefers the mini ones. Muffins are kind of like dessert to me: they are a special occasion-at-home bake like cake or cookies are. We need more mouths to warrant the effort to make them. But with this, I realized that the end of this muffin tin’s life had finally arrived. So after rinsing it, I said goodbye to it as I chucked it into the recycling bin (it’s metal, so it must be recyclable, right?!).

Now, I am debating whether I want to buy a replacement regular-sized silicone muffin plan, or if I should just live with a 6-muffin silicone pan I was gifted at graduation in 2008, plus the mini muffin pan I use for Kaia’s healthy muffin treats.

Not all mascarpone is made equally

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I was whipping up the heavy cream, powdered sugar, kesar mango pulp, and mascarpone cream for the mango tiramisu for my father-in-law’s birthday yesterday, and it suddenly dawned on me that something wasn’t quite right. I kept looking down into the bowl while mixing and wondering why there were tiny little white chunky blobs floating in my creamy mixture. And then… it hit me: the mascarpone cheese was not breaking up properly. I did the suggested thing of letting it sit on the counter for about 20-30 minutes before I mixed it, but that did not seem to help. And I was scared that if I kept using my hand mixer, it would turn my cream mixture into butter. So I eventually just relented and decided that I would continue assembling the mango tiramisu even with the uneven mango cream/mascarpone mixture.

When I served the mango tiramisu today, no one else seemed to notice the white chunky mascarpone bits. I noticed them in some bites, but I was at least relieved that overall, the chunks had melded in. I told my cooking friend about this, and she told me that she actually just read an article about how mascarpone is not all made equally. I advised her for the future that she should never, ever buy Whole Foods brand mascarpone cheese. I bought it in a rush to get the dessert ingredients in order in time, but normally, I would buy BelGioioso brand from Trader Joe’s, which always whips up easily. I checked with AI, and for future reference, Galbani and Ciresa brands are also supposed to be excellent, premium mascarpone brands to consider. Sorry, Whole Foods — you just didn’t cut it this time for me.

Buttermilk Falls State Park

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Our last stop in the Finger Lakes region before heading back home today was at Buttermilk Falls State Park. The park is named after the foaming cascade (little waterfall) formed by Buttermilk Creek as it flows down the steep valley side toward Cayuga Lake, one of the eleven Finger Lakes. It was named for its “frothy” appearance of its churning waters. Similar to the rock formations at Taughannock Falls State Park, the rocks form in endless horizontal layers, creating flat slabs and angular, even sharp edges as they erode and fracture. The gorge and waterfalls formed since the last ice age, within the last twenty to thirty thousand years.

We did the gorge trail at Buttermilk Falls this morning, which was quite wet on and off throughout the walk up and down the stairs. There were times when we actually just had to walk through large puddles, which soaked our shoes and socks (Pookster was not a huge fan of this, but she was a good little trooper and sucked it up). After going through three of these gorge trails already, I am so impressed with how well maintained they are. The paths are very clearly defined; it would be impossible to take a wrong turn or get lost (…unlike the Mount Jo debacle I caused back in the Adirondacks in 2014 when I thought I would be disowned by my then-future in-laws). There’s really zero way for you to get lost on any of them, and all the stairs are sturdy and taken care of.

While the main Buttermilk Falls is impressive at this park, I would actually say that my favorite part is along the gorge trail further down, where you can see all the pinnacle-like rock formations with layers upon layers of stone etched out. The pinnacles flank all the little waterfalls that keep flowing into each other. When you look at the pinnacles, it almost appears as though a human etched them to look this way; it’s so beautiful and scenic, just asking to be stared at and photographed!

After this trip, I would say that the state parks in the Finger Lakes region are likely one of the most underrated, lesser known, and lesser appreciated public parks in the country. While I’d always been aware of the Finger Lakes region for wine and hiking, I didn’t actually realize how “gorges” the area was until doing research for this trip, and then finally going on it. I’d love to come back and see Watkins Glen State Park and some of the other gorges in the area. Who would have guessed that scenery like this existed in upstate New York?! We’re still always learning about the state, country, and world we live in.

Cascadilla Gorge, Taughannock Falls State Park, and Purity Ice Cream Co.

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Much to Chris’s mom’s annoyance of walking on surfaces that are not flat or cement, we did two hiking trails today: in the morning, we visited Cascadilla Gorge, which drops 400 feet from Cornell’s campus to downtown Ithaca. The gorge is carved through bedrock — shale, siltstone and sandstone, exposing sedimentary rocks that were deposited over 400 million years ago. When you walk through the extremely well-maintained trail, it feels like one little waterfall after one big waterfall after endless waterfalls over and over. And if you take the gorge trail from the trail main entrance, you end up on the Cornell campus!

In the afternoon, we went to Taughannock Falls State Park and did the North and South Rim trails. The name “Taughannock” has Native American origins, as one translation suggests the name is derived from a combination of Iroquois and Algonquin terms meaning, “great fall in the woods,” which would be quite aptly named. The waterfall and gorge together are an example of a “hanging valley,” which is formed where Taughannock Creek’s stream-carved valley meets the deeper glacially carved valley that contains Cayuga Lake. When we reached the falls outlook point on this trail, I used my camera to zoom in on the fall’s base. You could see right away the effects of erosion over time right at that point.

It didn’t seem to matter how many waterfalls we saw on this short trip, but each one was incredible and breathtaking in its own way. I also loved seeing the different colors of the water at different points of the hike, and also when the sun occasionally poked out of the clouds to reveal itself. Though because Chris’s mom hates stairs, inclines, and anything that is even slightly uneven or not flat, she kept muttering, “Another waterfall? Again?” And not necessarily in a positive way…. It also gave way for some fun jokes. Even Kaia at some point said, “Another waterfall? I don’t want that! I’m tired!”

Kaia did get a very special treat at the end of the day, though: at the end of the day, we stopped at Purity Ice Cream Co, an Ithaca institution operating since 1936. It is known as “The Ice Cream of the Finger Lakes” and is quite the impressive ice cream shop: its storefront is huge, with generous seating (booths!), WiFi (a big plus for Chris’s dad), and huge restrooms. There’s even a drive-through where you can pick up ice cream and not even get out of your car! For the first time ever, we let Kaia have a waffle cone — she chose strawberry as her flavor. I shared it with her (since she’s never allowed to have her own to control sugar intake/portions), and I will say that the strawberry ice cream was truly excellent — really creamy, with strawberry flavor infused throughout, and generous with frozen chunks of strawberry fruit. And while I never get waffle cones, this waffle cone was really, really good. It still seemed like it was warm, maybe even fresh off the waffle cone iron, and it was thick and crispy throughout.

We could easily spend a week here exploring all the interesting food spots and hitting every single gorge, but alas, tomorrow is already Sunday and time to go home. I am still wondering how it took us this long to finally come up here. And I still can’t get enough of how good and fresh these state parks smell!

Three-day weekend away by car

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Two times a year, we rent a car for a long-weekend away somewhere. This usually happens once in the spring when Chris’s parents come visit. Post-pandemic and in an era of Pookster, we have stopped doing getaways by air with them and instead opt for car travel for this trip. In the autumn, we usually go somewhere in October for leaf peeping, and so Kaia can get her fix of pumpkin patches, fall festivities, and apple cider donuts. This year, Chris decided we would finally go up to the Finger Lakes region, which is about four hours north by car. We’ll be staying up in Ithaca and seeing the surrounding areas.

While I’d always heard Ithaca’s surrounds were a beautiful place given it’s right in the heart of the Finger Lakes, I actually didn’t realize what made it so pretty. Its slogan is “Ithaca is Gorges” for a reason: it is home to 150 gorges/waterfalls, with a number of them living in some very vast, unique state parks — all formed during the ice age. You can visit Ithaca Falls, a massive waterfall, just a few minutes drive outside of downtown Ithaca; for zero payment, you can park your car and walk right up to the waterfall and enjoy it! The major school nearby, Cornell, is flanked by two gorges. It seems every which way you turn in the area, there’s a stunning waterfall waiting for you!

When Chris plans these trips for his parents, he never tells them in advance where we’re going. So his dad is left guessing in the passenger seat by the road signs. It’s a little game for him, and Chris revels in keeping his parents guessing. He loves hearing all of his dad’s random guesses (some which would geographically be so impossible that they become hilarious). By this time, though, his mom has learned not to even bother asking. She simply asks about weather and keeps it at that.

And so, a “gorges” weekend awaits!

How long are we allowed to be kids?

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When we were getting ready to go to Kaia’s friend’s 4th birthday party in our building yesterday, out of nowhere, Kaia decided that she wanted to wear her cow costume (from Halloween two years ago, as it was oversized!) to the party. Originally, Chris was not a fan of this and insisted that she just wear regular clothes. But Kaia is stubborn (just like both of her parents), and she continued persisting that she really wanted to wear it. I thought about it for a minute and just told Chris that we should relent.

“We should just let her wear it,” I said to him. “She only has so much time when she can wear a costume like this when it will be considered ‘acceptable.'” Plus, she’s already slowly getting too long for this oversized costume, and she won’t be able to wear it soon anymore. So we should just let her get more wears and fun out of it as long as we can.

Of course, Kaia was thrilled. She insisted that the cow be fully zipped up, and that she even wear the cow “head” (the hood part). Knowing her, I had a feeling she’d last only a short time at the party with the outfit since it would get quite hot and stuffy, especially with so many people in the apartment. So predictably, the cow costume eventually came off. But of course, all the adults marveled at her cow costume initially. One of them even asked me, “So, is this her weekend outfit of choice?”

Kids can get away with so many things that adults could never get away with: making beelines and cutting people off for seats on public transportation; constantly angling for freebies at stories and restaurants; simply smiling and getting free candy from doormen in buildings; wearing single-piece full length costumes on just any average day. I love that about childhood, and I wish we could all learn to embrace it more. Childhood is finite — it will all come to an end, and then we will no longer be given grace on so many things. Well, I can’t really personally embrace it since I’m quite far from my childhood years, but I want to let Kaia embrace it for as long as possible. I want her to enjoy her childhood and not have her rush to become an adult. There’s so much fun and magic in childhood that gets lost when we focus too much on the future and “getting big.”

Proof that my child will become an omnivore (or stated differently, will not become a vegan)

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I’ve been clearing out most of the meat-based proteins in the freezer ahead of our upcoming Costco trip, and I found that I still had two packs of bone-in chicken thighs from Butcher Box. So I marinated them last night and roasted them, Vietnamese garlicky-style. I pulled all the meat off the bones and assembled what my mom would call a “cuon cuon” station: a shallow bowl-plate for dipping rice paper, a stack of rice paper, bowls with various herbs, lettuce, sliced cucumbers, pickled daikon/carrot, cooked rice noodles, crushed toasted peanuts, scallion oil sauce, a plate of just roasted garlicky chicken, bowls of nuoc cham for dipping. And because I had a random single egg remaining from the carton I just threw out, I also ribboned an egg omelet into strips to add to the cuon (rolls).

Kaia had her own vegetables and chicken on her plate at dinner time, but she was watching as I rolled chicken cuon for Chris and me. For the first time watching me do this, she was actually very fascinated. First, she asked if she could do it. Then, she realized quickly how finicky it was (these rice papers are very sticky and pliable for a 4-year-old!), so she asked me to make some cuon for her. And then, she happily tore into them and chewed them vigorously. She was very excited to finally “participate” in her cuon cuon station that her mama made. She instructed me on exactly how much of each filling she wanted in her cuon. I was so proud that she was embracing this for the first time, at age 4. There’s a first for everything!

Then at bedtime, we read a book together that included a unicorn and lots of food. And as per usual, Kaia likes to “pretend eat” all the food by “grabbing” all the food on the pages and pretending to chomp on and eat them. For the first time, she “grabbed” the unicorn and pretended to eat it.

“Pooks!” I exclaimed, a bit confused. “You can’t eat the unicorn!”

She smiled mischievously at me in response, then her face went blank. “Why not?” And then she paused and giggled. “I’m just pretending, mama!”

Unicorns are mythical animals. But my Pookie insists that she wants to “eat” them. I guess this may be a sign she has zero desire to become vegan anytime soon.

“Why is it just three of us?”

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Kaia woke up this morning to see that her paternal grandparents were not in the house anymore. As they usually do, Chris’s parents left on one of several side trips on this trip: for the next week and a half, they are off to Utah, Nevada, Toronto, and Maine. She came out of her bedroom and peered at our bed where Chris’s parents would sleep and did not see them. Instead, she saw a fully made up bed. She also saw me lying on the sofa bed, still under the covers.

“Where did Suma and Topa go?” Kaia asked, as she got into sofa bed with me.

“Remember we told you they’d leave this morning for about a week and a half?” I said to her lightly. “They’ll be back next Wednesday! They’ll be back before you know it.”

She gave me her contemplative look. She was clearly sad and did not like that they weren’t at home with us anymore.

As she ate her breakfast, she said to me, “Why is it just the three of us?” And when I told her that Suma and Topa couldn’t stay with us forever, she kept asking me, “Why? Why?”

Kaia wants everyone she loves with her all the time – forever. Like most kids her age, she never wants the fun to end, and she always wants to be loved and cuddled and given attention to constantly. It’s hard to explain to her in a way she will understand why some people she loves live so far away, and why these same relations (like grandparents) can be closer in proximity like her classmates’ grandparents may be. But I guess that’s all the things you start learning and understanding the older and more mature you become.

When part of your family thinks that doctors are the “persecuted class”

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I think it can be universally stated no matter what country you are in that doctors, as a group of people, can be considered a “prestigious” profession or class of people. They are known to earn good money regardless of where in the world they live. There’s pretty much no one you would meet, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, race, or gender, who would say that to be a doctor is not a ‘high class’ profession. And there is no one who would say that nurses are equal to doctors in prestige and/or pay.

But then, I met my in-laws and listened to a very big and loud debate they had with Chris tonight, and I realized that they are actually the only two people I have met on planet earth who actually do believe that doctors have the same level of “prestige” or “status” as nurses, and would even argue that nurses get paid the same — at least, in Australia. And I also heard my mother-in-law say that she thinks that doctors are a “persecuted class” of people in Australia.

I asked my good friend Claude (AI) what the average salaries are in Australia for nurses versus doctors. Claude informed us that on average for the last available year of data, doctors as a group make about double what nurses make there. Both in-laws refuted the data and insisted the stats were inaccurate. My mother-in-law kept insisting her own personal experiences were representative of all doctors in the country, and that her own anecdotes held more weight than national statistics.

I love my in-laws and think they are generally good people. But this doubting of real statistics feels like the spread of fake news. Now I understand why Chris and his brother always say they’d never take real career advice from their parents.