Category Archives: family

“I wanna go to [Australia] where it’s summer now!”

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To my pleasant surprise, even though it was extremely cold on Sunday going to and from the VHC Tet Lunar New Year Festival in Brooklyn, Kaia actually didn’t complain too much about the cold or walking. On both sides of the subway ride, we only walked about 6-7 minutes, so it really wasn’t that bad… even when the icy winds hit us. But while on the train, Kaia had some thoughts to share about the cold.

“Mama, when it’s winter here in New York, it’s summer at Suma and Topa’s house, right?” she asked me with wide eyes.

“Yes, baby… when it’s winter here in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s the opposite in the Southern Hemisphere where Suma and Topa are in Australia, so it’s summer,” I confirmed to her.

“Mama! I don’t like winter,” Kaia said with big frown on her face. “When it’s winter here, I wanna go to Suma and Topa’s where it’s summer! I wanna go to Melbourne because I don’t like the cold!”

This conversation was funny to me for a few reasons: 1) I love that she’s putting two and two together, beginning to understand the differences in seasons where we call home versus where her paternal grandparents are, 2) I also love (and laugh at) the fact that she thinks she can just snap her fingers and go to Australia during their summer time just because she wants to. She has no idea behind the financial costs of flying at high times of the year, of flying in general. She also doesn’t understand that it’s a commitment, that it’s a privilege to be able to have a mother who can work remotely for that amount of time and not have her job be in jeopardy (it’s also a privilege, in today’s day and age with soaring costs of living, to have a father who lives a “life of service [leisure]”, but that’s another topic for another day). How many four-year-olds are going to have the luxury of experiencing life in two hemispheres regularly… of flying on a long-haul flight from New York to Melbourne every year of their life thus far, and getting to see how amazing it is to escape the bitter cold of winter here for the summer there? Most Australians in New York I’ve met and known to date, at most, go back to Australia every other year… and that’s on the higher end. Almost no one I know other than Chris insists on going back every single year.

It’s going to be a work in progress to make sure that my only child doesn’t grow up to be some silver spoon, entitled child, who snubs other people for not seeing as much of the world as she has, or for being less worldly.

The necessity of soup at the Chinese dining table: an ode to my paternal grandma

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Growing up, I remember there was almost always a massive stockpot full of some kind of broth or soup on the stove. Sometimes, it was a gentle herbal chicken soup. Occasionally, it was a thick and packed jook/congee with lots of different proteins, like chicken, pork, tofu skins, shredded dried and rehydrated scallops. Other times, it was a ginseng-based tonic meant to “cool” our bodies from eating too many rich foods. Regardless of what was in the big pot, I grew up knowing that soup was an integral part of our diet at home. It was rare to have a day when there was no full stockpot on the stove. It was an everyday occurrence to hear my grandma, mom, or aunt insist that Ed and I “drink soup.”

Soup was the antidote to everything. You ate too much fried food? Drink soup. You aren’t feeling well? Drink soup. You’re feeling sluggish or tired? Drink soup. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has a soup or tonic for pretty much anything you can complain about.

I started getting back into thinking about soup more regularly after I gave birth to Kaia in December 2021. My aunt had lovingly sent me ingredients to make a specific Chinese chicken wine soup (雞酒湯 ji jiu tang), which she insisted would nourish my body to recover quickly from childbirth, while also simultaneously helping my body to produce more milk for my baby (debatable, but it was still tasty). Two years ago, I started being more intentional about making soup. And this year, I am trying to make soup even more often. It’s delicious, nourishing, tasty, and given it’s been so cold this winter, who could say no to a hot bowl of soup? Soup rounds out any meal. In China, there is a saying called san cai yi tang (三菜一汤), meaning “three dishes and one soup,” which is a foundational principle of a balanced, home-cooked Chinese meal that is meant to be shared. It’s typically a meat/protein, one vegetable, one tofu/egg/seafood dish, alongside a nutritious soup. The soup type can vary depending on how it complements the other dishes at the table, but more often than not at home, the soup is a very simple broth that is lightly flavored and seasoned.

I made a simple home-style soup today called yuanzi tang (圆子汤), or pork meatball soup. I was inspired to make it because this blog post by Xueci Cheng, a recipe developer I follow, talked about how integral soup was to her family’s meals in Sichuan growing up. It reminded me of how I ate with my family growing up. And similar to me, she also had forgotten how soup was always at the dinner table at home, as she had moved away to Germany, and soup had mostly been forgotten as a thing to have at a meal. So she made this same soup, and she said when her parents made it for them all during their visit to see her in Germany, they immediately said at the first sip once it was finished cooking that it “tasted like home 家的味道.” This soup is really simple. There’s no required broth base, as it’s mostly flavored by the fat and flavor from the pork meatballs you make (though I did use a cup of dashi I happened to have in my fridge). But after I seasoned it, it really did remind me of the simpler, light home-style soups my grandma used to make when I was little.

My paternal grandma passed in 1995. If she were alive today, she’d be 109 going on 110 this September. Her only granddaughter just turned 40 last month — that’s me. I wonder how she’d feel knowing that even 31 years after her death that I still think about her and her cooking often. I wonder if she’d be pleased to know how much of an impact she’s had on my life and the way I view food, cooking, and our shared culture. She never thought cooking was that great of a skill; for her, it was just something she knew and did. It fed her family (and around Lunar New Year, it fed her friends), and that was enough for her. But in these moments when I taste things that remind me of her and her cooking, I do find myself missing her and wishing we could share that same taste together.

The growing Le Creuset collection

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I am now 40 years, two weeks old. For most of my life, I’ve looked longingly and with a bit of foam at the corner of my mouth at Le Creuset and Staub bake and cookware — you know, those glorious enameled cast iron dutch ovens, pots, and stone bakeware, all handmade in France, that you always see in fancy kitchenware sections and shops. Just the variety of bright colors would get to even the most indifferent-to-cookware people. Although I always admired them, I could never bring myself to buy even a single piece for myself. It felt like too much of an indulgence for me. I tend to be a lot more practical with kitchen items. So instead, I accepted a $35 Amazon Basics five-quart dutch oven from Chris’s aunt and uncle as an early Christmas gift in 2018 when they visited us, and I insisted to myself that I never needed Le Creuset or Staub anything. For comparison sake, a 5.5-quart Le Creuset round dutch oven currently goes for a whooping $435! So there’s clearly a massive markup there. So until this past December, I owned zero Le Creuset or Staub pieces. Hell, I bought a five-quart Staub dutch oven for our ex-nanny and never even bought myself so much as a single Le Creuset ramekin!

In December before we left for Australia, Chris presented me with an early Christmas gift: a Le Creuset 3.5-quart dual braiser and grill pan in a Marseille blue color; the grill pan also acts as a lid for the braiser. I was excited at the acquisition of this item, as it would be my very first and only Le Creuset item. I loved the color immediately. But I wasn’t sure how much I’d use it given I have most of the pots and pans that I use a lot. This braiser also seemed quite shallow at just 3.5 quarts, so other than pasta, I am still not sure what I will “braise” in it. But I knew I’d find ways to use it because after waiting almost 40 years, did you think I’d actually consider giving up my first and only Le Creuset…?!

Then we had the funny Shun knife debacle around my birthday. My friend kindly accepted the return of the eight-inch Shun knife. In its place, she got me a four-piece Le Creuset Heritage line stoneware baking set — one loaf pan, one fluted pie pan, one square baking dish, and one oval dish — all in Marseille blue to match my current braiser-grill pan duo. Of all these dishes, I will likely use the loaf pan the most since I make a decent number of loaf breads in a year. But all the dishes are sturdy, gorgeous, and heat evenly. They would all look beautiful simply as serving dishes. And they could easily reheat in different methods. I laid them all out on the dining table after opening them yesterday and just stared at them. I had the same feeling I do whenever we return from a Costco trip: I felt RICH. Once, I was poor and had no Le Creuset. And then, out of nowhere, I have (technically) six pieces! I am rich now!

The mental load of cooking and managing perishable and pantry ingredients, and food as a love language

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A few months ago, I told Chris that sometimes, despite the fact that I obviously enjoy cooking and food, it can feel like a burden to keep track of all my ingredients — what we have versus what we need, what we’re low on, and then figure out what we need to top up. For example, because I have food ingredients spread across several areas of the apartment due to limited space and no central pantry, I didn’t realize that I actually still had four pounds of dried Garofalo pasta in various shapes; these packages were hiding behind some of his Australian snacks in the side “pantry” we created by the laundry. So because of this, I went to Trader Joe’s and purchased two pounds of dried Italian pasta in other shapes. It wasn’t a big deal because these are dried pantry staples that don’t go bad, but it still annoyed me. So Chris politely told me in the nicest way possible (which is impressive for him given he can be very blunt and snarky) that maybe, I could consider “making simpler food.”

I stared at him as though he told me that I should “go back to China.” What the hell kind of a solution is that? I don’t want to eat blander food, and I love the fact that we have so much variety in this house. I relish that our pantry is well stocked enough so that I can make various types of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indian, Italian, American-esque, and Middle Eastern dishes whenever I feel like it and just need to get some fresh produce to make it happen. There’s no way that I could possibly make “simpler” food because I just wouldn’t be as happy or satisfied. Nor would our gut biomes be as diverse.

Since we’ve got back, I scrolled through my camera roll of a few of the things I made (I don’t photograph the everyday things like roasted or sauteed vegetables most of the time because they’re so regular), and this is what it looks like: Sichuan-style stir-fried chicken, mushrooms, and vegetables; lobia masala (Punjabi black-eyed pea curry), Cantonese-style braised tofu and egg; Pork rib and lotus root soup; tahini granola, di san xian (Dongbei-style stir fried eggplant, potato, and bell peppers); kung pao style stir fried lotus root and peanuts; Cantonese-style beef stew with daikon and tofu skins; turkey chili (using my new gifted Burlap and Barrel ancho, pasilla, and guajillo chili powders). Tomorrow, I’ll be making vegan creamy mushroom pasta (with silken tofu as the secret “creamy” ingredient)! The food this month has leaned heavily Chinese, but it’s also because for whatever reason (maybe because I’m officially middle aged now?!), I’ve had cravings for food of my childhood, hence the beef stew and the lotus root/pork rib soup. But even if most of it is Chinese, it’s still a pretty eclectic variety. We don’t do “pasta Mondays” or “mashed potato Fridays” or whatever regular theme that a lot of families I hear about do where both parents are working (or leading a “life of service”) and need to minimize the mental load of daily family dinner. I like that it’s different, and it also exposes Kaia to endless variety to keep her palate guessing.

And at the end of the day, I love cooking for those I love, not just myself. I like knowing I nourish Chris and Kaia, plus any family and friends that come visit us. Food is one of my love languages. So while sometimes friends can make fun of me and tell me they never would guess I’d be such a traditional mom or wife, I’d like to look at it a different way: this is just how I show I care and love, and so I do it because I love.

The different ways that people show they need you

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Last night, Chris read to Kaia and put her to bed. He came out and noticed I had lit one of my candles and had my Kindle on the kitchen counter. He asked me if I was planning to read on the couch (in the living room), to which I said yes.

He then responded, “Why do you have to read all the way out there?!”

“I’m right here!” I exclaimed back. It’s not like we live in some huge palace. I’m about 30 feet away from him!

I thought about this because it’s not the first time he’s had this reaction to my wanting to read in the living room while he reads or does things on his computer in bed. He always indirectly is saying that he doesn’t want me to read in the living room, that he would prefer I be in bed right next to him… even though it’s not like we’re doing anything together. We’d just be doing our own thing separately, just in the same bed together. And I thought this was cute and sweet. I told him this, to which he mumbled that I come up with “crazy theories” and he was wondering who I was going to blab this to in the next day. I actually wasn’t originally planning to share this with anyone, but since he said this, I decided to text his brother because I knew I would get an immediate reaction.

So I texted his brother, and his brother replies that he never expected me to say something like this. Then, he says, “Isn’t it obvious that he cannot live without you?”

And then I just thought…. Awwwwww. Even when my husband is annoying, emotionally avoidant, and borderline crazy, he still does need me and love me very much. He just wants to front like he’s fiercely independent. But at his core, he does truly need me. That is love.

Winter is cold, and getting even colder, plus a secret love of boots

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For years here in New York, winter hasn’t been a true “winter.” We haven’t had much snow relatively speaking due to global warming. December through March has been a milder weather period; it has always been cold, but just not as freezing as we expect. Snow has been sparse, so Kaia has had very few times to make and throw snow balls or build a snowman. But this winter, it has most definitely been cold. It snowed last weekend; the temperatures have been in the ‘teens and low twenties Fahrenheit. And Kaia is NOT a fan. As she is becoming more and more verbal by the day, she’s definitely making her opinions known.

She has protested almost every other day of boot wearing. “I don’t wanna wear boots! I wanna wear shoes!” She hates the high-top nature of the winter boots I bought her; she probably dislikes how her ankles can feel trapped in them. I can relate to that feeling, but I have since gotten used to wearing boots since moving to the East Coast.

Kaia told us multiple times this past week, “I don’t like winter. I want spring and summer. I want to wear sandals! I want it to be warm!” We agree with her; we also tell her that neither of us likes winter much, either. But winter does not last forever, and before she knows it, spring will be here, and she can shed all her thick layers and boots and wear regular shoes and dresses again.

I’ve adjusted to living in a four-season part of the country and world. I actually don’t mind it much. It does require more different types of clothing (and a very different skincare regimen in winter due to dryness!), but now that I’ve been here almost 18 years, this is my long-time current “normal.” One thing I have secretly embraced but never said out loud is that the best thing about living in a four-season place is that… I actually love boots! For someone who doesn’t like winter, this sounds kind of funny. But to be fair, most of my boots are autumn/winter boots, so it doesn’t necessarily have to be freezing cold to wear them. I still remember back in 2003 when the Wellesley recruiter came out from Boston to San Francisco, and she told me that she had at least ten pairs of boots — all for different types of cold/weather, occasion, and environment! My mind was boggled at the time when she shared this, but now, I completely understand. I myself have three different pairs of dressy boots, along with one pair of super casual, long Uggs (which I basically live in when it’s cold but not wet outside), one pair of rain/waterproof boots, and one pair of fall duck-style boots (which really need to be retired, after ten-plus years of wear, because I found out while in Denmark that one shoe has a hole in it!). So I have seven pairs of boots myself, which is kind of hilarious. I love all types of boots: I like the leather boots, the suede ones, the heeled ones, the flat ones. I like the Chelsea style boots, the tall knee-high ones, the slouch style boots, and even the chunky combat style ones. I could easily waste an hour on Nordstrom’s website staring at all their boots and wondering which ones would be comfortable and still look good in whatever weather. But then I think that if we end up moving to a warmer weather place, how often would I really wear all these boots, if at all?

Kaia doesn’t currently share my love of boots, but who knows — maybe she will embrace them as she realizes that you absolutely need these in cold weather climates. Or maybe she will shun them and refuse to ever live in a cold weather place ever again.

Cantonese style beef stew with daikon and tofu skin 萝卜腐竹牛腩

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Growing up in a Cantonese household and with a Cantonese paternal grandma, I was exposed to endless Cantonese delicacies and dishes that I am sad to say, I oftentimes have forgotten about. Some dishes, like Cantonese dim sum, zongzi, or wonton mein have stayed with me as staples in my current eating life. Others have completely disappeared from my consciousness. But then I occasionally get reminded of dishes my grandma either used to make herself or would order out when we went to restaurants, whether that is through seeing pictures and videos on social media or by looking at restaurant menus, and then I am taken back to those delicious moments of food discovery and appreciation.

One of the dishes my grandma never made at home, but my dad always loved ordering for lunch at casual Cantonese restaurants, was Cantonese style beef stew, usually served in a claypot with rice, and almost always with braised daikon. Occasionally, some restaurants would add tofu skins to their stew, but many just had different cuts of beef stew and tendon with a generous sprinkling of bok choy, and always with copious amounts of steamed rice to sop up all the delicious, umami beef stew juices. The stew was always extremely fragrant of five spice powder and star anise. It was comfort food for my dad, and then eventually it became comfort food for me. I rarely order it as an adult, as when I go to Cantonese restaurants, it really hasn’t been top of mind. But occasionally, I will get beef stew as a topping on my wonton mein, or as a small side when ordering takeout. Most places I tried were a bit disappointing — something was lacking, or the quantity of food I got was just too tiny. So I was really happy to find some recipes for this dish developed by recipe developers I follow that made me realize how easy it is to make at home with a little time. Other than the beef stew meat and daikon, I usually have all the other ingredients ready in my pantry, so this recipe was beckoning me to make it! So I “gave it a go” yesterday, and the result far exceeded any version I’ve had in New York to date! Variations of this will be on rotation in our home moving forward. Chris ate some and declared it “not bad, pretty good,” which is his version of a glowing compliment. Kaia did not say anything about the stew, but she did quickly and eagerly eat all the beef stew pieces from her plate during dinner time tonight!

“Maybe you can do this every year now!”

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I was telling a colleague about my birthday party after she asked. She saw the pictures and videos I posted on Instagram and was telling me how amazing the food presentation looked, and she said she wasn’t surprised I’d have such a crazy spread given it was my 40th. I told her I’d actually never thrown myself a real birthday party before this past Saturday; it took only 40 years for me to plan and host my own birthday party. I told her that planning it was so easy and fun, made especially smooth by the restaurant manager at Patok by Rach. And so she said to me, half jokingly, “So, this means that you’ll do a birthday party every year now, right?”

It’s not an awful idea. Though I would be unlikely to book out an entire restaurant in the next year or so for a non-milestone birthday year.. or pay for it all. But when I think about it, the focus would be less on the fact that it’s my birthday, but more an excuse to get people together. Whenever Chris or my friends would groan about things like bridal or baby showers, my response would always be that it’s far less about “showering” someone with gifts, and much more about just having togetherness, which no one does as much of anymore. Since the pandemic, people have led far more isolated lives, whether it’s because they live farther from people they care about, or because they simply have no desire to initiate get-togethers. Vivek Murthy, the former U.S. Surgeon General and an internal medicine doctor, has said in a podcast I listened to that the biggest epidemic he’s worried about… is loneliness. And it would be so easy for us to resolve that by being less formal or rigid about having our houses perfectly cleaned or planning get-togethers with extensive menus or programming months in advance; we can be more spontaneous with some friends and family and just lay out some crackers and cheese or pizza, and get people together just for the sake of it. And it would create warmth and connection just like that.

So who knows – maybe I’ll do something more casual and simple like that for a future birthday of mine if I am so inclined. It could even be a cupcake party — Kaia would love it!

Happy 40th to me

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It snowed today. I went to and from the Upper East Side for my makeup appointment in the snow. The crosstown bus was delayed getting there, but I still made it five minutes ahead of schedule. We had two spouses decline last minute due to unexpected lack of childcare for young children. Chris’s friend and his wife were supposed to come were deserted by their scheduled babysitter, who cancelled on them right at the time she was supposed to arrive. Then, his friend decided to come on his own… but made the mistake of going to the Brooklyn food hall location of Patok by Rach. He ended up taking the A train all the way up to Inwood and arriving about 1.5 hours late.

Things don’t always go as planned, but despite the snow, the fact that my birthday is right smack in the middle of Northern Hemisphere winter, and that cars and trains were delayed today, it all went amazingly well, probably even better than I could have imagined. I had so much fun at my party tonight. Everyone enjoyed the food and drink. I got rave reviews from several friends who had never really had Filipino before. The service was amazing by the Patok by Rach team. And we ended the night with karaoke!

I gave a little toast at the beginning that went something like this:

….

I’m so happy you could all make the trek to the very top of Manhattan to celebrate with me tonight.

Thank you so much for being here. A couple special individuals I have to call out: Rebecca, one of my best friends along with Crista here, since we were 11 — which means we’ve been tolerating each other for a very long time. Thank you for flying all the way from San Francisco just to celebrate my 40th. That means more to me than you know.

And of course, to my life partner Chris — the most loving and most annoying person I know — thank you for sharing this incredibly happy, lucky, and full life with me for the past 14 years. You may find this hard to believe, but I consider it a privilege to be annoyed by you every day. And I consider it an even bigger privilege to get to annoy you every day! 

Every person here tonight is special to me in a different way. I’ve met you across many chapters of my life — through work, food, friends — some of you just recently, some of you over a decade ago. And even if we don’t know each other well — if you’re a partner of a friend or a friend of Chris — you’ve brought joy into my life by making the people I love happy. And that makes me happy.

I’m truly grateful to be here, to have made it to 40. I know that may sound strange, but as many of you know, I carry with me the people I’ve loved deeply who didn’t get to reach this age, and I think of them every birthday — and how lucky I am to still be here, experiencing how beautiful and delicious this world can be.

So tonight, I’d like to raise my glass — to all of you. Thank you for the love, laughter, food, and meaning you bring into my life. Here’s to many more meals, thought-provoking conversations, and memories together. Cheers! 

….

When the evening ended, we took the A train back down with a small crew. We thanked the babysitter, and she went home. I spent about 15 annoying minutes taking off all my makeup to find several white heads on my forehead and nose — thank God I rarely wear foundation because this would completely ruin my skin! And after four hours of my party, I left with a very full heart — and maybe even a fuller belly.

A birthday kamayan feast planned

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Given I never had a real birthday party growing up, other than the one that one of my besties threw me for my sixteenth birthday, I figure that my 40th birthday coming up tomorrow will be the one party that I actually get to throw myself. I found the perfect restaurant for it, Patok by Rach, up in their cozy Inwood location, complete with a large tree growing inside and a kamayan feast. Kamayan is a traditional Filipino celebratory meal that symbolizes community, camaraderie, and cultural heritage. Large banana leaves are laid out across tables where guests sit, and the food is served directly on top. It traditionally will include dishes like pork BBQ, chicken inasal, kare kare stew, different types of lumpia, lechon (with crispy skin!), freshly fried shrimp chips and fruit. I’ve had it a few times before with my cousin’s wife’s family, as well as for a friend’s birthday dinner in lower Manhattan. I just love the idea of everyone being surrounded by endless food served on banana leaves, directly on the table, and eating and drinking to their heart’s content. That’s ultimately why I chose this place — not to mention the deal we got on this space, and to have the entire restaurant booked out, seemed almost like robbery!

I think every birthday is special because it’s another year around the sun, another year when I get to continue experiencing life and all that it has to offer. But I haven’t had a group birthday dinner since pre-pandemic. It’s mostly just been Chris, Kaia, and me in the last few years — nothing big or splashy. But this year, one of my besties is flying in from San Francisco to partake in festivities. I’m using a gift certificate she got me two years ago to get my makeup professionally done tomorrow. And we have a set kamayan menu for 18 guests tomorrow night. Kaia has her babysitter lined up. I’ve never been this excited to celebrate my birthday before now! Who knows — maybe I will have so much fun that I’ll decide to do something like this (okay, maybe not at a restaurant and pay for everyone) every year from now on!.