I filmed part of another video for my channel today that will be part of the Grandma’s Recipes series. In this episode, we’re making Chinese turnip cake, or Luo bai gao in Mandarin. It’s a common dim sum dish in dim sum/yum cha houses around the globe, and it’s a dish my grandma used to make for us around Chinese New Year growing up. I haven’t really been in the mood to do any videos until today. Lunar New Year is in just two weeks, and I wanted to post a video for the Year of the Ox ahead of schedule.

I think part of the reason I was excited and eager to film this video today is because somehow, even to this day, even when I feel upset or annoyed or just not in the mood to do anything, thinking about the comfort food of my childhood still uplifts me. It’s remembering a simpler, more naive time when my worries about the world were far fewer and less significant, and I somehow was sheltered from most of the ill in the world by family. Those were the days when I could just be excited about food and that was really it. And that was totally fine.