Monthly Archives: November 2023

Eating savories in Central Europe

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When Chris booked our trip to Prague and Bratislava, while I was excited for the sights, Christmas markets, and the pastries/desserts, I will be honest and say that the day to day food that Central Europe is known for is not really up my alley. I love spices, heat, texture, and complexity in food. The simple meat and potatoes food culture has never really been on my top cravings list. In fact, Chris always makes fun of the other kids at Kaia’s school when we talk about the sheer variety of food we have exposed her to, from different cuisines to various spices to even chili peppers. He likes to say, “well, of course she likes / eats (insert food we feed her). She doesn’t just eat meat and potatoes like all those other kids.”

But you know what? When I’m in Prague or anywhere in Central Europe, I am happy to eat local food and try new things. I rarely have eaten potato “dumplings” made from a dumpling “loaf” sliced like bread slices and presented with goulash. Beef and pork are commonly eaten in rich stews in this part of the world, as are potatoes in many forms, whether it’s boiled or mashed and pressed into dumplings. Our first meal at a restaurant (canteen style, where you take a tray and a ticket, then go to each stall and choose what you want, then pay at the end) on our first night was beef goulash (Czech style, which is apparently different from Hungarian style according to the menu – always learning!) stew with sliced potato dumplings, along with the local favorite beer on tap, Pilsner Urquell. The goulash was pretty tasty, and the texture of the potato dumplings really surprised me. It looked dense when you peer over it, but when you cut into it with a fork and eat it, it’s actually quite fluffy and spongy.

For something sweet to end our meal, we also had knedliky for the first time, which are sweet dessert dumplings made with quark, a type of soft cheese, flour, egg, yeast, and some sugar. They are typically filled with a fruit — most commonly apricot or berries. Once you choose the fruit filling for your sweet dumplings, the server then ladles a big dollop of a warm, sweet cheese based sauce, along with a sprinkling of savory cheese. I was pleasantly surprised — it was quite satisfying! I could see how people could grow up eating knedliky and have them as a craving.

It was a hearty meal, and one that would fill us up and keep us warm at the beginning of this cold week.

Signing “more” with her hands for planes at the Cathay Pacific Lounge at Heathrow Airport

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If you chat with any parent of a young child, especially of toddler age, they will tell you that parenting is both so adorable and sweet, yet completely and utterly exhausting at the same time. And how could it not be? Toddler age children are learning more and more about the world around them and absorbing it, figuring out what their place is. They get excited by the little things that we adults take for granted. They’re responding to all their different stimuli. While all that is happening, they’re also discovering their emotions and how people or things will respond to them, which could potentially result in tantrums. No parent likes tantrums. But most parents who love their children would agree that moments like the below are what makes parenting during this period so sweet.

We were on a cushy layover at London Heathrow Airport early Sunday morning, so Chris decided that we should spend time at the Cathay Pacific Lounge to shower, rest, and eat before our connecting flight. The Cathay Lounge at Heathrow is particularly gorgeous and comfortable in that it has floor to ceiling windows to give you a full-on view of planes on the runway, coming and going. Kaia is really loving all motor-operated things now. She loves watching cars and trucks on the road, and she really enjoys identifying airplanes. When she sees them, she visibly gets excited and starts saying “airplane! plane! fei ji!” nonstop, and she keeps watching them with her full interest. She stood intently at the corner of the room, looking outside the window and watching the planes constantly coming and going. But when there was a break and no planes came for a while, she kept looking out the window, then up at Chris, signing “more” with the fingertips of both hands tapping each other. I didn’t observe this initially and Chris saw it first, but when he told me about it when I came back from my shower, I couldn’t help but gush and just think it was too adorable. I then subsequently heard Kaia repeatedly say “more? more?” for more planes, and sign it with her hands.

These are some of the best toddler moments, the ones I want to have emblazoned in my mind forever to remember how precious she is.

Cadbury at Christmas TV special on British Airways

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The time I spend on airplanes is really the only time I am seated in front of a TV for long periods of time and am actually willing to watch something. I rarely sit on the couch to watch TV, and when I do, it’s a specific series that I watch with Chris at most a few nights a week, never more than an hour. So when I went through the TV and movie options on the British Airways flight tonight, connecting in London and ending in Prague, I took a look at some Christmas specific shows and movies given we’re entering the festive season. I bookmarked The Polar Express and The Nightmare Before Christmas, both Christmas movies I’ve always wanted to watch but never saw. And then a quick 45-minute TV special called Cadbury at Christmas caught my eye. I decided to watch that first.

It looks like this show is a very new release and details the behinds the scenes look at one of the world’s most celebrated chocolate factories located in Birmingham, United Kingdom. Chris grew up eating Cadbury chocolates and is very loyal to them (while also, in the same breath, harshly critiquing the “average” American chocolate like Hershey’s, which has very little actual chocolate in it and is mostly sugar and artificial flavoring). He loves how milky the chocolate is, and the quality of the milk used in Cadbury chocolates is quite high. When I was growing up, I never associated any specific chocolate type with Christmas. When I did see or hear of Cadbury, it was mostly the Cadbury cream eggs, which I always found a bit underwhelming and too sweet. The vast variety of Cadbury chocolates that Chris was used to eating were foreign to me. I never saw them until I went back to Australia for Christmas with him.

I learned a number of interesting things from this show: one, that Cadbury World actually exists as a place to visit with over a dozen different areas to explore, though there’s no actual viewing of the chocolate being made anymore. I also didn’t realize that a Quaker family originally founded Cadbury, but eventually sold it to a large confectionary company. As Quakers, they themselves did not actually celebrate Christmas, but they did believe in making money. So they decided to increase their production and also create special festive season/Christmas chocolates at this time of year. Their Milk Tray was one of the ways they made chocolate more affordable and appealing to the masses instead of the super wealthy. And their festive season chocolates became one of the most gifted items in the UK as a result of all their Christmas chocolate promotions.

As someone who has spent most Christmases since 2012 in Australia, I do appreciate Cadbury a lot more now. I love that they are affordable, high quality chocolates with little fuss. And after watching this TV special, I am even more intrigued by them and want to visit Cadbury World. Yes, I’m an adult, so maybe I can make the excuse that I want to take Pookster there. But you know what? There’s no shame in being an adult and loving chocolate.

Kaia loves her Peter Rabbit

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For the longest time, Kaia did not take to any of her stuffed animals. Over her 23 months of existence, she’s been gifted endless stuffed animals, including a life-sized teddy bear, which is still vacuum-sealed and in its original wrapping in the closet. We’ve exposed her to a number of them, but she’s never really seemed to care about them. She kind of looks at them and then plays with something else, whether it’s a book, a jar, a lid, or another toy she has. The couple exceptions are the stuffed animals that are battery operated and sing or play peekaboo, or Babar, which is her stuffed elephant that has a few parts that either make sounds/noise or squeak depending on where you touch or squeeze it. Randomly the other night when I was putting her to bed, she grabbed Peter Rabbit off the book shelf and took it to bed with her. I laid her baby blanket over her, and she snuggled under the blanket with Peter Rabbit and said, “okay, bye bye! Wan an!” I guess that was a cue that she wanted me to leave, so I told her good night, wan an, and I left the room and closed the door. I wasn’t sure if she’d really fall asleep on her own given that she usually needs one of us to stay there with her until she falls asleep. But somehow, it worked. And it’s now worked three nights in a row. The last two nights, she asked for four other stuffed animals to accompany her to bed, as well. And she didn’t need me to stay with her until she fell asleep. It was incredible.

I love seeing her interact with her Peter Rabbit and her stuffed animals. She tells them to do things like “sit up” and “lie down,” and she even wants Peter Rabbit there at breakfast with her. Chris wouldn’t let her have Peter Rabbit on her food tray given it would be a mess, so he told her that Peter Rabbit would “watch” her eat. And she happily agreed. It’s too adorable. I just love these moments and how she is developing. This age is truly precious… but I suppose I’ve said that about every other stage to date. I just love being Pookster’s mummy.

The first lockdown procedure at Kaia’s school happened yesterday

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I went to pick Kaia up from school at the end of the day yesterday, and as per usual, I asked the teachers how her day went. They said she was good (she usually is), how she ate, and then gushed over how much they adore her and how she always follows directions (gee, how come she doesn’t always do this at home…?). Then, the teacher said, “oh! And I almost forgot to mention: we had our very first lockdown procedure with the class today. And ALL the kids did so so well! We quickly hid in the back classroom and ducked, and when we told the kids to all be quiet and shhhh, they all did it! We didn’t hear a peep from any of them!”

My smile immediately faded from my face and was replaced with a glum stance. I recognize that while living in this country, a procedure like this is more than 100 percent necessary and needed. But it honestly hurts my heart so much that my child, and really any child anywhere in this country, should be subjected to this as just another “routine procedure” the way earthquake or fire drills were done in school when I was growing up. It makes me sick that we actually have to worry about this because school shootings are such a frequent occurrence. We are sick as a nation. And it’s infuriating that our government will do zero about this. This is not normal, nor should it ever be normal, but we have to treat it like it’s normal. And that’s just disgusting.

I told the teachers that while I was happy the lockdown procedure went well, it made me physically sick to know that this was the state of our country and that this should not be normal. They both shrugged and said they agreed, but hey, they had to do it, and the good news was that the kids were all obedient and went with it!

This is our world as long as we live in the United States of fucked up America.

Candle tunneling – a very “adult” problem to have

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Years ago, Chris and I were watching a comedy special that featured Dilruk Jayasinha, a Sri Lankan Australian comedian and actor who did a standup bit on being an adult. Being an adult… means owning nice, high quality, expensive soy or coconut wax based candles with lead-free wicks. It also means understanding how to burn a candle properly to prevent tunneling.

What’s tunneling, you ask? There’s a strong chance that if you own large candles, this has already happened to you, but you didn’t even know what it was called, nor did you know how to fix it. Candle tunneling occurs on a candle, usually with a large diameter, when the candle burns for a short amount of time, too short to actually burn the top layer of wax properly (yes, there ARE actually rules about how long to burn a candle, and you really DO need to burn your candle long enough to ensure even burning!). This then results in uneven burning, which creates a “tunnel” around your wick. Eventually, this prevents you from burning all the wax in your super expensive candle and enjoying it far less. Seriously? Yes. This is a real problem.

Unfortunately, I encountered this with two candles already. One, which is peony scented, I was able to save with a method he mentioned that I also looked up, so this used both foil on the diameter of the candle, as well as a blow dryer. The second candle is still one I am struggling with. It’s one of my favorite candles, and one of the very few that I have purchased: a Tasmanian lavender candle I purchased at a lavender farm in Tasmania back in December 2015. I’m still working on fixing it, but it’s been quite frustrating to say the least. I love the pure lavender scent. I especially like to burn candles in the winter months because it gives a festive, cozy vibe at home. Plus, the ones we have just smell lovely. Lighting candles has become a winter time ritual of mine, and I don’t want my candles to get ruined because of some freakin’ tunneling!

Pandesal baking for when another dry active yeast packet is alive

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On Sunday afternoon, I tested another dry active yeast packet from two years ago to see if it was still alive, and I was in luck: it was the 3rd one that was alive out of four, so I have a 75% success rate so far (just two more packets to go!). I wanted to make something easy that would not yield too much, as we are really pushing it with the tiny bit of space still left in our freezer. So I decided on pandesal, a Filipino bread roll (literally meaning “salt bread,” though I have no idea why since there’s so little salt in it…) that is known for being like a round dinner roll. It’s characterized by being very soft, airy, and subtly sweet. Versions also exist other than the regular one with eggs, sugar, and oil that have ube or pandan, but I just wanted something quick and I didn’t want to buy any more ingredients, and so I stuck with the plain version to begin with. I was also disheartened to see that most versions of the ube pandesal recipe online called for artificial ube extract, which is exactly what I did not want. If I’m making it at home, I want it to be all natural with no artificial ingredients! Some versions use ube powder, which I assume to be dried, ground up ube, but I wouldn’t know for sure until I actually saw the ingredients on the packet. So I guess I can keep a lookout for it the next time I’m at a Filipino grocery store.

It was quick to put together the dough, though quite soft and sticky. I kneaded it well in the bowl on Sunday, then rolled it out on Monday and allowed it a second rise. Then, I baked it in the oven at 350 F for 20 minutes, and they came out perfectly: beautifully and evenly browned on top, with a nice, pillowy, airy inside. The dough is sweet, but not too sweet, so I was comfortable giving Pookster some as a treat at the end of dinner. And boy, did she gobble it up! I didn’t want her to have a full bun, so I ended up taking two generous bites out of hers when she offered me some, which of course caused her to wail nonstop (she believes sharing is caring… to a degree :D).

Few homemade things are more satisfying to me than the result of successful, tasty homemade bread. It always hits the spot and makes me feel really accomplished when it comes out right.

My road to making good dal

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Anthony Bourdain once famously said that India is likely the only country he’s ever visited where he could imagine happily enjoying life as a vegetarian. And I completely understand what he means: so many Indian dishes across its many regions treat beans so well with endless spices and seasonings that oftentimes when you are enjoying them, you forget there isn’t any meat on the table. It doesn’t matter if it’s strong spices like cumin and hing or fresh curry leaves or cardamom — the cuisine is so rich that if you want to make something seemingly bland like the humble lentil delicious, it’s really easy to do so.

Living in a rich western country, I have always had easy and affordable access to animal protein. My mom, on the other hand, living in rural, poor, Central Vietnam as a growing child, did not, and so when she came to the U.S and had easy, cheap access to meat, she obviously wanted to take advantage of it. So growing up, when I would occasionally threaten to be vegetarian after learning of animal cruelty or factory farms, she would scoff at me and say that “being vegetarian is not allowed.” She just saw it as my being spoiled: only someone extremely privileged would give up meat.

She’s kind of right. But as the world moves forward, and climate change, global warming, and the environment are becoming far more of a concern, meat consumption really does need to decrease. And so in my mind, the only way to really get tasty protein into one’s diet is to eat more beans – the South Asian way. So I started experimenting a lot more with different Indian pulses and legumes. I’ve tried endless dal recipes and spice combinations for tadka. And I’ve realized that the most flavorful dal is definitely one with a dal tadka, or a spiced oil that is added towards the end that really gives dal quite the “pizzazz.” I made this today after a while of not doing it (doing full Instant Pot dal is honestly so much easier than dealing with tadka, as there’s no splatter on the stove to clean up!), and after having a spoonful, I’ve reminded myself why I need to do this more often to eat more dal.

Dal is the future. Dal is tasty. Dal is good for the environment (I just learned on the beans episode of Gastropod that growing beans and having that be a part of crop rotation enriches the soil and land! Another win!). So we should all eat more dal.

Trader Joe’s chicken or vegetable stock: never again

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As long as I have been cooking for myself, I have always insisted on making stock from scratch. I usually keep freezer-safe gallon-sized ziplock bags in the freezer and keep filling them with meat bones/vegetable scraps until the bag is full, and then I throw them all into my Instant Pot for the best easy homemade stock. The problem with this, though, is when you don’t have many bones. I really haven’t made any whole chickens at home this year. A lot of the meat I’ve purchased has been boneless. So I haven’t made much homemade stock at all this year, sadly. And well, food just never tastes as good when you use a canned stock or broth. There are certainly ways to doctor up a canned stock where it isn’t obvious you are using something from a can or carton. I grew up knowing that my mom usually used Swanson’s brand when she didn’t have the time to make stock from scratch. But there are certain things that you would always, always use from-scratch stock for: jook/congee, any type of soup tonic meant for healing/rejuvenation/sickness, and Chinese sticky rice. You just cannot substitute canned/cartoned for these dishes. A trained palette will always know.

I didn’t have enough bones/vegetable scraps to make stock this time around for my planned soup. So I begrudgingly considered my options. Ages ago, I had sworn off Trader Joe’s chicken stock. I have no idea what they put in theirs, but it always tasted… artificial, as though their “natural flavor” additive really was quite fake, and so fake that I just couldn’t stand it. The mere smell of it grossed me out. But when I saw that they had a low-sodium vegetable stock that was quite inexpensive, I thought I’d at least give it a shot. It was a $1.99 investment for a full quart, so what could really go wrong?

Well, everything, apparently. I opened the carton, and similar to the bad memory I have of the TJs chicken stock in the carton, this smell was… not great. It smelled almost like tomatoes. And who the hell uses tomatoes in their vegetable stock? Vegetable stock should smell like… onions, carrots, and celery. NO TOMATOES. IS THERE ACTUALLY TOMATO IN THIS?

I ended up using this horrible stuff to make my second butternut squash soup of the season. And it did not taste as good as I hoped. Part of it was maybe due to the recipe. But the main reason it was not good… I strongly believe it’s because of this stock. And what’s worse is that when Chris took a first taste of the soup after I told him I wasn’t happy with it… He confirmed my annoyance and fear all along. He simply said, “It tastes… very tomato-y.”

Yep. This stock sucks, and I am never, ever buying it ever, ever again. And the next time I make butternut squash soup, it will not be “not good” like these last two times, and I am definitely going to use homemade stock.

Sunset Park, Brooklyn

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Once upon a time, after visiting Ba Xuyen, my favorite banh mi spot in all of New York City, several times, I told my then roommate back in 2009-2010 that Sunset Park would be a good neighborhood to live in. It had a huge park nearby. It was in the heart of an area that has both a large Mexican/Latin community (like Little Mexico) AND a Chinese/Asian community (known as one of many Chinatowns in New York). The neighborhood had a really pleasant family friendly feel, which is basically code for “safe.” At that time, the rents were still quite cheap.

I still think Sunset Park would be a great place to live if you choose to live in New York. Since 2009, more fun, trendy restaurants, cafes, and bakeries have opened. I notice more White people frequenting the businesses we enjoy, especially Ba Xuyen. But every time we come back here for food, I am reminded of how I always want to eat literally everything here, but it would be pretty much impossible to do it given that we don’t live even remotely close by, and we come here maybe once or twice every YEAR.

In one afternoon’s visit, we had a black sesame iced latte from a trendy Malaysian owned cafe called Parlay; banh mi thit nguoi and jackfruit shake from Ba Xuyen; Hainese and roast chicken rice and laksa from Hainan Chicken House; picked up 40 pork and shrimp dumplings (frozen) and a hot sweetened soy milk from Kai Feng Dumpling House; got duck dumpling takeout from Orchid Dim Sum Cafe; snagged a guava/cheese flaky pastry and a vanilla concha from La Flor de Izucar Bakery; and split a beef tongue taco and horchata from Tacos El Bronco, the taco truck. That’s a pretty darn large variety of food right there.

So much good food in Sunset Park, but so little time! And that doesn’t even cover all the other places that I would have wanted to check out, both old and new for us!