Monthly Archives: September 2024

Sweet potato leaves – not a family favorite

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While reading Clarissa Wei’s Made in Taiwan cookbook, I learned that sweet potatoes made their way to Taiwan from China in the 17th century. Initially, the sweet potato’s leaves were consumed as food during famines when there was little else available to eat, and as livestock feed. This is why sweet potato leaves are often referred to as “the pig vegetable.” Original sweet potato leaves had coarser, rougher, tougher leaves, which made them more time-consuming to prepare. In the late 20th century, an agricultural center in Taiwan developed a new variety of sweet potato that was cultivated just for its leaves, which were more tender than the original varieties. Today, sweet potato leaves are cultivated worldwide, but they are mainly consumed in Asia. In Taiwan, you can oftentimes find stir-fried sweet potatoes leaves made by night market vendors, dressed up with a lot of crushed garlic for extra pungency and flavor.

Prior to this year, I’d never really given sweet potato leaves much thought. I’d only see them at Asian grocery stores, and because I didn’t know much about them, I never thought to buy them. Given that I’m down in Chinatown every weekday now given Kaia goes to school there, I figured it would be my opportunity to try to give unfamiliar Asian vegetables a try, especially when they are on special, so I have now purchased and cooked sweet potato leaves at least three or four times now.

Well, I’ll be honest: they are certainly not my favorite Asian vegetable, or any vegetable, for that matter. I bought it subsequent times because it added variety to our diet, and you can never have too much variety when it comes to fresh fruit and vegetables. But at dinner time today, Chris commented that he was NOT a fan.

“These sweet potato leaves… they are not good,” Chris said, begrudgingly crunching down on them. “Can you not buy them again?”

As he said this, Kaia was pushing them around on her tray, hesitant to eat more of them. Clearly, they were not her favorite Asian vegetable, either. We had to bribe her with a “treat” after dinner to finish eating her leaves (she got a quarter of a taro bao).

I told him that sweet potato leaves were looked at by older generations of Taiwanese people as famine food, so many of them to this day refuse to eat them because of the negative association. He quickly said he could understand that sentiment.

Okay, so I relented and said that if he really didn’t want them again, then I would no longer buy them. All I’m trying to do is diversify our gut biome as well as Kaia’s exposure to different produce, so can you really fault me for trying?

A play date in New Jersey

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Kaia’s bestie from her old school/daycare, Jacob, and his family moved to Glen Ridge, New Jersey, earlier this year. It was a sad time because they were very close at school and talked about each other all the time. Chris and I had become friendly with Jacob’s parents, so we had a few play dates before they moved, and also went to a kids’ theater show at Lincoln Center together shortly after their move. They said that once they got enough furniture and things fixed in the house that they’d invite us over, so that day finally came today. Chris rented a Zipcar, and we drove the approximately 20 miles to Glen Ridge so that Kaia and Jacob could reunite.

Unfortunately, the day was quite wet, so we spent most of the day inside, other than the brief time we were out in their yard so that they could grill some late lunch. I got a brief tour of their vegetable boxes, and Kaia was excited to eat fresh raspberries off the bush. But it was sweet to see the two of them get excited to see and be around each other, even if that was still interspersed with fighting over toys and squabbling here and there.

On the ride back, I was reminded of how disgusting and infuriating New Jersey traffic can be. The entire drive back to Manhattan was bumper to bumper and miserable. It took an hour to get back even though the distance was only 20 miles. I wonder how people could possibly find this tolerable who do this multiple times a week? The traffic here never seems to get any better, yet people always think it’s a “better life” when you move out to the ‘burbs. From my perspective, it just feels like more annoying time spent in a car and in painful traffic.

A growing awareness of mortality

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I’m almost done reading the book I am currently on, Matrescence. While I am not totally sure I would recommend the book, as it does tend to get on a number of tangents that are hard to follow at times, and it seems a bit like rambling at others as opposed to cohesively strung together thoughts, it does bring up a number of thoughts I’ve had about becoming a mother and about life in general. One thought that I was ruminating on after Kaia was born was that becoming a parent really does force you to think about your own mortality quite a bit. As a parent, you bring life into the world with the awareness that your goal, as ironic as it may be, is to raise that tiny blob into an independent adult who will one day not need you. And at some point, assuming all goes well and nothing tragic happens, is that that adult will one day live in a world without you in it; your child will outlive you, and you will die before they will. They will die after you (hopefully…. please). So becoming a parent makes you even more painfully cognizant of the fact that you will one day die, that your life on this earth is finite. It will come to an end. And so with that thought and fact is another thought: how are you going to make this life and all the moments that make it up worth it?

But that’s also another reason that it’s important for us as parents to have passions outside of our children, as all-consuming as parenting can be. One day, soon enough, Kaia will not want to spend that much time with us, and we should not expect her to fulfill all our needs and spend all her free time with us. I think that’s something that’s lost amongst many parents of our parents generation… like my own mom. In my early twenties, my mom used to get angry if she knew I was taking time off work to do anything other than go home and spend time with her. She used to call me selfish and threaten to make me pay her back for my college tuition (oftentimes used as a threat, as always). She said that all my vacation time should be spent with her. When I’d come home and spend time with friends, she would get angry and say that it wasn’t necessary and that I should be with her (you know, at home doing nothing). And at that time, I could not coherently verbalize why I thought that was wrong. But now, it makes perfect sense to me why all that talk did not sit well with me. As a parent, you are not just a parent. You are (potentially) a spouse, a sibling, a friend, a colleague, a citizen of the world. You also play other roles. And as your kids grow up, spread their wings, and fly away, you should also grow up and get back in contact with your own self and what you like to do and spend time on.

The lesser visited parts of Manhattan Chinatown

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As I’ve gotten older, and as the pandemic decimated a lot of Chinatown businesses, my fondness, general adoration, and affinity to Chinatowns everywhere have grown. Since the pandemic, my desire to support Chinatown businesses has only grown stronger, not that it was ever weak. So much Asian hate happened in 2020-2021 because of COVID-19, and it was unfairly exerted against businesses in Chinatowns across the world. Although I’ve lived in New York since 2008 and have always had a strong familiarity with Manhattan Chinatown, I think my knowledge of it and its businesses has gotten even stronger since 2020. Manhattan Chinatown is quite a large Chinatown. If you were to delineate where Manhattan Chinatown is touristy, popular, or “clean,” I’d draw the line at where Chrystie Street is, all the way down to where the Manhattan Bridge starts, and say that everything west of that line is recognized and frequented by people who are Asian and not. The main tourist drag is most definitely Canal Street. But once you go east of Chrystie Street, that’s where things become a bit more ambiguous. That area, to me, has always felt like the “real” Manhattan Chinatown since even before I moved here. At some times of the day and night, walking through there feels just like walking around in a large city in China when you see the sea of people moving, hear all the endless Chinese dialects spoken, and feel the sheer energy.

Generally, the area both slightly to the east and west of the Manhattan Bridge feels grittier, likely because of all the endless car traffic and the trains going above. There’s this one “mall” that is right on East Broadway, just underneath the bridge, that I’d always wondered about. It looked like there were businesses inside, and I could always see people walking in and out of that building, but I never felt compelled to go in there until a popular New York City-based Asian food personality on Instagram posted that she had some delicious dumplings and steamed pork buns in its basement. The spot is called Fu Zhou Wei Zhong (or ZWZ for short). The owners are originally from Fuzhou, so the food is Fuzhou style, which I’m still getting familiar with. So I figured that since I have to go pick up Kaia from school down in Chinatown five times a week now that this is my opportunity to finally explore all these little restaurants and holes-in-the-wall that I never gave myself time to really look at (and taste!) before.

This afternoon, I entered the mall, which was dingy, poorly lit, and not well labeled (other than in Chinese). I went down to the basement, where it was pretty much completely deserted except for tthe Fu Zhou Wei Zhong food stall, which was a huge window with a bunch of random tables around it. The same printing of the menu was on several walls, in English and in Chinese. On another wall, there was just Chinese writing outlining additional items, such as drinks (hot and cold), congee, and other steamed breakfast items you could get earlier in the day. I decided to order the fried dumplings, which was eight pieces for $5. They make all the food to order, so I waited for a bit while they did this. All the cooking is viewable through their large window, where I could see four women all busy pleating dumplings. Another woman was busy mixing a huge vat of what appeared to be pork and chive paste for dumplings. They called out to me when my dumpling order was ready, and I decided to eat one fresh. I took one bite, and BAM! It was crispy on the outside, super juicy and well seasoned on the inside. It was like the perfect fried dumpling. I did not regret eating one right away; I was only sad that Chris couldn’t enjoy these immediately with me and would have to eat them an hour or so later after I brought them home. I cannot recall the last time I was that happy and satisfied having a freshly made dumpling for takeout. These are like the dumplings that used to excite me when I first moved to New York, when I lived in Elmhurst and would occasionally go to the very popular Lao Bei Fang in Elmhurst’s “Chinatown.” Unfortunately, Lao Bei Fang, while still going strong in its newer location directly on the main drag of Elmhurst on Broadway (when I first moved to New York, it was in a tiny space on Whitney, which is a more obscure street) has since lost its magic since the owner no longer makes the dumplings himself and has his staff make them (good for him, but bad for us).

So while it’s nowhere as convenient now taking the train downtown to drop off and pick up Kaia every weekday while she’s in 3K in Manhattan Chinatown, it’s actually a positive in more ways than one. I get constant access to all my Asian greens, fresh tofu, and noodles. I can revisit my favorite bakeries and businesses as often as I’d like (or as much as my cholesterol/waist line allow). And I can also check out and really explore other sections and businesses in Chinatown that I’ve never given myself time to do before. So many places around East Broadway look authentic and delicious (not to mention that the prices on this side are definitely cheaper!), and they deserve to get more business… and my business.

“Oh, she eats well!”

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Our interactions with the teachers at Kaia’s new school have been a lot more limited than at our last school. We’re not allowed to enter the classroom as we please like we could at our last school. They keep the doors locked at all times. The only real time we can talk to them is at drop off (which Chris rarely does), or at pickup. At pickup, Kaia’s Chinese teacher has left, so there is another teacher’s assistant there along with the main teacher, but they are not the ones in charge of getting Kaia ready for dismissal. That’s the admin’s job. So I usually end up asking the admin quick questions about Kaia’s day. She always seems a bit frazzled, so I try not to ask too many things at once.

The other day, the admin wasn’t there, and another one of the teachers got Kaia ready and brought her to the door to meet me. I recognized the teacher’s face but forgot her name, so I reintroduced myself so that she’d tell me her name, too. I asked her how Kaia’s day was. She didn’t really give much of a response other than, “It was good.” But when I asked her how she ate, her face immediately broke into a huge grin and she said, “Oh, she eats well! She eats a LOT! She definitely enjoys eating and has no problem there at all!”

I laughed. Well, I already had a feeling she was eating well given the admin had told me, plus they had written us quick “kiddie grams” for her first two weeks, so we got quick summaries of how she ate, played, and interacted during the day. But it makes me happy to know that my baby is eating well when I am not there and that she doesn’t need much help in that area. I want Pookster to have a happy, healthy relationship with food and to eat to her heart’s content…. as long as it’s not processed garbage.

Matrescence: On Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood

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I recently started reading a book called Matrescence: On Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood, written by Lucy Jones. The term “matrescence” still doesn’t seem to be recognized by the dictionary in the year 2024, which is quite sad and pathetic considering time has evolved. Matrescence refers to the state of a person becoming a mother and all that this transition entails. I first heard of the term in a news article my friend linked to me, which I think was in NPR, about matrescence and how it doesn’t get nearly as much research, news coverage, or talk as it should. My friend sent this to me as she was sharing with me how much her body and her mind had changed after giving birth. She said it was hard to describe, but the way she thought about things and saw the world was completely different. She expected it to be different after becoming a mother, but she wasn’t prepared for exactly how different her perspective would be in her postpartum state.

A lot happens to a person when they become a mother, both mentally and physically, yet somehow, we’re all expected to just “bounce back” in every sense of the word after giving birth. Children do not give birth to themselves; mothers give birth to them, and that’s a very wild and intense ride, and for some women, can even be traumatic. To this day, the 25 hours I spent in labor from beginning to end was the most intense 25 hours of my entire freaking life; I doubt anything will ever top that – physically, mentally, emotionally. IT WAS BEYOND INTENSE. It is said that it takes somewhere between two to four years for a woman to feel like “herself” again after giving birth. Unfortunately, in the U.S., you’re meant to go back to work the next week, in six weeks, and if you’re “lucky” like me, in the next 16-20 weeks. So who cares if you are “yourself” again!

A lot has resonated with me as I am going through this book, but what I wasn’t expecting was this excerpt near the beginning:

“During pregnancy, cells are exchanged between the mother and fetus in the placenta. When the baby is born, some of those cells remain intact in the mother’s body. For decades. Perhaps forever. The phenomenon is called microchimerism. The exchange creates what the leading geneticist Dr. Diana Bianchi calls “a permanent connection which contributes to the survival of both individuals.

“Cells have been found in subsequent siblings, too. If you have a younger brother or sister, they may have your cells.”

I figured that something would likely be left behind from my baby after giving birth, especially given the role the placenta plays and how that also needs to be birthed out of you, but I didn’t realize that my baby’s cells could stay in me potentially forever. Nor did I ever think that any subsequent siblings would have their older siblings’ cells in them. But that then made me stop and think: Wow. That means that I physically have some of Ed’s cells in me. He actually is a part of me, and in more ways than I had previously thought or known. I always knew that a part of Kaia would be in me, and I’d obviously be in her, but Ed’s in me? But it gave me this sense of joy and warmth, as strange as it sounds. He may no longer be living, but he physically is still living on in me, through cells that I got from him through our mother.

I think it goes without saying that I am definitely enjoying this book.

“It takes a village” that can even include total strangers

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The last several days, I haven’t been taking the stroller when picking up Kaia. It started when Chris said he wasn’t going to take her in the stroller to school when we got ready early one morning, and so he wanted her to walk. It made perfect sense: the weather was warm and comfortable, and well, Kaia can walk. So she should walk! She tends to walk better (as in, in the right direction and at a decent pace…) with Chris than she does with me, though. She barely will walk the one block from the school to the subway stop in Chinatown with me, so I end up carrying her. Then, when we arrive at Columbus Circle, she will whine and whinge when I ask her to walk just for the two blocks home and insist that, “Mummy carry you! MUMMY CARRY YOU!” So I end up having to tell her if she doesn’t walk, she won’t get <fill in the friend, stuffed animal, toy, food, treat>. When we finally land on a motivator (yesterday, I told her if she didn’t walk, she wouldn’t get to see her friend Jacob this weekend…), she will eagerly hold my hand and walk with me the full two blocks nonstop.

Today, when we got to the corner of the street with two blocks to go, she started crying and asked me to carry her. I said, no, you will walk. Big girls walk, and you are a big girl now! She refused, so she simply sat down in front of the luxury apartment building and just stared up at me blankly. I was not going to let her win this; I do NOT want her always getting her way, even if we were running late to get home today. So I did my usual thing and threatened to take all these things away I knew she wanted. Nothing worked. She just would not budge. And I was not going to let her get what she wanted in this moment. I stood my ground.

Then, a good samaritan appeared out of nowhere. A slightly older woman with a big smile came up to us and kneeled down to Kaia. “Hey there!” the woman said in an upbeat voice. “What’s going on here? You don’t wanna walk with your mommy? You just don’t feel like it, huh? Well, how about this: if you don’t want to walk with Mommy, then I can take you with me! You want to come to my dance class with me? It’ll be so much fun! And then after, I’ll take you to my house! How about that?”

Pookster peered up at her and gave her a slight side eye. Then, she looked at me to see what my expression said. I simply smiled. After a few seconds, Pooks jumped up, grabbed my hand, and we started walking. I thanked the nice woman and wished her well, and we were on our merry way home.

“Sometimes, it just takes another person to chime in for a bit, and all is well in the world!” the woman said gleefully, as she wished us a good night.

Who is part of my village? All of New York City who has done things to entertain Kaia, soothe her, make her laugh, play peekaboo with her, and encouraged her to walk with her friggin’ parents properly.

Neighborly neighbors and my fixed earrings

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I was rummaging through my vast earring collection a few days ago when I came across a pair of earrings that Chris’s cousin had made me. She had taken a jewelry making class last year, and with that she decided to use her newly learned skills to make all the women in the family earrings for Christmas presents. It was so sweet of her. She’s always been a very crafty person. She’s knitted and crocheted Kaia a number of different clothing pieces, from mittens to hats and even more complex pieces like sweaters. As someone who enjoys creating arts, crafts, and homemade food, I really appreciate her hand-crafted pieces and the time and effort she puts into them. Anyone can buy a gift; not everyone is willing to put the time and effort into making it with their own hands for someone else.

Unfortunately, I only ever got to wear those earrings once before I broke them. Me being me, I overstuffed my carry-on bag that held the earrings, and tone of the earring backings fell off. The way it broke could not easily be fixed unless I found a new replacement piece, so I left it in my jewelry box and just let it sit. Though I figured someone in our neighborhood must know of a place where I could buy a replacement piece, so I posted in our Upper West Side Neighbors group for a recommendation on recommendations.

Amazingly, someone who is an artist herself responded. She said she’d have the finding needed to fix it, so she’d help me do it herself. I just had to come to her apartment. So yesterday, I went to her place after my dentist appointment, and she showed me the piece she’d glue on the earring back to fix it. I was truly amazed at her generosity, plus the fact that she’d so willingly let a stranger into her apartment. She lives in a co-op building in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment, where she uses the larger bedroom as her studio. If I hadn’t known any better when I walked in, I would just assume this was a work space and not originally intended as a bedroom! She said to leave the earrings with her so that after the glue dried, she could test it to ensure it really was successful. She’s already messaged to tell me her handiwork was a win, so I’m planning to go back up to her place to pick them up. I offered to pay her, but she insisted she just wanted to be a good neighbor and meet people in the ‘hood. So I’ll likely bring her flowers as a token of appreciation.

People complain a lot about Facebook, but I’ve really enjoyed feeling like I’m really a part of the Upper West Side through the Buy-Nothing and Neighbors groups. It really makes me feel like I’m a part of a real community and that people do care and look out for each other here. Yes, people do genuinely look out for each other here, in this big concrete jungle. Just in the last week, a kid’s new giraffe stuffed animal got returned, and in the craziest incidents, a real diamond tennis bracelet got returned to its owner! It’s really not terrible living in a big city!

The baby tooth that could

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I went in for a dental cleaning today and told my dentist that my destabilized baby tooth (thanks, pregnancy) felt even more destabilized in the last few weeks. He took x-rays of the tooth and showed me what it looked like.

“The bone has completely degraded underneath the baby tooth!” he exclaimed while looking at the x-ray through the light. “The baby tooth has nothing to hang onto! It’s really any day now!”

My childhood dentist told me that I’d be lucky if my two baby teeth lasted until age 30. I’m turning 39 in just a few months. The only reason this baby tooth got destabilized is due to pregnancy tooth decay in the neighboring tooth, which resulted in a root canal in 2022 that shook up the baby tooth. All dentists I’ve seen since childhood have told me they’ve been amazed I’ve kept both baby teeth in such good shape for this long; I’m an anomaly. And as each year goes on and the baby teeth stay in tact, I’m even more of a freak (or miracle?) to them.

We decided I’d just wait until the tooth fell out on its own. That day is going to be utterly terrifying and relieving at the same time. I can tell it’s gotten looser in the last few months. I consciously try to avoid eating anything hard on my right side because of it. The day it falls out is also going to be a sad and bloody one, an end of an era. I just hope that when it does finally happen that I’m not in a public place; the last thing I want to do is freak people out by trying to run to the nearest bathroom with blood running down my mouth and chin. And then, at that point, I’ll need to get bone grafted for a potential implant, which will not only require surgery, but also be quite expensive. The dentist told me that I should be reserving next year’s dental allowance from my insurance for this. I’ll need to brace myself.

This is what getting older means: spending more money on annoying health-related procedures. It’s mortality staring me in the face.

Listening as a skill

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A former colleague I was friendly with reached out to me a few weeks ago to let me know that she had relocated back to New York in the last year from San Francisco. She asked if I was still here and if I was, that she’d like to meet up for coffee to catch up. I hadn’t seen her in over two years, so I thought it would be good to see her. We met up late Friday afternoon for some tea and sat at a park in Chinatown before I went to pick up Kaia from school.

We chatted for over an hour about all the usual things: her relocation, our respective work situations, people we still kept in touch with from our last company. We talked about Kaia and parenthood, and we also talked about health. I was pretty stunned when she recounted to me things I’d shared with her over three years ago when she was last in town, and we met for coffee. I invited her and another former colleague to hang out on my roof, and she remembered me telling her about my cubital tunnel syndrome and random travel anecdotes that I didn’t even remember telling her. I was really endeared that she remembered, and it felt really comforting. I’m so used to being a broken record nowadays and sharing the same stories over and over again that I forget who I have shared them with… and frankly, who even cares and retains them.

But it made me realize how it feels like people have such short attention spans now that they don’t really listen. People complain about news articles being too long. There are even people now who think that some TikTok or Instagram videos are too long, so they just swipe to the next one that is faster. Chris even complains sometimes when his brother or I are telling a story and he keeps saying, “Get to the point!” People don’t seem to appreciate the art of story telling the way I always did as a kid and even now, as an adult. But I think the best stories are nuanced and have interesting arcs. There’s always a good lead up. Characters have different subtle personality quirks that only reveal themselves with time. And it’s comforting to know that there are still some people in existence who really do take the time to listen, and even remember.