Author Archives: Yvonne

Eating and embracing the food of her cultures

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Since before Kaia was even conceived, I knew I would be hell bent on making sure she embraced the foods of her culture, so Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian, and well, inevitably Australian/American (whatever that means). It really wasn’t difficult at all, as she was exposed to flavors like sesame and soy almost immediately; within a week or two of eating solids, she was tasting and licking every Indian spice under the sun, including chilies! And since six months of age when she started eating solids, she’s never really stopped embracing these flavors. Her favorite vegetables, by far, are all the Asian ones like gai lan and yu choy. Kaia enjoys dal and richly flavored curries. As of late, she’s been obsessed with this miso that has Japanese butterbur flower buds that peak in the spring (!!) that a friend brought back from a recent trip to Japan. I’ve used it as a glaze on roasted eggplant, as well as in a braise with mushrooms and eggplant.

One area that Kaia has not quite embraced has been around Asian desserts (we intentionally have not given her any Indian sweets because they are like sugar bombs). In general, we’re strict with her sugar consumption, so when she gets sweets, it’s usually only a few tastes at most. I’ve tried to give her dou hua (tofu pudding) just to taste a few times. She will have one taste and then say she doesn’t want anymore. I tried to give her a black sesame tang yuan after cooling it, but she seemed put off by the black color. She had the same reaction to grass jelly and refused to even try it on multiple occasions (grass jelly is my THING). She did, however, very much enjoy taro coconut sago.

So when I went to Banh Mi Co Ut in Chinatown and picked up a fat slice of banh da lon (layered pandan and mung bean tapioca/rice cake), I figured she probably wouldn’t want any. These types of desserts are my ideal “sweets” to introduce to her, as 1) they aren’t too sweet, 2) they actually have nutritional value due to the protein in the mung beans and carbs from the rice/tapioca, and 3) they are the flavors of her culture. As she happily peeled lychees after dinner tonight, I briefly warmed a slice of the banh da lon for myself and placed it on the table between us. She immediately looked down at it and asked what it was. I told her it was pandan mung bean cake.

Her eyes twinkled. “Can I have some, please?” Pookster asked with a cheeky smile, expecting me to say no.

“Okay, you can have one bite,” I said to her, breaking off a piece of the squishy cake for her.

She tentatively took it, said thank you, and took a teeny, tiny bite and chewed. Deciding she liked it, she placed the entire piece in her mouth and chewed while smiling.

“Yum!” Pookster said. “Do you have more?” She started giggling with excitement.

WOW. I cannot even describe how happy this made me. My baby was finally embracing a Vietnamese dessert that I loved, that I grew up enjoying, that I always saw as a treat when my mom would surprise me by bringing some home. She was embracing the sweets of my culture, her culture, and there is little else that warms my heart than knowing she is embracing foods I either make for her or get for her.

I explained to her that we didn’t have anymore, but next time, I could either buy some more, or if I was feeling up to it, I might even make this at home with her (the negative response elicited a loud and long “Awwwwwwww” from her). This cake is laborious, as it’s layered and steamed multiple times with mung bean and pandan layers, but hey, maybe now was the time to embrace this cooking adventure! And it would make me so happy to make the foods of our shared culture together with my sweet Kaia Pookie.

Overnight potty training, continued – with an eventual success!

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We finally had a success last night! I was able to estimate the time of Kaia needing to pee early enough so that she did not wet the bed, and actually peed in the potty! I originally came to her bed at around 11:30, and she sleepily told me she did not need to pee. I laid with her for another 45 minutes, and then at around 12:15, she came with me to the bathroom with little resistance and urinated! Then, she insisted that she “wants mummy” to lie down with her. So I laid with her for about an hour and 15 minutes. I tried to sneak back out to my own bed, but she came out to look for me. As she stood in the hallway at around 1:30am, I asked if she needed to pee. She said nothing but wandered into her bathroom and turned on the light. I pulled her shorts down, placed her on her potty seat, and she urinated the second time that night. I had a pretty good feeling when I set an alarm for Chris to wake her up to pee at around 3am.

Chris had her successfully pee again at around 3am. I passed out and barely noticed that wakeup. When I woke up again just before 6:30am, she had come into our bed… with dry shorts. We didn’t have any wet bed situation, no soiled shorts to throw into the laundry, and no pee-stained Kaia to clean up this evening! It’s been our first fully successful night! We celebrated, gave her many hugs, kisses, and high fives, and I told her that if she kept this up, she’d be that much closer to getting her requested and much wanted pink and purple nail polish!

Now, the question is: can we keep eye balling correctly her pee windows and keep her dry so that she will then want to wake up on her own to pee?

Mandoline sliced something other than zucchini today

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Today was Father’s Day, and I thought it would be a good occasion to put together a cohesive meal. Most of the time when I am making food, I am thinking in singular dishes or about how many vegetables I need to prepare. Since Kaia was born, the only times I’ve really prepared a cohesive menu are when we’ve had guests over. But I really do want to change that because I prefer it when dishes are supposed to go together. So today, I made kimchi soondubu jigae (Korean kimchi soft tofu soup) with pork ribs, japchae (Korean glass noodles with vegetables), bindaetteok (Korean kimchi mung bean pancakes), rice, and three different types of banchan: soy bean sprout salad, marinated spinach, and zucchini.

For the zucchini banchan, I decided to whip out the mandoline Chris got me during the pandemic. Honestly, I haven’t used it too many times because I am a little terrified of it. I have a mandoline section on my box grater, but I’d only ever used it a few times and didn’t really trust it (it seemed too dull, which would beg for more pressure, which is dangerous!).

The few times I’ve used the mandoline setting, I was very deliberate with each slice. I watched each cut go through. I was always determined to never get cut by it… Until today, when I finally got cut by it. I was talking to Chris. Kaia was making a ruckus nearby, and I was very clearly distracted. I kept slicing the zucchini until it got way too close to my fingers, and SLICE! A huge section of the side of my right thumb got cut off. The blood was literally getting everywhere. I was dripping blood and leaving small puddles on the counter and floor. It took almost an hour and endless tissue, gauze, and paper towels to stop the bleeding, along with applying pressure and ice. I’d never cut myself this deeply before.

Luckily, I don’t think I cut any nerve or tendon, but it’s been pretty uncomfortable. The few times I’ve knocked myself in that spot, it hurts like hell. I’ve been doing my best to not use my right thumb, which is obviously hard. But it’s so painful when something even taps it. I have a feeling this will be the worst kitchen wound I have had to date. My friend, who also cooks often, was marveling that this was just my first mandoline cut (it’s a VERY common kitchen injury!). She even educated me on “finger condoms” (today, I learned…) and how I may want to get some to protect myself from similar injuries in the future.

Next time, when I am brave enough to take out the mandoline again, I will not talk to anyone or have my child near me. I will need to be 120 percent focused. Wounds like these are not fun at all, and even typing this feels odd because I am trying to avoid using a thumb to type…

Two rainy Saturdays in a row going out

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Last Saturday and today mark two Saturdays in a row this summer where we’ve seen grey skies and rain. Today’s weather was far worse than last Saturday, though: while last Saturday, it was drizzly, a little more, and grey, it was still warm. Today, however, was much cooler (I actually heard people shivering on the street and complaining how cold it was while wearing hoodies!), and the rain seemed a bit harder and more steady. My friend remarked last week that he was surprised we even went out given the weather. I laughed and told him that was silly. A little drizzly wetness was not going to prevent us from going out on a Saturday. The mere thought seemed ridiculous. We were not going to die once rain water touched us!

But the thing is – that’s how a lot of people feel about the rain. And it’s sad when you think about it. Why are you going to let a little sprinkle keep you home bound for an entire day? Are we really that delicate as a species?! It’s like you’re just letting life pass you by because of some subpar weather, which just seems a bit pathetic unless you are in poor health. Last Saturday, we were in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Today, we were in Ditmars, Queens. While in Ditmars, we went to a popular Greek restaurant that usually has a wait of anywhere from one to two hours. Given the rain, they had zero wait, so we were seated right away. People deciding not to be out today due to the rain benefited us, so I wasn’t going to complain about that. But just the thought that people change plans just based on a little rain really sat with me throughout the day.

I suppose this thought relates to how i’ve been thinking about spending my time more intentionally, and part of that means spending less time on my phone looking at things that don’t matter (ahem, scrolling Instagram or Facebook or Reddit endlessly and staying the hell off of TikTok), reading news that I actually do want to read, and not feeling compelled to respond to non-urgent text messages right away. I don’t want some stupid social media platform or my phone having control over my time and life. So why should anyone let a little bad weather control their life, as well? Go out, do what you wanted to do, see who you want to see, carry an umbrella, wear rain boots or a raincoat, and live your life, for god’s sake!

Struggling with the truth of what I see

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I met up with a friend for a catchup at a cafe near Kaia’s school this afternoon. We recently celebrated her upcoming birth with a baby shower. When we met up, she was noticeably tense. I know she hasn’t been sleeping well due to the baby moving around a lot, plus not being able to find a comfortable enough position, which is pretty common in this later stage of pregnancy. She also hasn’t been eating well, as she’s had pretty bad acid reflux, which has caused her to vomit several times. So now, she tries to eat small meals instead of any one big meal at a time.

She was confiding in me that she was feeling a lot of frustration with her dad and sister for pushing her to get married to “protect” herself given the pending birth of a baby. They were giving her grief for not doing enough to plan for her and the baby’s housing and protection in the event her relationship ended or god forbid, if her partner suddenly died from catastrophic causes. Her sister had also insinuated that she was making a lot of decisions and living her life by going along with whichever partner she was with or whomever she was close friends with at the time. In the same breath, she also honestly acknowledged that she’s really struggled with criticism and not taking it personally. Though she recognizes that people do often give critiques because they want to help you or know you can be better, she oftentimes internalizes it and sees it all as a personal attack.

I didn’t say much to any of this. I just asked her questions about the context, how these comments made her feel. I am sure some of the follow-up questions I asked would also reveal my own opinion on these topics even if I didn’t openly speak up about it out loud. But it was a difficult conversation because frankly, I agree with a lot of the points her family is making. These observations her family is making has context because they are patterns she’s exhibited her whole life, and no one would be able to see that better than those who have been around her this long; I’m included in that small group of people. But there’s no way to nicely tell someone that they change with the winds, that they culturally appropriate or adapt the views or interests of those around them so easily. Of course, it will all be met with defensiveness. I also know even without her saying it that she’s delicate and cannot handle feedback like this. People like her dad, sister, or I who have opinions like this are just being “assholes.”

So, I’m just trying to be a good friend and listen and not judge. It’s not like my opinion matters anyway because she’s never looked to me for advice. You kind of have to wait for people to crash and burn on their own for them to see how the decisions they’ve made will ultimately shape their lives. It’s a hard and awkward position to be in, though, because good friends always want to help. But like in so many situations, you can only help those who want your help. I know this from experience, and as I get older, I have to keep reminding myself that people never change because of other people telling them to have to; that desire to change has to come from within.

“Moving Up” to Pre-K ceremony

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Last week, Kaia’s school sent out a message to all families that a “Moving Up to Pre-K” ceremony and celebration would be happening today at school. It would include some speeches, a slideshow of the kids throughout the school year, a performance by the kids in Kaia’s 3K class, and then end with a lunch celebration with the families. Although I am familiar with preschool/Pre-K “graduations” (I myself had a preschool graduation), I didn’t realize that schools gave ceremonies for kids who were in 3K moving up to preschool. It could be a new thing — who the heck knows? It feels like a bit of a participation trophy, but I guess that could be argued for preschool, elementary, and middle school graduation, as well. All I know is that we were given about a week’s notice for this, and we were asked to contribute money for the lunch — what joy!

So Chris and I both came today. I had known that Kaia had been singing some mysterious Chinese song I didn’t recognize, and I suspected it was a “surprise” song for the performance today, so I didn’t press the teachers when they didn’t send me all the names of the Chinese songs Kaia was singing parts of at home. Our administrator gave a speech and showed a photo slideshow, followed by the main teacher of the class giving a speech (or, well, reading off a piece of paper and having zero eye contact with any of the audience), followed by two dances from the kids. One was an English song about growing up/moving to the next stage. The second dance was to a Chinese song called “Gan Xie Lao Shi” (“Thank you, teacher”). The English song and dance were really cute. The Chinese song and dance, however, totally made me tear up. I am not sure what it is about Chinese melodies or words, but this completely had me getting emotional and feeling like my baby was floating further away from me. It’s not like the Chinese song is expressing anything particularly more complex or deep than the English song. But there’s this line in the song once you translate it that says, “Thank you, teacher, for helping me grow up / Your cute smiling face will stay in my heart … You are a beautiful angel.” Everything always feels deeper and more emotional in other languages than English for me. I am not sure why. I also thought the same thing when I have seen texts translated from French or Japanese.

I still can’t believe my baby has just over a week left of 3K. Then, she has summer camp (at the same school), then it’s officially preschool in September. It’s like time just flew by so quickly. She grew these long limbs. She lost her baby fat and pudge. She can speak coherent sentences now that people other than Chris and I understand. She can use words like, “but,” “yesterday,” and “tomorrow” and know what she’s actually saying. My mom said to me on the phone the other day that I should try as much as I can to, “enjoy with her now… because soon, she will grow up and be like you… want to do her own thing.” She didn’t mean it in a mean or spiteful way; she said it in a very wistful, sad tone. My mom had it infinitely harder than me, as she managed and raised two kids, all in the midst of a demanding and demeaning mother-in-law and a pretty useless husband when it came to child-rearing and managing a household — all on top of a rigid full-time job that was fully in office. I don’t blame her for not being “there” for me as much growing up since she also worked full time. I’m lucky I can have quality time with Kaia and really enjoy our moments together. Sometimes, I still want to freeze time so I can just hold her sweet face in my hands and admire how beautiful and intelligent she is. In the slideshow, they did a photo juxtaposition of each kid the first week of 3K and then this last week — they’ve all grown and matured so much! It’s just so hard to believe it went by this quickly. I guess that’s what parenting is all about, isn’t it — watching your babies evolve into tiny humans and then big humans.

Potty training, Part II (overnight)

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Our original goal was that by the end of this summer (hopefully sooner), we’d have Kaia out of pull-ups overnight. Once we get her out of pull-ups overnight, Pookster will officially be 100 percent diaper free (because, yes, as the Oh Crap! training lady says, pull-ups are still diapers). Last summer, she got the peeing down pretty quickly with an accident here or there. The pooping took some time as expected, but she got it within a reasonable amount of time. After our Australia/China/Hong Kong trip late last year into this year, we stopped carrying around the little potty, so she knows she has to use the big potty (with a toddler seat on top). Day time training was relatively painless for us, especially when I see all the potty training horror stories in my parent groups. Night time training, while we attempted to do it the first week we did day time training, did not go well at all. I still remember that last August, I successfully got her to pee in the little potty overnight just once. And then, several hours later, she still wet the bed for her second nightly pee. With warm summer weather now, we thought it would be easier to try to clean her up and have her wear little shorts to bed to minimize dirty laundry.

Chris’s cousin had suggested that we begin overnight training by simply not sending her to bed in any pull-up. This way, she’d realize how sticky and uncomfortable it was, and that would urge her to pee in the potty. Well, we are on night three of consecutively going without any pull-up, and somehow, she seems to show zero desire to get out of bed to urinate at night. We know she’s wet the bed/herself when she wakes up crying for us, or if she walks all the way over to our bed and says, “I wet” (I still love and cannot get over the cuteness of how incorrect that sentence is. I am lightly dreading the day when she comes over and says, “I am wet” or “I’m wet.” It’s like the other night when I went out with a friend for the evening. I told her I’d be back when she was asleep. And she came over at 5am with a huge grin on her face and declared, “Mumma, you came back!” instead of a month or so ago when she said, “Mumma, you back!” I loved the evolution in the sentence and hated it all at the same time. My baby’s youth was slowly slipping away in front of my eyes…. and ears).

We shall see how this goes. But unfortunately, I have a feeling that the Oh Crap! training lady will have it right in the end; I’m probably going to have to go down the damn “guesstimating” route of trying to guess which two windows at night are when she is most likely to pee and drag her to the toilet. The fun that awaits!

Hot cross buns, take 2, results

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It looks like I did two things right that I got wrong last time: I made sure that I used instant yeast as instructed, and I also scalded my milk to prevent any weird growth deactivation in my yeast. But I probably did not spend enough time folding over my hot cross bun balls enough. The balls were already a bit misformed when I rolled them into balls. So when they rose a lot and expanded, they just… got bigger as the same misshapen balls. The second thing I also got wrong once again was the hot cross piping. I think my flour/water paste was too thick this time; last time it was too thin, ran too much over the buns, and then completely disappeared. This time, the crosses are very clear, but a bit too thick. I also cut slightly too big of a hole in my piping bag (I just used a Ziplock bag), which made my crosses thicker than I would have liked. So appearance wise, they still are not completely what I would have liked, but they are far, far better than the crappy “hot cross scones” that I made a couple months ago. When they came out of the oven and we ate one each, we both declared that they looked, smelled, tasted, and felt just like hot cross buns. So even though they are not perfect, they are many steps closer to my ideal homemade hot cross buns.

I might not try this again so soon after having made them twice, but I do want to try my hand at them at least once more this year, just to get the hang of shaping and piping better. That’s #alwayslearning for me here!

Hot cross buns, take 2

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Since I messed up the first iteration of hot cross buns I did around Easter time, I decided that I would follow up by trying to make them again this week. This time, I was ready with both my instant yeast and my pre-scalded milk. There’s no deterring me this time! The dough is currently right by my stove rising. I just checked and it’s already more than doubled in size, which is not what happened last time. A couple months ago when I did this, the dough probably only rose about 50 percent, which was already an indication to me that something was inhibiting the yeast from growing my dough to the full potential.

My friend asked me last week if I had tried making hot cross buns again given my mini disaster last time, and I told her I hadn’t yet. She gave me this look to basically keep me in check: “If I were you, I would have already done it to prove to that fucking dough that I could do it!” Good point. Time is of the essence, so fingers crossed that tomorrow morning, I’ll be able to make this work the right way this time!

An evening of burlesque at The Slipper Room

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A friend of mine has spent years and years raving about how much he loves burlesque shows and specifically, how he loves the Slipper Room in the Lower East Side for their burlesque. I have only seen caricatures or snippets of burlesque over the years, and I’d never been to a proper burlesque show in my life. But I figured, hey, I should do this at least once to see if I like it. I am living in the capital of entertainment and live performances/theater, so what better place than where I currently call home to go see this? I always think (and say) that if you live in New York City but do not take advantage of the live theater, entertainment, music scene, or the vast array of cuisines and restaurants, then why are you even living here to begin with? I decided to go last night with my friend to check this place out.

The venue was very cozy. After we checked in, we went into the main stage area to see a few seats that were reserved, plus mostly standing room. Unfortunately, my friend messed up the reservations, so while he intended on getting us reserved seats, we had to stand for about half the time. This ended up being fine in the end because he was keeping watch on the open seats, and since he’s a regular here, one of the guys manning the seats offered us a table right by the stage halfway through the show. The host of the evening, who my friend says is his favorite, was most definitely the highlight of the night. He made fun of a lot of people and things about the crowd (“an all white audience yet again? Oh, what a surprise!”), he offered for audience members to come up and do provocative or funny things, and he infused a lot of humor throughout. There were three main performers during our show who were rotating in their theme or portrayal. The third person, a female, definitely stood out with how flexible she was; I kept looking at her and wondering how people can actually contort their bodies in every which way without completely injuring themselves. I have more yoga goals now as a result of this. Predictably, there was a lot of teasing of nudity, which I personally do not get that excited about, but I can see how others find that to be an actual “tease.”

Now that I’ve gone once, I can mentally tick this off my list of types of live performances I have seen. But in all honesty, I definitely prefer live comedy, music, or actual theater (Broadway or off-off) far more than I liked this burlesque show.