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“Why is it just three of us?”

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Kaia woke up this morning to see that her paternal grandparents were not in the house anymore. As they usually do, Chris’s parents left on one of several side trips on this trip: for the next week and a half, they are off to Utah, Nevada, Toronto, and Maine. She came out of her bedroom and peered at our bed where Chris’s parents would sleep and did not see them. Instead, she saw a fully made up bed. She also saw me lying on the sofa bed, still under the covers.

“Where did Suma and Topa go?” Kaia asked, as she got into sofa bed with me.

“Remember we told you they’d leave this morning for about a week and a half?” I said to her lightly. “They’ll be back next Wednesday! They’ll be back before you know it.”

She gave me her contemplative look. She was clearly sad and did not like that they weren’t at home with us anymore.

As she ate her breakfast, she said to me, “Why is it just the three of us?” And when I told her that Suma and Topa couldn’t stay with us forever, she kept asking me, “Why? Why?”

Kaia wants everyone she loves with her all the time – forever. Like most kids her age, she never wants the fun to end, and she always wants to be loved and cuddled and given attention to constantly. It’s hard to explain to her in a way she will understand why some people she loves live so far away, and why these same relations (like grandparents) can be closer in proximity like her classmates’ grandparents may be. But I guess that’s all the things you start learning and understanding the older and more mature you become.

Making strawberry matcha latte at home

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The last time I was at a matcha cafe, I was very tempted to get their strawberry matcha latte. But then I balked at the price — $9. I thought to myself, I know I can easily make this for so much less at home, and I would enjoy doing it. So I ordered a cheaper matcha latte that day and made a mental note to myself that I had to buy strawberries when on sale next and commit to making the strawberry sauce base.

So I got two pounds of very ripe strawberries from a street vendor in Astoria last weekend, and this time I knew I was finally going to make this happen! I washed and cut up the strawberries, tossed them into a little saucepan with a little bit of sugar. Then I boiled and simmered it for about 10 minutes. I pureed the sauce and stored it in a jar in the fridge. The “hard” work was done here.

Today, I finally put it all together: I added about a quarter of a cup of the strawberry sauce to two tall glasses (for both Chris and me), then poured in about half a cup of milk to each. I took some of my Costco everyday matcha powder and whisked it with some hot water. I added this to the glasses along with some ice and stirred a bit. Then I took a sip.

This was definitely tasty, and likely more satisfying knowing that I made this all by myself… And knowing that each of these glasses did not cost $9! I am more than happy to pay for lattes or tea/coffee drinks out when I know I cannot be bothered making the equivalent at home. But for me, a strawberry matcha latte is very low effort, high reward. And as long as I have matcha at home and affordable access to sweet strawberries, then I’m all in on making these and enjoying at home.

Rediscovering the glory of cooking with fresh lemongrass — all because of a very sharp knife

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At most, I cook with fresh lemongrass two to three times a year. You can’t buy it at a regular grocery store; if I need it, I pick it up from Hong Kong Supermarket or my Vietnamese market in Chinatown. There’s really no substitute for fresh lemongrass: it is bright, fresh, almost sweet, with very floral, minty, almost gingery and herbaceous notes. When you eat something with lemongrass, it stares at you in the face; subtlety is not a characteristic of this herb. Although I love this herb, I’ve historically found it really annoying to deal with. The edible part of the stalk is very hard, which means it can be difficult to cut, even with a sharp knife. If you look at guides for how to cut lemongrass, some of them even say that you should consider resharpening your knife after cutting lemongrass because the damn stalk can dull your blade!

But alas, with my fancy Shun knife that was gifted for my birthday, I have a super, duper sharp knife now. So when I picked up two lemongrass stalks to make some grilled Vietnamese lemongrass beef patties, I wondered how much easier it would be to cut these with this new knife. And lo and behold, this crazy sharp knife made a massive difference: not only did the knife slide through the tough stalk quicker and smoother, but every cut felt so easy! Who would have thought that the knife would truly make all the difference when it came to cutting this delicious herb?

So I finely minced the lemongrass and threw in some other aromatics, fish sauce, oyster sauce, black pepper, and some sugar. I added the minced beef, mixed it up, created meatballs, then flattened them for quicker cooking on the pan. And once I was done cooking, I took a bite of one of the meatballs: Yum. The lemongrass flavor was just singing! Few things beat this flavor for me. My new mental note to self is that I will definitely be cooking with lemongrass more often now that I have this knife, which has greatly improved my handling of literally tough ingredients like this herb. It really is true: oftentimes, your equipment makes all the difference when cooking!

The little klepto friend at our Lunar New Year party

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Giving hong bao/li xi/red envelopes/pockets/packets is a Lunar New Year tradition, one that I don’t really practice as an adult outside of my Lunar New Year party, if I had to be honest. My parents and our wider family are further away, so it’s not like my cousins’ kids are close by (or close in relationship) where I’d see them often enough and give them hong bao. I remember receiving lots of hong bao very frequently as a young child, especially by my grandma’s friends and our very extended older relatives who would stop by during Chinese New Year, bearing lots of gifts and eating all the traditional foods. I stopped receiving hong bao regularly once my mom converted to Jehovah’s Witnesses. But traditionally, the way it works is that children receive hong bao from the older generations. Then once you become an adult, you can continue receiving them until you get married. As an adult, you’re expected to give to the younger generation. But once you get married, you are expected to give to younger friends/relatives who are not married, as well as the younger generation. In some families, once you start working, you’re expected to give a hong bao to your parents, but alas, my parents don’t celebrate, so…

I prepared a hong bao for all three kids who came to our Lunar New Year party. As a child, I remember until I was old/mature enough to be “trusted” with money, my mom would allow me to first receive the hong bao in my hand, then after I thanked the giver, she’d quickly snatch it away for safe keeping until we got home, fearing I’d lose the money. Unfortunately, when I handed out the hong bao to the kids at the party, the parents did not always follow this (smart) practice my mom did, and they let the kids play with the hong bao. Well, one child called S took H’s hong bao, opened it, and then took the money for herself. When H and his mom left our place, she told me that H had two hong bao originally, but one of them disappeared. After we finished cleaning the place after all our guests left, I found H’s hong bao, but it was empty. I asked Kaia if she knew where H’s money went. She very matter-of-factly responded that S had taken the money out of H’s hong bao. I still couldn’t find any loose cash after looking everywhere in the house.

So I texted S’s dad and asked how much money she came home with. I told him the context that Kaia had shared, though I wasn’t sure if I could fully believe her given her age/level of maturity. He went to go check. And lo and behold, he snapped a photo of not two bills S was supposed to have, but THREE, including the one I was supposed to give H.

I didn’t realize that we had a little klepto toddler friend among us.

Live and learn, parent friends: take your children’s hong bao before they start opening the envelopes and stealing the contents from each others’!

Lunar New Year gifts this year

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Every year I throw my Lunar New Year party, I try to do things a little bit differently to make it better, different, or more special with the food. This year, I made some more intricate Vietnamese dishes. I also created food labels for everything, even marking the ones that were vegetarian or contained pork/mushrooms/shrimp (for people with allergies to those foods). That’s partly to make my life easier with questions on ingredients/what the dishes are, so I don’t have to re-explain myself a dozen times, and so that people know what they’re eating right away. But what I wasn’t quite expecting this year is that the gifts we got were extra special, nice, or fun!

Kaia received several generous hong bao from friends, as it’s a cultural tradition that the older generation should give hong bao/li xi to the younger generation. One of my friends gave me a small money tree several weeks in advance for Lunar New Year party hosting. A third friend drove all the way from New Jersey down to Manhattan Chinatown to a popular (and pricey!) Malaysian jerky shop to get us an entire pound of pork jerky. She also gave us a couple boxes of bean-based pastas, a single orange for good luck (haha), and some homemade lentil-based breads she’d just baked. Another friend brought beautifully boxed and individually wrapped Japanese Yoku Moku “cigare” biscuits, plus an entire box of sumo citrus! I love sumo citrus, but they are quite expensive, so we rarely buy them. Originating in Japan, Sumo citrus are actually not an orange, per se, but a cross between satsuma, mandarin, and navel oranges. We even got a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. A friend who recently came back from India brought us a framed Madhubani painting, which is a style of painting traditionally done by women from her dad’s old village in Bihar. And then there was the most bougie gift of all that Chris’s friend gave me, perfectly wrapped in glittery pink wrapping paper: a Williams Sonoma gold and white ceramic dragon candle, made especially for Lunar New Year. I placed the candle, alongside my 3D cherry blossom birthday card from a friend, in our dining area to display them both. That huge gold candle definitely is the most flashy, showy thing I own to date now…

Year of the Fire Horse Lunar New Year Party

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Today, we had a Lunar New Year party of 17 friends who came to feast on 12 different dishes that I made! It was our largest group hosted yet. We had 16 people, but then a friend of Chris decided last minute he could come. Chris asked if I had enough food. I had a mini panic in my head last night, but I figured that I could always supplement with additional dumplings I had cooked and frozen that were originally meant for future use.

Well, there was way more than enough food; I was actually shocked by the amount of food we had left over, which just means that we’ll have more to eat (and less need for me to cook!) for this week. This year, in true form, I “upleveled” and tried out some new recipes, did my usual trusted staples, and also added more Vietnamese dishes (which were quite labor-intensive!) to the line-up. After prepping for two weeks and deciding on this menu about a month ago, this is what I made:

Starters:

Banh it tran – Vietnamese (Hue) sticky rice dumplings filled with mashed mung bean and minced pork, topped with scallion oil, fried shallots, and served with nuoc cham

Banh bot loc – Vietnamese (Hue) banana leaf steamed tapioca dumplings stuffed with shrimp , served with nuoc cham

[Do chua – pickled carrot and daikon (for both dumplings above, plus thit kho as a palate cleanser/much needed acidic hit)]

Luo bo gao – Chinese pan fried radish cake with Chinese sausage, shiitake mushrooms, and shredded scallops

Mains:

Thit kho – Vietnamese coconut water braised pork ribs with eggs

Nuo mi fan – Chinese sticky rice with Chinese sausage, cha siu, shredded scallops, shiitake mushrooms

Dan Dan noodles

Steamed wild black sea bass with ginger and scallion

Blanched yu choy greens with black vinegar sauce and crispy garlic

Buddha’s Delight / Luo han zhai: Stir fried (12!) vegetables with mung bean noodles

Desserts:

Black sesame swirled pumpkin nian gao

Chinese almond cookies

Black sesame tang yuan

Food is one of my love languages. I love feeding people I love. I love it when people discover new foods and enjoy them, and I love when they discover new foods they enjoy because of me. And I love it when people love the food I make them. One friend discovered she loved lotus root and the different tofu products in my zhai dish; she also loved the do chua/pickled carrot and daikon for my Vietnamese dishes. Another friend was obsessed over the savory-sweet flavor that the coconut water gave my thit kho/pork ribs. A friend who came for the first time said she couldn’t get enough of my steamed fish and how flavorful it was. A friend also was excited to have my black sesame tang yuan again — this is someone who is self-professed about being anti-dessert, but loves these sticky rice balls of “not too sweet” black sesame filling.

It’s definitely a lot of thought and work to put into this party, but I love every bit of it. I love the lead up, the food prep, the last minute bits that have to be cooked, the chaos that ensues with the kids coming in. And I always end the evening, after lots of cleaning and washing, with a happy and warm heart.

Cultural food traditions – honoring family, roots, and ancestors

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“Are you sure you want to make everything?” Chris asked me the other day regarding our upcoming Lunar New Year party this Sunday. “You don’t want to buy any food at all?”

I hesitated for a second because I realized that we had about 18 people total expected to come. To date, this would be the biggest group of people we’ve not only had in our home, but would also be providing food for. “No, I don’t want to buy any prepared food,” I insisted. “I like making all these dishes!”

He relented and said that as long as I enjoyed it, then we could proceed as is, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to lighten the load and buy some prepared foods. I told him I’d consider it in the future — maybe.

As progressive of a person as I like to think I am, there are some traditions I do like to hold up, especially in the realm of food. There’s a real art in making a lot of these traditional New Year’s dishes, and the skills are dying because most people of my generation and younger just don’t value it very highly. Who is going to spend time sourcing all the eight to 20 vegetables to make a cohesive and homemade Buddha’s delight (luo han zhai, or just zhai)? Who wants to spend time making tang yuan dough by hand and from scratch; plus the black sesame paste filling, grinding, rolling, then freezing individual black sesame balls, to then wrap them in dough, and freeze once again… to then boil in hot water and then finally eat? We all have work, day to day responsibilities, and most people just want to throw in the towel and simply eat the food. That’s why so many families just go out to restaurants to celebrate Lunar New Year, or they’ll get ready-made foods and bring them home. But I’m not one of those people. I actually take pride and joy in making these dishes from scratch. It’s like honoring my grandparents and my cultures — that’s the way I see it. Not everyone eating these dishes at my party will understand the cultural significance. But every time I make them, I remember why they’re important and why they’re worth the time and energy to make. This time of year, I do spend time reflecting on where I came from and my roots, and while I make these foods, I meditate on it, clear my mind, and reflect on the past, present, and future.

Bánh bột lọc: a labor-intensive, finicky, and annoying dish

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Bánh bột lọc, a Central Vietnamese (Hue) specialty, is a tapioca dumpling, usually wrapped and steamed in banana leaves, stuffed with seasoned shrimp, pork, and sometimes mushrooms. My mom introduced these to me as a kid, but it was very rare to find them even at Vietnamese restaurants and bakeries in San Jose because these dumplings are so laborious and annoying to make. The “annoying” part is due to the tapioca starch: unlike using glutinous or regular rice flour doughs, tapioca starch is extremely, extremely finicky and difficult to manage. Sometimes, it can feel like liquid sand in your hands, and it’s hard to get the texture just right so that you can actually knead and shape it properly. But it’s imperative that you get it to a bread dough-like stage, otherwise shaping it will be a nightmare.

The last time I remember having these tapioca dumplings was probably over 12 years ago. My mom met and befriended a Vietnamese woman who had an underground Vietnamese catering business. This talented lady made all the Vietnamese dishes we love that require so much effort, dishes like banh uot, banh cuon, banh it tran, and bánh bột lọc. My mom did a massive bulk order of banh bot loc, knowing that I’d be home. And then, she sent me back to New York with a big bag of banh bot loc, all individually wrapped in banana leaves. She ordered me to store them in my freezer and pop however many out for Chris and me, and to then steam them to eat. “And don’t forget the nuoc cham!” she said, before I went back to New York.

So I decided that for my Lunar New Year party this year, I’d finally attempt making bánh bột lọc. I always have banana leaves in the freezer. I just thawed the shrimp. And I had tapioca starch. I was always up for a challenge, right? And well, this was certainly a challenge.. and a real mess. The tapioca starch dough was so finicky and infuriating. But when I finally got it, I was on a roll. A few of the dumplings I rolled with banana leaves had errors, resulting in the “dough” oozing out of the leaves like liquid. So I promptly steamed my “mistake” dumplings to see how the texture and flavor turned out. And I was shocked: even the “mistake” bánh bột lọc looked decent, and the flavor and texture were spot on! The flavor was savory and briny; the texture was nice and chewy, just as tapioca should be.

My mom doesn’t really like that I love cooking, especially laborious, intense projects like bánh bột lọc. She will likely get annoyed when I tell her that I already made a batch of these, and it’s currently sitting in my freezer, waiting to be steamed. But I hope she realizes that it’s one tiny way that I try to keep her culture alive.

Blizzard descends upon the Northeast

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While I was originally planning to take Kaia to the Lunar New Year festival at the Lincoln Center today, that event ended up getting cancelled due to the blizzard hitting the Northeast through tomorrow. Chris was listening to the official notifications regarding the blizzard: it would officially be declared a snow day tomorrow, which means there wouldn’t even be remote learning for older school children. All grocery stores would be closed, and very likely the majority of restaurants and businesses. Many subway trains would be running on weekend/reduced schedule. New Jersey Transit would not run. And they even implemented a travel ban for all non-essential vehicles in Manhattan within certain hours of the day.

For activities for today, Kaia’s swim class got cancelled since the college pool is closed. But her martial arts class in the morning still went on as planned. Chris grumbled that the weather sucked and that it was miserable outside; I reminded him that most Sundays, he never wants to go outside, anyway, and insists on relaxing on the bed with his computer. He responded and said that wasn’t the point: it’s actually about just knowing there’s an option to have a pleasant day outside. Plus, dreary weather always gets most of us in a sleepier mood, even when we haven’t done much at all to get tired.

A friend of mine in San Francisco is having her belated 40th birthday celebration there today. I won’t be there for it, but I messaged her to let her know I was thinking about her and that I hope she has a good time. She responded and said she completely understands why I don’t typically travel for leisure at this time of year: she saw reports about the impending blizzard and said that would definitely be terrifying for any planned air travel.

So I spent my Sunday doing what I usually do: morning yoga, a lot of cooking, some cleaning, and some playing with the Kaia Pookie. Tomorrow will be a snow day, so work productivity will already be lower. So we’ve just got to focus on the important things, which is staying warm, having enough good food to eat, and making sure that we stay sane with this continuous cold weather.

Kaia, almond croissants, and Almondine Bakery

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We were wandering around Dumbo, Brooklyn, today, finding new places (like the incredible Fontainhas Cafe — what delicious royal chai!), and revisiting old favorites, like Almondine Bakery. Almondine Bakery has long been on the “best of” lists in New York City when it comes to their croissants, and especially their almond croissant. They definitely do not skimp here: they have a really thick, generous layer of almond paste inside the croissant, along with a beautiful sprinkling of toasted, sliced almonds on top. We’ve gone here pretty much every year of Kaia’s existence; I still remember Almondine being one of the very first places where I did a diaper change for her in their bathroom (on the floor, with a mat!). As soon as she realized we were in a bakery this visit, she ran to the glass display cases and started pointing at all the colorful things she wanted to eat. But I told her that we’d get almond croissants (she cannot always choose at her age). She insisted she didn’t want an almond croissant; as of late, she has some mental block seeing almonds and walnuts in any form (even though she’s actually happy to eat them). When I bought the croissants over to our table, though, she immediately tried to pull the croissant out of the bag and wanted to dig in right away. But.. she started trying to pick off the sliced almonds on top and just eat the main croissant.

When we were leaving Almondine, I had her pose with the Almondine sign and take a photo there. Later this evening when reviewing my Google Photos, I did a search for “almond croissant,” and there I saw more photos across the years of Kaia at Almondine. We’ve taken so many repeat shots of her at the same place, year after year, that I could easily do a year-by-year, one after the other, photo slide show of her frequenting our favorite spots across this city. Our old faves may stay the same at the same locations with our same love for them, but our Kaia Pookie just keeps growing and growing. And her smile at these places is only getting bigger and bigger, too!