Category Archives: Hope

Back from a 15-day vacation and home-cooked food is all I want

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Our Northern hemisphere summer trip is always our longest trip away without any home base. This year, we were away for about 15 days, which according to Chris, felt like a longer trip than last year given that we had an overnight flight form New York to Santiago in June 2024. It felt like a good amount of time to be away to feel like we really got to reset and be offline. But at the end of this trip, while I am always a little sad the trip is ending, I’m actually happy to come back home, get back into my daily routine of exercise, work, and cooking. The part I tend to miss the most when I am away from home for a long while is cooking. A friend of mine thought I was crazy when I shared this, but I actually do mean it: cooking is one of my passions, so when I haven’t made anything in a while, my mind and hands tend to feel a little idle. Maybe at some point in the future, we could do an AirBnB where I could have access to a proper kitchen, cooking equipment, and be able to buy local ingredients to cook. But until then, this trip will always mean that we’ll be eating out the whole time, even if “eating out” can simply mean going downstairs to our hotel breakfast.

For dinner today, I made sure to soak lentils and rice the night before so that we’d have dal and rice as our base. I thawed some frozen chicken and frozen tomato onion masala. I trimmed the chicken and cut it into smaller pieces for a Malaysian style curry using the Sambal Lady’s Burlap & Barrel curry spice blend packet. The tomato onion masala got used in the dal I made in the Instant Pot. I cooked some jasmine rice in the rice cooker, and then I made two salads: Chinese-style cucumber salad, plus an arugula salad with beets, carrots, tomatoes, sun dried tomatoes, and toasted pepitas, tossed with a French-style vinaigrette. I also made a side of stir-fried bell peppers for the Pookster.

It always feels good to come back home from a trip and have home-cooked food that is less fatty, oil, salty, or sugary. I’m not saying all the food we eat out is salty, fatty, or oily, but well, you can’t really know what’s in your food unless you make it yourself. That’s what “home sweet home” is all about.

Day trip to Quilotoa crater lagoon, one of my favorites

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There are dozens of beautiful mountains, volcanoes, forests, farms, villages, and other natural wonders to explore in Ecuador. I knew we had to get out of the city and explore something, but I wasn’t sure where to start when researching. So I did a few searches for single day trips from Quito, and one of the first results was the Quilotoa crater lagoon/lake. Laguna Quilotoa is a collapsed volcano in the western Ecuadorian Andes, located about 178km southwest of Quito, in the Cotopaxi province; it sits at high altitude – 3,900 meters/12,800 feet above sea level. It takes about three hours by car to get there from Quito. The crater lagoon formed as a result of the Quilotoa Volcano erupting back in 1280 in what is supposed to be one of the most explosive eruptions of the past thousand years. This eruption caused the collapse of the volcanic dome to form the wide crater we can now see today. While Quilotoa Volcano has remained dormant since, occasionally, you can see volcanic activity via the electric blue-green waters bubbling at the edges of the lagoon. Even after all the gorgeous places in the world we’ve been privileged to visit, I must say that Quilotoa is likely one of the most spectacular places we’ve seen.

Volcanic minerals in the crater give the lake water its stunning emerald green, almost electric blue tint. The water color definitely changes depending on the time of the day, the weather, and the amount of sunlight hitting its surface. When we first arrived in the morning when it was drizzling and grey skied, the surface of the lake was more of a deep bluish green color. When we decided to go on horseback to get back to the top (partly because we were tired from the altitude, but mostly because Kaia really hated the hiking and whined endlessly), as we rode up, the light rain completely cleared. The sky was really dark and cloudy with light shining through, which then led to the water turning into this bright, vibrant, almost electric turquoise color with bright green at the water’s edges. I also loved seeing the beautiful purple lupine flowers along our hike down. They were really beautiful against the bright blue waters of the lake (they almost asked to have their photos taken…). And if my memory serves me well, these looked very similar to the beautiful purple flowers we saw when hiking in the South Island of New Zealand about 12 years ago, so that also brings back happy memories of brilliant purple flowers against electric blue waters.

Our driver/guide Cristian took us to the lake, and he hiked with us down and hiked up with our horses as we rode back up. He was a real trooper with us. Despite Kaia’s constant whining and protests, he managed to get us through the steep, sandy, and uneven hike down. And finally when we got towards the end, he even carried her down for quite a while since he said he was worried that if Chris tried to carry her given he was just wearing regular sneakers, they could both fall and get hurt. He humored her and carried her to the point up where the horses were, and we spent the best $20 ever for two horses to take the three of us back to the top (I’m just going to say — these were the cheapest horseback riding sessions we’ll likely ever have in our entire lives). Kaia was definitely Ms. Manipulator with poor Cristian. She would whine and whinge until he picked her up and carried her… just so she didn’t have to hike up herself. When she realized she wouldn’t have to go up all the way and would get taken on a horse, she got a little excited and kept on saying “Nay, nay, nay!” over and over again. After getting on the horse with me, Kaia was so calm and steady that somehow, she managed to even fall asleep on the horse with her head up!

Looking out at the lake, it was strange to think that a place this gorgeous and literally breathtaking (I mean, we were at high altitude, and I could even feel myself getting a slight headache on the horseback ride back up) had so few tourists. When we hiked down, we passed maybe just a small handful of tourists. As we reached the lake, there were just a couple more, but that was really it. As we got back to the top and headed out for lunch, we did see a few additional vans parked with people coming out to hike down, but this seemed so tiny in comparison with other famous scenic spots in the world. I really loved the peace and quiet. I reveled in the fact that there were no crowds or hoards of people. It feels really gratifying to see places in the world that “everyone else” isn’t constantly going to, the beauties that exist out there that are less seen and less traveled to.

Being honest with myself, though, places like Quilotoa will only grow in popularity. Who knows – Quilotoa may become one of the next Macchu Picchu type sites in terms of popularity (and over crowding). It’s already seeing an increase in tourists coming from internationally. Our guide told us that about twenty years ago, the entire area around the entrance to Quilotoa was all traditional mud and clay domed houses. Now, they have been replaced with more modern structures going up, with local families opening restaurants and hostels that cater to tourists (including the restaurant where we ate lunch, which had a number of hostel rooms in the back of the building for visitors to rent for short or long-term stays).

When we come back to the U.S. and people ask us what we saw, this will likely be on the top of my list. They will unlikely know what I am referring to, but I DGAF because I am totally obsessed with this place and think more people should visit (I just hope they don’t spoil the beauty of it).

The power of the U.S. dollar

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Every time I travel abroad, I am reminded of a lot of my privileges as an American. Even when you think about disparities between rich and poor, when you think about how people struggle here in the U.S., how people live paycheck-to-paycheck, even the poorest people here still lead richer lives than the poorest people in more developing countries. I will never forget the first time I was in Vietnam in January 2008. There was the moment when my mom’s cousin’s wife in Qui Nhon, Vietnam, came into our 3-star hotel room there. They exchanged a few words. Because I don’t speak Vietnamese, I wasn’t sure what was spoken. When I saw the cousin’s wife undress, I got confused, and I asked my mom what she was doing. My mom looked at me quietly and said, “She asked if she could use our shower, and I said yes. She doesn’t know what it’s like to have a hot shower.” For myself until that point, I had no idea what it was like to not have access to a hot shower.

I recently saw a post in an alumnae career group I am in, where the person posting said she had been living abroad but wanted to move back to the U.S. She wanted to start her job search and was looking for advice. In her post, she wrote that it was “very important for me to earn in U.S. dollars.” And I thought about the shower incident in Vietnam. I thought about the poverty I had seen in Guatemala. I remembered chatting with our Guatemalan driver, who had lived abroad in England for eight years and had an English wife. In his Guatemalan/British accent-tinged English, he lamented how things like a cappuccino or latte at a cafe in Guatemala City seemed affordable or maybe slightly cheaper for Americans, but for local Guatemalans, it was quite the splurge, which I had noted to him. “Sure, it’s affordable when you earn $25 USD an hour,” he said. “But if you earn in Guatemalan Quetzales and only earn the equivalent of $15 USD a day, that $3 USD cappuccino is a lot of money to spend.”

Yes, it’s expensive living in New York City. Yeah, it kind of sucks that coffee drinks here now can cost $6-10+ each. But I am lucky and privileged to enjoy them occasionally. We lead extremely privileged lives to work in white-collar jobs in the U.S., earning our income in U.S. dollars. As our driver noted, “you have money” if you can afford to go on a trip to Guatemala and hire a private driver for a day or so (pretty sure he was referring to us, and not just the previous guests he had driven). Every day, even when I think this country is crumbling down and that democracy is going to shit, I still remember how thankful I am for my life’s privileges, for my health, and everything I have and have access to that makes life so enjoyable and relatively stress free.

The best of the Buy-Nothing Group hauls

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It’s been just over two years of being a member of my area’s Buy-Nothing group, and it’s been a really great experience. I’ve had, for the most part, very positive encounters with neighbors and great exchanges on different items that we’ve either wanted or been trying to off load. Just this last week, I was able to snag something out of a competitive lottery that I’d been thinking of buying Chris for some time, but I hesitated on it since he seemed pretty satisfied with his current basic version: a Burr coffee grinder. Burr coffee grinders, versus conventional coffee grinders like the one we have (and the one my dad has always used since I was young), are different in that they produce a more consistent grind size. They also generate less heat during grinding, which helps to preserve delicate oils and flavors in coffee beans. Given these factors, they are clearly a lot more expensive than the average coffee grinder, as they tend to go for $80+. The version I was able to get, a Bodum burr grinder, dummy-proofs the process even more for you: there is a guide right on the lid showing you which grind setting to choose depending on the type of coffee drink you are making. Then, it also has a timer built in; you just have to select how long. Thus, there’s less guess work this way! Along with the Burr grinder, with the same bundle, I got a bag of partially used ground beans that I plan to use for cold brew, a brand new one-pound bag of Costa Rican whole beans, a brand-new, still sealed electric milk frother (which I’d also been wanting, but didn’t really want to spend money on… even though it only costs at max $10), and a portable tea kettle, which I am planning to re-give.

Of the things I’ve gotten from of being part of this amazing Buy-Nothing group and community, these are most definitely the best and most useful items I’ve ever scored:

  1. Endless toddler/school-age books for Kaia
  2. Swim floaties in multiple formats (all of which have been regifted, other than the current puddle jumper which Kaia now uses and fits)
  3. Baby Bjorn potty for potty training
  4. The Oh Crap! potty training book
  5. The majority of Kaia’s toys, including a dozen Lovevery toys, a massive collection of cars, trucks, Hot Wheels, a very sturdy and like-new yellow dump truck, and Peppa Pig vehicles. Her favorite right now is the big Peppa ice cream truck she actually sits and rides on. I’m amazed it hasn’t been broken yet…
  6. Toddler training knives
  7. Toddler popsicle molds
  8. Two brand-new, full sized Dr. Bronner castile liquid soap bottles, which I use for multi-purpose cleaning. This stuff lasts forever because a little bit goes a long way! We still have 1.5 bottles left!
  9. Burr grinder and brand new milk frother
  10. Chemex coffee maker, with a near-full box of paper filters
  11. Real Pyrex brand liquid measuring cup
  12. Vintage Pyrex mixing bowls – all of varying sizes and different bright colors
  13. Bundaberg ginger beer – of course, these were for Chris
  14. Farmers market GARLIC – eight super fresh bulbs with fat cloves!
  15. A nearly full bag of organic, culinary grade lavender
  16. Organic mushroom matcha

I’m grateful to be a part of this group; I’m also grateful that I’ve been able to off load so many things that we have that we either do not use or no longer need — I’m all for declutterring, helping others to declutter, and also contributing to the circular economy!

La Morada – Indigenous Mexican and Oaxacan cuisine in the Bronx

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During the pandemic, Chris and I walked through the South Bronx and attempted to go eat at La Morada, a Oaxacan restaurant that is not only known for serving indigenous Mexican cuisine, but also feeds those in need through The Mutual Aid Kitchen. But alas, we were out of luck: they were actually closed on the Saturday we went. At that time, they were open only during the weekdays. We were able to come back today and enjoy some very chocolatey and slightly spicy mole poblano with the most delicious oven roasted chicken, rice (which was likely cooked in chicken broth, and luxurious black beans. We enjoyed it with a jamaica drink (hibiscus tea) and ended with a proper Mexican hot chocolate. Marco served us; his mom is the chef and owner. It was a warm, homely family-run and owned restaurant. And they were so warm and kind serving us and answering any and all of our questions. Everything about the place took me back to Oaxaca, from the decor on the walls to the open kitchen to even the plates and bowls our food was served in. Unfortunately for Kaia, she didn’t get to enjoy any of the food since she had passed out right before we arrived at the restaurant.

I later read more about La Morada and found out that their family actually has undocumented status, yet they are still so resilient, run their own business, feed those in need, and run a community garden, where they actually source a lot of their own vegetables and fruit. I found it shocking that they’d be so open about this, especially now with the current political climate. But it’s clear that they have guts and perseverance. It almost makes me want to go up there more often just to support them — and eat through their delicious menu, which I’m sure pretty much no other place in New York could replicate, and definitely not at their price points.

Handmade with love – ceramic mugs flown in from Seattle

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As someone who spends a lot of time thinking of what food to make and then making the majority of foods she eats at home from scratch (or near scratch), I have always deeply appreciated homemade, handmade things. Aside from food, I used to scrapbook a lot before Kaia was born. I also regularly handmade cards for holidays like Christmas and Valentine’s Day. The rare times I have been given handmade things, whether it was jewelry, cards, and Kaia’s hand-knit and crocheted clothes from Chris’s mom and cousin, I have always marveled that someone would actually want to spend their time and energy hand making something for me (or my child). We live in a fast-paced, fast-everything world, where people seem to value cheapness and mass production over unique, hand-crafted things now. Even the platform Etsy, which historically was founded as a marketplace for unique, one of a kind handmade items made by artisans, has now been overtaken by mass producers in China, Korea, and other parts of the world, touting the facade of uniqueness and artsiness.

Today, I received a package of goodies from a friend in Seattle. It included a few things she got Kaia and me on her recent Japan trip, as well as Rooted Fare black sesame butter (which I’d been wanting to try for ages), and something I was not expecting at all: two unique, handmade ceramic mugs her husband had made at their pottery studio to which they have a membership. While I love and appreciate all the gifts, I couldn’t help but stare at and move the ceramic mugs in my hands multiple times. As soon as I saw them, I was about 90 percent sure they’d made these at their pottery studio, so I texted her to ask. She confirmed that she actually did not make them, that her husband made them, since she was taking a break from pottery. I knew she had been going to a pottery studio, and I was floored that they’d actually share things they handmade with me. I just felt really touched.

I guess it’s my old-fashioned side, but I really don’t think people appreciate handmade items much anymore. It’s easy to look at these mugs and not be impressed; you can get aesthetically pleasing, reasonably priced (or exorbitantly expensive) mugs anywhere and everywhere now. But the special thing here is: I know these were handmade by friends of mine, and they chose to give these to me. And for that, I am grateful. They’re giving me a gift that they actually made with their own hands, and with their precious time. Their time that they put into these mugs is a gift.

And as an added bonus, they’re dishwasher safe! So I am definitely planning to use these regularly now.

Twelve-years-aged tangerine peels from my friend’s mom

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When I met up with my friend for lunch this past Monday, I was shocked when she told me that her mom had brought me back a gift from her trip to China. Over a year ago, I told my friend that I was taking on “old Asian lady” habits by attempting to dry a bunch of mandarin peels that winter. In the winter time, we eat so much citrus that it felt wasteful just to dump the peels out. One winter during the pandemic, I was taking citrus peels and making homemade house cleaner with it, but I eventually got bored of that. I felt like a better and tastier way to use the peels was to preserve them via drying for future Chinese dishes. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, aka TCM, preserved mandarin or tangerine peels are known to be a warming ingredient that can warm your spleen and regulate your qi. It’s supposed to help with dampness and disperse phlegm from the lungs. But in general, even if you don’t believe in TCM, aged tangerine peels give an interesting, complex, complementary flavor to savory courses, such as braised pork belly, beef noodle soup, or tangerine beef or chicken dishes. In a lot of traditional homely Chinese soups, a single peel or two can be thrown into the pot for an extra flavor note.

So, when I shared this with my friend last year, she told her mom, who I’d only met once back in 2018. I went to her house so that I could meet my friend’s then new baby. And since then, she’s shared lots of stories of what I cook with her mom and also showed photos and videos, and I guess her mom has been very impressed. She remembered this story about my drying mandarin peels, and so she picked up this individually sealed bag of 12-years aged tangerine peels for me and carted it all the back from China to New York! If you are not aware, dried tangerine peels get more expensive with age (the color also gets deeper and darker brown), so 12-years aged tangerine peels cost a small fortune here.

I was honestly in shock when my friend told me this, and I felt like my eyes were going to bulge out of their eye sockets when she presented the bag to me at lunch on Monday. I kept on staring at the bag and turning it every which way, admiring how thin and dried and deep brown they were, and even trying to see if I could smell some aged citrus fragrance from the sealed bag. I was just so touched that her mom would not only think of me, but even be so generous as to buy me a highly prized Chinese cooking gift while in China and carry it all the way back here for me. I’d only met her mom once — ONE TIME. And somehow, she has remembered me AND gifted me something now! I love a lot of things about this scenario, but I guess I especially love it because it is such a unique gift, one that not just anyone would appreciate. Her mom thought specifically of me, how I dried mandarin peels, and knew I’d appreciate this a lot. And I really, really do. I am beyond grateful and felt so blessed in that moment — not just for her thoughtfulness and generosity for someone she only met once, but also for having this friend who would have a mother who would do something like this for me!

“That’s my mom’s love language: remembering random things I tell her about friends or me and then taking action on it and gifting something related!” my friend exclaimed. “She’s bad at most other things, but she’s really good at this!”

As with most things that matter, if you know, you know #iykyk. And if you know, you know that 12-years-aged tangerine peels in Chinese cooking is like aged fine wine.

Grocery bagger’s integrity

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I was at Patel Brothers in Jackson Heights this morning picking up a few Indian grocery staples before getting some work done at a cafe and then meeting a friend for lunch in the area. At the cash register, one worker was ringing all my items up, while a second was bagging my groceries with my canvas bags. The Indian male worker who was bagging my groceries was likely in his 70s or 80s; he was short, had a bad back with his very visible hunch, and was slowly bagging each item into my first canvas bag. After all my items were rung up and I paid, I thought I would help speed things up given there was someone behind me who was about to be rung up, and we could get done quicker if we both bagged the items. The grocery bagger gazed up at me sternly but grandfatherly, shook his head and wagged his finger with a smile on his face to indicate to me that he didn’t want me bagging my items, and motioned for my second canvas bag to fill it with my items. I let him finish slowly bag up the rest of my items, thanked him, and departed. He gave me a slow smile and a wink on my way out.

I don’t know why, but on my walk over to the cafe, I kept thinking about this guy. He didn’t say anything to me; I’m not even sure if he spoke English. But what’s clear is that he took his job seriously and had a lot of integrity. He knew that if I helped bag my own items, it would have been quicker; two is always faster than one. But he really didn’t want me to do it. And it made me think about integrity. I am not sure what he did for a living before bagging groceries at Patel Brothers, but I am willing to bet that as a little boy, he didn’t dream about bagging groceries in his 70s and 80s. Yet what I also think is true is that given this is his current chosen job, he just wants to do the best possible job he can because he actually cares. And frankly, not everyone cares enough to do the best possible job they can at any job today, especially ones that are higher in pay or prestige elsewhere.

King Arthur flour on sale at Whole Foods

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Before my love of cooking was my love for baking. As a young child, I baked lots of breads, cakes, and cookies with my aunt in her warm upstairs kitchen. When we made bread, it was oftentimes “healthy” quick breads like zucchini bread or carrot bread. At some point during my childhood, my dad got a bread maker, and he’d occasionally make a rounded loaf and have it be part of our dinner. It was always a similar flavor and texture, and while I liked it, I always preferred homemade bread that was a bit more free form. When I got to my teen and college years, I started experimenting with commercial yeast and would make a number of different breads, ranging from sweet Portuguese bread, fougasse and focaccia, challah, brioche a tete, cinnamon rolls, and even sticky buns. I always felt very enthralled and stimulated during this process. There is something very magical that happens when you can see your yeast bloom, and then watch as your bread dough grows and rises and bubbles. It’s almost like your little yeast baby that you made from a bunch of flour, water, and yeast. It feels as though you are giving “life” to something.

Although my pandemic era fascination with sourdough starters was very short lived, as I didn’t have the patience to nurse a starter (and had even less patience to deal with the starter discard, as I didn’t want to throw food away, nor did I want to eat as many bread products as using up starter discard would warrant), I realized that for me, homemade bread would always require commercial yeast. I love the freshness and flavor of naturally leavened bread, but I’d have to leave that to the pros. After making my last two loaves of challah in the last couple weeks, I realized my all purpose flour supplies were dwindling, and they needed to be restocked. And then this week, Whole Foods had a King Arthur flour sale; I hadn’t bought King Arthur flour since the pandemic! They are known for having some of the highest quality, unbleached flour in the country, and for having consistent and higher protein levels, which produce greater gluten development, which results in higher quality bakes. I picked up their organic bread flour and organic all-purpose flour today — five pounds of each. As I walked home, I felt excited and alive knowing that more delicious bread and baked goods would come as a result of this ten-pound haul.

Why people who read books are the best kind of people

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Ever since I started learning to read as a child, I have loved it. I read voraciously as a child, and throughout my life, I’ve always enjoyed reading and have done it for leisure. Sometimes as a kid, I read because I had nothing else to do; when I was young, my parents never enrolled me in any activities, so I’d just be stuck at home during school breaks and summers. I’d end up reading whatever I could get my hands on. Sometimes, that included home remedy and house repair books. Other times, it included gardening and cookbooks. But even when I did start getting out of the house more, I always, always enjoyed my quiet time reading. When we read, we are able to whisk ourselves away from our current place and time and fully immerse ourselves in the stories, times, and lands where the book’s story takes place. We are able to learn and see through another person’s eyes, and thus, are likely to be more empathetic and understanding of different people’s experiences. Reading broadens our scope of knowledge and exposes us to different aspects of the human experience that we may never have the opportunity to get exposed to, for better or worse. I’d like to think this makes us more capable of deeper feelings. While reading the very best and complex novels, it can feel like a bit of time travel. As the physician/novelist Abraham Verghese says, “You suspend disbelief, and you live through centuries, sometimes, or at least decades, (…) births and deaths, and you put the book down and it’s still Tuesday.”

On top of adding to one’s knowledge of the world, increasing empathy, and just being a form of entertainment and even “time travel,” in its most basic sense, reading helps to improve critical thinking, vocabulary, grammar/sentence structure, and can even help with stress relief. It’s also been linked to helping with preventing dementia/Alzheimer’s Disease. So given this, it’s been really strange and unsettling to hear that to this day, Chris’s dad thinks reading books is not a good use of time, and even mocks his mother for being an avid reader. Apparently, he “learned” this disdain from his own mother, Chris’s Nana, who always thought that a woman’s place was in the home to take care of the household and children, and to never do anything else. She used to mock Chris’s mom’s love of books and tell Chris’s dad to get her to stop. They both failed in this endeavor (thankfully). Chris’s dad has often times made disparaging comments about Chris’s mom’s love of reading, saying things like, “She must get these crazy ideas through the stories she reads!”

Given we’re in the year 2025, Chris’s parents are in their late 60s/early 70s, and Chris’s mom is a medical doctor, this disdain for reading books is quite a primeval and unenlightened idea to have. I never would have thought I would meet someone in my lifetime who would disparage reading books of all things, but alas, the person ended up coming right under my nose in my own father-in-law, someone who has grown up in great wealth, comfort, and access to education and knowledge. I was reminded of this negative opinion while finishing The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese this week. It’s a long, long book (over 700 pages) that spans three generations of a family and two continents, but along with Verghese’s Cutting for Stone, it’s likely one of my all-time favorite books I’ve ever read. I love the character development, the interwoven stories of multiple families across countries, and how they all came together. I love the imagery of water and how it brings us together yet divides us, and I even loved all the medical details and how they came to life for me right on the page. Every time I picked up the book, I knew I was in love with it because it would literally feel like I was escaping reality and being transported to another place while I was reading it. While both of Verghese’s novels are rumored to be in film production, like pretty much every time I have seen any book I have read become a movie, it’s never the same. The richness of character development and locations is never quite there. The subtlety of speech and body language always falls far short in a movie than on a page. I have rarely rooted for any character in a movie the way I have rooted for a character in a book.

Coincidentally, and it’s really no shock, most of the people I’ve liked and have enjoyed company with in my adult life are readers. They read fiction and nonfiction, and they love sharing what books they are enjoying (or not enjoying). Readers are the very best kind of people. I don’t think that’s really a debatable point.