The COVID-19, or Coronavirus, has slowly made its way to the U.S. We now have reported cases in California and Washington states, and it’s only a matter of time before it gets everywhere. With that, panic is everywhere: companies are issuing travel bans for International travel and severely limiting domestic travel; people are wiping out entire shelves of face masks, toilet paper, cleaning supplies, and hand sanitizer; Non-perishable foods are slowly being sold out everywhere. Panic instead of prevention seems to be the theme right now.

The only real “change” I may have made is using hand sanitizer a little more often. I already wash my hands all the time. I’ve been buying food the way I normally do. I’m not sure what else any individual can do to help the situation other than try to remain calm and collected, and do what is practical.

I’m getting into a good groove with video editing for the YouTube channel. It’s been fun to look for music that suits a video theme, and it’s been entertaining for me to use creative juices to edit and cut video for my final versions of my vlogs. The travel ones always require more time, thought, and work, but the process has actually been very enjoyable despite how time consuming it is. Even though I am at a computer most of the day at work, working on this at night is actually something I’ve looked forward to this week. It’s my creative outlet away from the humdrum of work, which has zero creativity.

If I could edit video all day long and get paid for it… that would be really fun. But, I don’t think I’m quite that good just yet.

After posting about my Chinese radish cake making on Instagram, a number of people responded and said they were inspired to make their own after watching my videos. Another said she’d tried making a few different versions based on different recipes, but they never came out quite like she wanted. Some were too dense; some totally lacked flavor. I wonder if she actually spent the money on the right ingredients, as the fillings for these cakes are not cheap, hence why so many places skimp out on the fillings. A small handful of Chinese dried scallops or shrimp can easy be $5-10 alone. A former colleague messaged and said he and his wife had just went out to buy all the ingredients to make this same cake, but he had a hunch that mine would turn out better than theirs.

I realized that because there are so many different versions of all these recipes that sometimes you just have to combine multiple and tweak them until you get the result you want. I probably used four different recipes to get to the version I made, and I’m really happy with it on the first go. Next time, I might sub in Chinese bacon instead of the Chinese sausage since the bacon takes more prep work and time, but I’m lucky it was the perfect taste and texture the first time around.

After years and years of making wu tou gao, or Chinese taro cake, I decided this year to branch out and also try making the equivalent version with radish this time. At dim sum and at dim sum takeout spots, this cake is always just a bunch of rice flour filler, pan fried with pretty much no filling. I will eat it if my mom gets it, but it’s usually just for the sake of eating rather than because it’s any good. It never is outside. But when I made it today, I was surprised by exactly how simple it was to prepare; it’s exactly the same as with the taro cake, except there’s no fuss around peeling an unruly and hairy taro. It actually felt much simpler to make.

And when we actually pan fried it, it was light and airy, almost custardy. The texture was so much lighter than the taro (understandably so), and it didn’t feel as heavy and dense as the taro. The outside edges were perfectly crisp, especially since I used my stainless steel All-Clad pan to pan fry them evenly to a golden brown on both sides. Chris actually admitted he liked this one more than the taro cake, even though he complained when I told him I was going to make the radish cake. He liked it more than the taro cake! I was shocked.

I went on a cleaning spree today through the apartment, vacuuming, dusting, and mopping. Mopping does not happen frequently in the apartment. I don’t particularly like the act of it, and I hate constantly having to ring out the soap and water, even if we have a more modern “mop” and it doesn’t have all those nasty stringy things on it. But I suppose I am addicted to that feeling afterwards of a super clean hardwood floor, the lack of sound I hear when I walk across the floor with my flip flops, and even better when my barefoot touch the floor and I feel not a hint of dust or stickiness. It’s ridiculous to think how quick the kitchen floor gets; all it takes is a few crumbs of spinach of flour, some smudges of water, and then feet to walk across it to get the whole place dirty. It’s no wonder my mom always had a rag on the floor to wipe things up when I was growing up. I might need to start doing something like that when I am cooking.

This is one of those situations where you thought you wouldn’t be like your mom, but in the end, you end up being exactly like her…

A good friend from college is coming to town the last weekend of this month, and when I asked her what she wanted to do, she said, “eat!” She has a list of things she wants to try: Peruvian chicken, Levain Bakery chocolate chip cookies, Xiao long bao/soup dumplings, Indian food, and Thai or Malaysian food. When I asked her what she wanted to actually do outside of meals, she said she wasn’t sure and would have to get back to me. Food is the priority when she’s visited New York a number of times (and some of those times were with me when we were in college together!).

New York City is one of those places where you can finish doing all the “touristy” things such as the Empire State Building, Central Park, Times Square, but still never get enough of it because of the massive diversity of cuisines here. I suggested that because she wanted a lot of different Asian foods that I take her to Queens; outside of JFK airport, she’s never really seen Queens. It’s a very under loved and under appreciated borough, so we have that on our plan for Saturday of her weekend with us.

Reading the news has become far too depressing in a day and age of climate change, a global move toward the political right, and an age of President Dipshit, so I’ve tried to lay off reading too many breaking news stories unless they are through my round-up news summary e-mails and top headlines. What I’ve been trying to focus on more are long-form feature pieces that tend to have more research and paint a bigger picture story of a given topic. It’s likely the only way to stay sane in today’s life.

Podcasts on food, politics, science, and history are always fun, and so the intersection of all the above topics can be found in my absolute favorite podcast of all time, Gastropod. The latest podcast they released is on McDonald’s and how it became so ubiquitous. What it also touches upon is how they actually helped create jobs for black Americans during the 50s and 60s when “white flight” was happening, and the inner city was left just to black Americans. McDonald’s obviously did not discriminate “white” money from “black” money; they just wanted *all* money and then some. And so they allowed black Americans to become franchise owners in urban areas, which led to more and more black Americans eating in McDonald’s in inner cities; many of these black-owned McDonald’s franchises ended up being some of the best performing McDonald’s of that time.

The sad truth, though, is that while McDonald’s created these opportunities for black Americans, they did it 100 percent motivated out of greed and capitalism, to line their own pockets more. It was hardly because they wanted to help the black community at a time of extreme racism and segregation. Forget the government taking over the responsibility of creating opportunities for its citizens; why not just let a corporation do it so that it can profit and make money under the guise of “helping the local community”? The racist conservatives loved this idea because the idea of “black enterprise” was a more palatable solution to them than integration (because, oh, no, what would happen if people from different ethnicities mixed and actually interacted with each other!). The liberals liked it from a superficial perspective because this brought money and ownership to black communities.

Today, discrimination still persists across people of color working at McDonald’s at all levels, and sadly because of this history, fast food has become part of the stereotype of the black American diet. So when conservative commentators from Fox News talk deprecatingly about black Americans, they say they make the conscious choice to eat junk food and get fat, completely ignoring the history behind how this stereotype even came to be.

Racist stereotypes persist. Racism persists against pretty much all people of color. It’s so depressing to think about.

Oh wait. Didn’t I just say that Gastropod was my favorite podcast? It is. It helps shed light on nuggets of history like this for me that I wasn’t quite aware of before. It’s depressing, yes, but at least I am informed in an entertaining and fully researched way.