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.

Every time a three-day weekend comes, while I am always grateful to have an extra day tacked onto my weekend, it always feels like it goes by too quickly, as though maybe the American work week should have been made to be a four-day work week with a three-day weekend just so that we could all learn to be a bit more efficient. I’ve always found that when my weeks are shorter, I tend to prioritize what absolutely has to get done, and in the end, I feel like I’ve actually gotten more accomplished with less time. In fact, I’ve read several studies showing that women in countries where companies actually allow flexible work schedules actually feel more efficient and productive with four days at 10 work hours a day vs. five days with 8 work hours a day.

I got a good amount of things done this weekend, though, along with another vlog edited. I wish I had this every week.

I started this week pretty unmotivated, grumpy, and irritable about pretty much everything: family, work, the cold weather. Nothing was really keeping me going, and each morning when I’d rise, I had zero desire to start the day with exercise the way I usually do, so I abstained and stayed in bed longer. This ended up having a pretty negative effect on me, as I felt even worse during the morning and throughout the day. I finally hauled myself out of bed for a 40-minute workout this morning (this is actually short for me), and even with just 40 minutes of exercise, mentally I felt in a much better headspace than I had all week.

Even when I am feeling lazy and unmotivated, I need to remember and keep reminding myself that exercise puts me in a better place both mentally and physically, and even if I find it painful in the moment, once I start, I will rarely regret it.