Tea preparation: the good vs. the bad

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On Friday during lunch time, I took a break from my coworking space to head over to Matcha Cafe Maiko, a matcha spot close to Kaia’s school that I’ve been meaning to try. I ordered their cold matcha latte with cheese foam. It was carefully whisked with perfectly measured out matcha powder. It was sweetened to 50 percent as I requested. And when I had my first sip, I was obsessed. Was it expensive at $7.62 (that includes tax)? Yes. But I could see the entire process of the drink being made meticulously, and I knew the quality of the ingredients were high. So while it’s an indulgent treat to pay this much for tea, it’s an occasional indulgence I like to have because I think it’s worth it.

Let’s contrast that with Poppy’s Cafe on Henry Street in Brooklyn, where we did our Saturday food crawl this weekend. We popped in there after we had lunch, and Chris suggested we get a hojicha to go. He ordered it and asked for some whole milk in it. Then less than two minutes later, the guy at the cash register says, “Your tea is ready!”

That’s odd, I thought in my head as Chris took the tea. How could it already be done so quickly? Chris took one sip of it as we left the small cafe and told me it tasted weak. I sipped it and felt annoyed immediately. “This wasn’t steeped properly!” I said to him. I took a peek inside the cup under the lid to see that it was a hojicha tea bag that was just steeped in water. They probably dripped in a little whole milk before the bag had the time to steep properly and didn’t really care; they just wanted us to get our drink and get out.

Tea from a good tea bag can still be good if it’s steeped properly and for the adequate amount of time. I almost exclusively only drink loose leaf tea now. The only exceptions to that are when I’m not at home, or if I’m having Dilmah tea bags or powdered tea (matcha or hojicha). But here, they clearly did not care and just added water to a to-go cup, dropped the tea bag in, added some hot water, clamped on the lid, and handed it over. I wasn’t necessarily expecting a hojicha latte made with hojicha powder (which wasn’t an option, and wasn’t what Chris ordered, anyway), but this was just a disrespect to tea and tea preparation in general. Tea is oftentimes misunderstood and thus not prepared properly by a lot of people, but in this case, you’d expect more from a semi trendy cafe on Henry Street in Brooklyn. Just for this, I’d be highly unlikely to patronize this spot ever again.

Brown nosers: the absolute worst in the corporate world

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This work week has been particularly vexing and not even remotely fun. It’s never exciting to be in a situation where a customer is annoyed and is asking for a refund. So it’s even more un-exciting to have to rope in executive leadership from both your side and the customer’s side to have a “tete a tete” to talk through this and get this resolved. What does this actually entail? It entails lots of internal meetings where people who like to think they are more important than the other talk over the other, people who think they know more than the other talks over others, and even more frustration ensues. It also requires people who actually are in the weeds and truly do know what is happening (alas, that person is me!) to do the grunt work and fill out documents that explain everything, bit by bit. And then it also requires people constantly messaging me to ask if I have thought about x, y, and z thing to add to said document. As you can see, this is super riveting!

I will say, though, that of all the things that I hate in the working world, few things are worse to me (other than outright toxic people who gossip and spread fake rumors) than brown nosers. I hate people who treat executives and their managers like they are God, like their time is so holy and that they need to be thanked over and over for… doing their job. Yesterday, I was on an internal prep call for this customer call today, and a brown noser on my team said to our exec who joined, “Thank you SO, so much for making time to meet with us today. I know your time is truly precious, and we don’t have much of it. So, we will jump right in!”

I thought all of our time was precious? Or is this person’s time just precious because he happens to be in a VP+ position, and he’s your manager’s manager, and therefore you feel the need to kiss ass to him to be “seen” by this person? This is not the first example of brown nosing I’ve seen from this individual, but I really had to deliberately stare hard into the screen to not roll my eyes or just vomit all over my keyboard when she said this.

As I always play back in my head, in the rat race, even if you win, you are still a rat in the end. It stinks to have to be in an environment where people feel like they need to suck up to get ahead, but apparently it works with a lot of people who like to have their egos stroked. And it’s yet another reminder to me how out of place I feel in the corporate world when these things come up because I’ve never really been able to do this and not feel like I had zero integrity. But I suppose that’s what tends to happen: people lose the meaning of “integrity” in the race to get ahead in Corporate America to the point where “integrity” means virtually nothing.

Manhattan Chinatown in the morning: when everything comes alive, and you tiao (油条) can be discovered made fresh

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I dropped Kaia off at school this morning since I had a 5pm work call that I couldn’t get out of, so Chris picked her up today. Since it’s technically mid-winter recess in New York City this week, kids who are opted in (and paying for) after-school hours can still attend school this week, just that the hours are slightly shorter. Drop-off this week is at 9am (instead of 8:30), and pickup can be no later than 5pm (it’s usually 6pm, but I usually try to pick up between 5-5:10).

Chris has said he prefers doing morning drop off and has gotten into a routine of it. When I have suggested in the past that he make use of that morning drop off time by buying some groceries and baked goods, he’s brushed it off, insisting he doesn’t have time and has a pseudo morning work schedule he has to adhere to. To be fair, he doesn’t really care to explore different shops in Chinatown the way I do, so it’s better that I do these things during the occasional times I do morning drop off. Like any decent sized Chinatown, the real life and energy of Manhattan Chinatown starts early in the morning, when all the produce and meats are getting delivered, when all the bakeries are churning out all their buns and breads and sweets fresh. The really good bakeries open as early as 8am; the shops tend to open around 9. This is the best time to come down here and buy all the freshly made staples for cooking Chinese food at home, such as freshly churned out and steaming hot rice noodles, fresh pressed tofu in endless forms, seitan, and soy milk. By the time I come between 4:30-5pm for school pickup, most of the best stuff has already sold out completely, or they’ve been sitting there, waiting to be purchased all day.

This morning, we arrived in Chinatown a bit early, so I decided to take Kaia into one of my favorite fresh food shops to pick up some things for cooking in the next week. This brought us to Kong Kee Food Corp, which is just a block over from her school. I discovered this spot maybe 10-ish years ago: they make fresh tofu and seitan in endless forms, as well as fresh rice noodles, herbal tea, and soy milk. They distribute to a lot of local supermarkets and restaurants. If you come early in the morning, they have stir fried noodles and rice noodle soup for breakfast that you can carry out. When we arrived, there were already some older ladies who were coming in to purchase breakfast noodles to go. A worker in the back was sitting at a table hand cutting noodles in bulk. Kaia curiously wandered around, looking at all the items in the glass cases and peering up at the female workers. She started giggling when one of them gave her attention; the woman behind the counter was so besotted by her that she took a package of fruit snacks and dangled them out as a gift for her. “So cute!” the woman kept exclaiming.

When I come in to Kong Kee, the items I get the most often are the pressed and five-spiced pressed tofu. I have also previously purchased and enjoyed their fresh rice noodles, which are cut thinly almost like pho noodles, thicker like ho fun/he fun (chow fun noodles), and also in huge sheets for large rice noodle rolls. I’ve also gotten their seitan and enjoyed it. This time, I purchased some seitan (kao fu), five spice pressed tofu as repeat buys. For new items to try, I finally got two sticks of you tiao (the Chinese donut crullers I wanted for jook at home), as morning is the best time to buy these sticks. I also chose a large container of their soy milk. They added some sugar at my request.

Well, according to the Shanghai saying, I already purchased two of the four warriors for Shanghainese breakfast – “四大金刚” Sìdà Jīngāng. The classic Shanghainese brekkie, heavy on the carbs of course, would be these four items: you tiao / Chinese donut stick, ci fan (pressed rice roll), shao bing (Shanghainese flat flaky sesame pancake), and fresh hot soy milk. I can’t wait to have my you tiao later! It’s the first time I’ve ever purchased these sticks whole anywhere in New York City!

When I look at whole long you tiao sticks in Chinese bakeries and food shops, I am reminded of the time shortly after my grandma passed when my mom made a big pot of jook. It was always a treat when we’d have jook at home and also have you tiao to dip into it. The textural contrast between the crisp chewiness of the you tiao against the soft creaminess of the jook was always so comforting and satisfying. My grandma would occasionally buy a bag of these freshly fried sticks from a local bakery, and when we’d have jook at the table, it would be a happy surprise when she’d lay out a plate of the you tiao, already neatly cut into bite sized pieces for us to dunk into our jook bowls. But it was always my grandma who bought them; we never knew what they were even called in Chinese then, and we didn’t know which bakeries to buy them from.

So one day, my mom was determined to resolve this issue. She said we would go out together searching and would find those donut sticks! My mom and I wandered around Clement Street (like San Francisco Richmond District’s mini Chinatown) and went bakery to bakery, peering in to see if anyone sold them. We used our broken Toisan to ask around, but we kept getting negative responses; none of these places made this donut stick. Finally, we got to a bakery off of 6th avenue that had them way in the back, in a big metal bin, all standing upright and tall, waiting to be purchased. We pointed passed the cashier guy and motioned towards the you tiao, and they got excited to have helped us solve our mystery of what it was that we were looking for. In Mandarin, you tiao are literally called “oil sticks/strips,” while in Cantonese, they are known as “oil fried ghosts” or yàuhjagwái. Since then, I’ve never forgotten the name of them. And since then, I’ve also learned that these delicious fried Chinese donut sticks are eaten not just with jook/congee, but also wrapped in fresh rice noodle rolls (a dim sum delight), tucked into Shanghainese shao bing pancakes, and simply ducked into hot soy milk and eaten.

Memories with food are usually the happiest memories from my childhood, but I don’t think that’s unique to me based on all the childhood stories I’ve heard over the years.

“I WANT CHOICES!”

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Everyone says they want choices. Then when presented with too many choices, people get so overwhelmed by decision paralysis that they realize that they don’t want too many choices, but just enough to feel like they are actually choosing from an array of things. The last several months before heading off to school, we’ve really simplified Kaia’s first breakfast of the day (I say “first breakfast” because she gets a SECOND breakfast when she arrives at school!) so that it’s really just cereal: it’s Weetbix or (organic, Whole Foods brand) Cherrios, and occasionally she can have some toast with peanut butter. But I realized that I really want her eating oats more regularly as she used to, and not just in baked healthy muffins and cookies. So I started making my oat porridge fingers again with oats, peanut butter, flaxseed, and milk. She ate them for breakfast yesterday, but this morning, she got really mad when I presented them to her along with a cup of milk.

“I don’t want this!” she yelled. “I don’t want to eat oats today!”

I told her that mummy made them just for Kaia, so she should eat some for her brekkie.

“I WANT CHOICES!” she yelled back. “I DON’T WANT OATS! I DON’T WANT OATS!”

I always have to stifle a laugh whenever she goes into these little indignant outbursts. I want her to know I take her seriously, but at the same time, I cannot help but think how comical all of these situations are. If we went back to 3-year-old me, circa 1989, and I yelled at my mom like this, she easily would have just whacked me or slapped my face to get me to shut up. She would have hit me into submission until I ate every last bite of oats. But here, I ended up relenting with one other option: I asked her if she wanted toast with peanut butter. She said yes, and I went ahead and prepped that.

Who knows — maybe one day, when Kaia is in her 30s, she will be in therapy and recount the time when she was 3 years old, when her mom *almost* forced her into eating peanut butter oat porridge fingers. And she will discuss how that felt like traumatizing experience to her.

The fridge breaks down and gets hot!

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This morning as I was getting Kaia ready for school, I reached into the fridge to grab her some milk when I realized that it felt weirdly warm. The top shelf of the fridge was hot. The temperature reading on the fridge said it was 53 F. WHAT?

We called the handyman to come see what was wrong and ended up having to completely empty out the fridge and the freezer. They had to be completely replaced, so they gave us a spare fridge sitting in the basement of the building. Some collateral damage happened along the way, too: the handyman and porter lost grip of the (extremely heavy) fridge facade glass door, and the corner of the door fell onto the bamboo floor boards. This resulted in a huge hole in the middle of our kitchen floor, which they said they’d replace and fix tomorrow.

So I ended up having to spend time cleaning all the bottoms of jars and containers in the fridge and then spraying and wiping down the new parts of the replacement fridge we were given. It was annoying, but luckily, all our perishable goods still have a place to go into and won’t go bad.

It’s in these moments when I realize that the premium we pay to live in our building actually does have a lot of value to us. In these times, we immediately get help and replacements, and it’s just included in the high rent we pay. And that’s a pretty darn good thing to have.

The worst cooking class I’ve ever been to

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For Christmas, Chris gifted me a South African cooking class at a cooking school in the Lower East Side. I attended the class on Saturday night, and unexpectedly didn’t arrive home until midnight. When he asked me how the class was the next morning, I told him that while I love him, to please never, ever get me another cooking class at this school ever again.

The class was over capacity, lacked a proper kitchen setup, was cramped and borderline claustrophobic (22 students, two teachers, a bartender, two photographers, and an assistant in a tiny basement room), completely lacked instruction or teaching of any technique or background of any recipe, was disorganized in that the ingredients were not laid out well or explained; the class started over 35 min late. 

For some details on what happened in this class: 

1. The class was over capacity in a cramped, tight space that is certainly not meant for a cooking class: The class was in a small room in Abigail’s Kitchen’s (a restaurant) basement. It had a bar setting, so I’d imagine the room is usually used for small private parties. The class was basically in this small room with several long tables set up where class participants were meant to gather, eight at each table. They somehow managed to cram 22 people (there were 24 people who originally signed up, and 2 didn’t show) into this tiny space. Abby and Lorna (the guest chef/teacher who is from South Africa) kept emphasizing over and over that the class would be “cozy.” “Cozy” is simply real-estate code-speak for a crammed and extremely tight space. 

2. No instruction or technique was taught. We were told the names of dishes, but not their cultural significance or any special techniques on how to make them. We were simply told to follow the recipe, and the chefs would walk around, observe, and give feedback. Copies of recipes were not distributed. Instead, each table got the equivalent of 2-3 parts of the different recipes. We all had to look over each other’s shoulders just to see how much of a single ingredient to measure out. In my pair (I randomly paired up with someone standing next to me), we worked on the yeasted dough for the South African donuts. Lorna kept telling us that the dough was too dry, while Abby told us it was just right. We had no direction on the recipe card and conflicting messages from both of them about what the dough should be like. 

3. There’s no kitchen setup here, and ingredients/materials were disorganized. The space had some makeshift stove setups and random kitchen items laid out. You aren’t able to see the items go into the oven and be taken out as a result. You aren’t able to do a part of every recipe, either. Because I worked on the yeasted donut dough, I had a LOT of time where I was simply observing other students try to figure out their recipes and how to execute on them. When I needed something basic like black pepper, I had to hunt for it. When I asked Abby, she simply responded that it was where “all the other spices” were laid out, but this actually wasn’t the case. 

4. The class does not start on time AT ALL, and it ends LATE. The official start time is 7pm. Most cooking schools are prompt and start on the dot. This cooking class started at 7:35pm. We didn’t get served dinner until 10:15, and dessert did not come out until past 11. We were all starving. 

The one highlight of this class: unlike every other cooking class I’ve ever done, alcohol (beer and wine) were included and unlimited. This is pretty unheard of. So, it was no wonder that people were getting sloshed in this class. My donut yeast dough partner was already on his fourth beer before we started mixing our dough. People were visibly tipsy. I’m pretty certain repeat students of Abigail’s Kitchen come simply for the wine overflowing. 

There are a number of great cooking schools with proper cooking school setups throughout Manhattan, along with real instruction and background on recipe given. This is not one of them. Here, you won’t learn technique or any new skills. But, you will leave with lots of alcohol in your belly. That may be a fun night out with some food and lots of booze, but that doesn’t really make for a proper “cooking class” where you actually leave and can say you really learned something.

Cooking with chayote, aka choko aka su su

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For the longest time, I’d walk into Asian and Latin supermarkets and notice this slightly wrinkly, green pear-shaped vegetable that I had no idea what to do with. It kind of looks like a gourd, maybe a squash, and potentially like a not so pretty fruit. In markets, they’d be labeled as “chayote,” so it sounded like it came from Mexico or another part of Latin America. Based on what I’ve read, chayote, also known as choko or “su su” in Vietnamese, origins in southern Mexico and Honduras, and is technically a vegetable in the gourd family. It’s used the same way summer squash is used; it’s lightly cooked to retain a slightly crisp but soft consistency. The gourd is high in fiber and also contains folate, magnesium, and vitamin C. It’s also supposed to have anti-inflammatory properties and be good for gut health.

I got inspired to buy and cook with it after Chris got me a copy of Thanh Truong’s (aka the Fruit Nerd!) book called Don’t Buy Fruit and Veg Without Me! The Fruit Nerd is Vietnamese Australian, and his book has a number of family recipes that have a Vietnamese twist. One of them is stir-fried choko, which is simply chayote sliced up and stir-fried with some garlic, shallots, and a bit of fish sauce. I bought these from Hong Kong Supermarket on Friday and stir-fried them today with Kaia. And I actually enjoyed them! It’s sort of like a cross between a cucumber and a summer squash, with a hint of sweetness similar to an apple. It’s a nice, versatile vegetable to add into our rotation and increase the diversity of plants being added to our diet. I just wish I had discovered this vegetable sooner!

Shadow Puppets of The Little Prince

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One of Chris’s friends gifted Kaia a Shadow Puppets version of The Little Prince. The way the “book” works is with big sheets of beautifully cut out scenes from the famous book The Little Prince that you hold up facing the ceiling with a flashlight (or your phone flashlight) under it. As you go through the scenes, you also either read the story or have the narrator read it via the pre-recorded story on their website. The idea behind it is to add variety to bedtime stories and also to encourage sleep.

The funny thing about doing this at Kaia’s age is that while she loves getting exposed to new things as a toddler, she gets very easily frustrated when she doesn’t “get” it right away. She seems to have perfectionist tendencies in this way. She tries to hold the puppets up vertically (which you’re not supposed to do), and then gets mad when she doesn’t see their perfect image show up in the light from my phone flashlight. I have to keep correcting her. Then she gets excited when she sees the image render. Then she holds the puppet up incorrectly the vertical way, and then the cycle continues.

I really like these shadow puppets myself and love making shadow images. But I think it’s going to take some time for Pookster to really embrace this and “get” it. After about 70 percent of the way through the story, she gets mad and says she doesn’t want it anymore. So, we end up moving on to her regular books and have to turn the light back on.

“Happy Valentine’s Day!” from Kaia Pookie

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I’ve lost track of when, but years ago, Chris and I stopped celebrating or acknowledging Valentine’s Day. I think it’s far too commercialized. The number of flower and chocolate says just for the day itself is completely out of control (you should also see the premium it costs to have flowers delivered on the day of Valentine’s Day!!). And for people who are newly coupled or dating, the day comes with so much ridiculous pressure to prove one’s affection that it just seems pretty senseless to me.

But I will say that there is one sweet spot for Valentine’s Day, and that’s with arts and crafts, especially for kids. Years ago, I used to make and send/give Valentine’s Day cards to my friends; for me, it was just an excuse to be crafty and exercise my artsy side. At school, Kaia and her classmates made “love bugs” that they painted and decorated with different rhinestones; she was very excited by this. And today when I picked her up from school, she immediately wished me a happy Valentine’s Day and showed me some of the little gifts she got from her teachers and classmates. The teachers gave each child a “Smoochy” heart stuffed animal, along with some candy and chocolate. One of her classmates in another class gave her a little puzzle as a Valentine. I like the move away in schools from candy/sweets to cute little tokens like these. They seem a lot more creative, and well, it’s better for one’s dental hygiene, too.

When Chris got home as we were getting ready for dinner, Kaia immediately wished her dad “Happy Valentine’s Day!” And instead of giving his equivalent of an eye-roll, he warmly greeted her back and was pleased to hear these well wishes from his child. Maybe we can learn to semi-embrace Valentine’s Day again just for the fun and joy of our toddler.

Kaia embraces Chinese songs (again)

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When Kaia started daycare four blocks away when she was about 17 months old, she started showing a clear preference for her English kid songs versus her Chinese ones. Oftentimes, when I’d try to play the Chinese ones or sing them to her, she’d protest and demand “Wheels!” She did have one exception, though: She loved it when I sang the chorus for “Lao Shu Ai Da Mi” or “Mouse loves Big Rice.” That is technically not a Chinese nursery song, but apparently a song that is often used to teach people Chinese easily; the words are very straightforward, the meaning is cute, and the tune is catchy. I learned it during my second year of Mandarin in college.

Since September, Kaia has been in a Mandarin immersion 3K, so she’s had half English, half Chinese instruction. I’m still not clear exactly how much Chinese is spoken, taught, or emphasized, as sometimes the teaching can seem like a black hole here. We definitely do not have the same level of updates at this current school versus our last, but it’s hard to blame them given they are stretched thin here (and it’s publicly funded). But since January, they’ve been emphasizing and singing a lot of Chinese New Year songs, so Kaia’s been getting really into all her Chinese songs. She will sing them at home. She will ask me to play them. And she will even take out her Bao Bao Chinese song book and play the songs and sing along on her own, even ones she used to reject, like “Xiao Yanzi,” or “Little Swallow.” That’s honestly not my favorite song since it has a pretty sad tune, but it really made me so happy the other day when I saw her singing along to the songs in her Bao Bao book, completely on her own and without prompting. I couldn’t help but beam and see my sweet bilingual baby embrace her second language.