Chinese New Year flowers: the beautiful plum blossom

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There are many flowers that are considered auspicious that welcome in the Lunar New Year, ranging from orchids to chrysanthemums to lilies and peach blossoms, but the one that I grew up with and know intimately because my grandma had a bush of them is the understated yet gorgeous plum blossom. Plum blossoms, or mei hua 梅花 in Chinese, are these huge, thin branches of small, dainty white or pale pink blooms. They initially appear unassuming, but once their little tiny buds bloom, they are like welcome sprays of warmth and happiness along seemingly bare and austere brown stems. If you are lucky enough to display them in your home, not only will they last quite some time (assuming you cut or buy them when the buds are tightly closed), but you’ll definitely need a large and sturdy vase to store them in, as the branches are quite long and big.

I grew up in a flat in the Richmond District of San Francisco, where we had a backyard that was once filled with gorgeous flowers and a handful of Chinese vegetables my grandma grew; this assortment included the gorgeous mei hua/plum blossoms, which grew in the top right corner of the yard. Although the Richmond is known for being in the colder and foggier part of the city, somehow, my grandma always made her garden bloom. But once she died, many things died with her, from the garden to all her amazing recipes and cooking. My dad attempted (and failed mostly) at growing a number of things, always blaming the weather as opposed to his own efforts/choices in flowers. I always wondered: if it was really so hard, then why did Grandma always succeed?

After my grandma died, my dad decided he didn’t want the plum blossom tree anymore. So he hacked it. I didn’t realize exactly how sad it was until years later, when I had vague memories of those plum blossoms and realized that they were never going to be anymore because my dad stupidly decided to kill it for zero reason. It’s not like he replaced it with some other beautiful tree or shrub. The yard continues to look like a haphazard waste land of weeds and random crap growing with no rhyme or reason. And recently while in Flushing, I asked a flower vendor how much a couple of branches of these plum blossoms would be. I was shocked: she told me she was charging $60 for a couple stems! If only my dad had realized how valuable these were, then maybe he wouldn’t have killed the bush.

Maybe at some point, I will buy some plum blossoms to display around Lunar New Year, in memory of my grandma. Whenever I see them, I am reminded of her and her green thumb. And I do quite love them even though I never have them. Plum blossoms are a sign of the beginning of spring, so it makes sense that they would be a part of Lunar New Year, or what in China is called the Spring Festival.

Nightly flossing: a mommy-daughter activity

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Since I was young, I’ve been flossing nightly quite religiously. Even in my twenties, when I would come home after drunk nights out, I’d still somehow manage to brush AND floss my teeth before passing out in my bed. My mom constantly told Ed and me that we had to take care of our teeth: we only had one set of teeth (well, after elementary school, that is), so we had to take good care of them. Otherwise, we were in for a lot of very painful (and horribly expensive) work like she had to endure, as she had zero dental care growing up poor in Central Vietnam until she moved to the United States.

I hope to instill the importance of taking care of one’s teeth in Kaia, but also explain the “why” behind all of the “you have to” statements. For example: don’t brush too hard, otherwise your gums will wear away and won’t grow back! Rinse your mouth after eating fruit/citrus, otherwise your enamel will wear away and you’ll have sensitive teeth (like your mom; UGH). Brush your teeth every day, twice a day, to prevent plague and gum disease! No one ever warned me growing up that if gums wore away, they wouldn’t grow back. No one was probably even aware that something healthy like an orange could actually erode your enamel back then. So now, I’m paying the consequences…

The cute thing is that since her crawling days, Kaia has always expressed fascination with flossing. Each evening before reading to her and putting her to bed, I’d wash my face and floss. She’d watch me intently and get really excited when the floss would come out. Occasionally when she was a baby, she’d try to reach for the floss, so I’d give her a clean piece and watch her carefully to make sure she didn’t swallow it. We once had an incident where she watched me toss my used floss into the trash. When I turned away, she quickly went into the trash, retrieved it in near stealth-mode, and started chewing on it. That was a very not-fun and disgusting moment.

Now that she’s older, when she knows that I’m flossing, she will eagerly run into the bathroom in the evening when I am there and ask to “floss with mummy.” So while I floss now each evening, I will give her a short piece of clean floss, and we’ll “floss” together. I will sit down on the edge of the bathtub and floss with her so she can see what I’m doing with the floss in my mouth, and then she will give me a big grin and say, “Wanna sit with mummy” while flossing. Then, she’ll stand so that she’s right between my legs, and we’ll continue our mommy-daughter flossing activity together. Granted, while I am actually flossing, I know she just has the floss in her mouth and is chewing on and licking it, but at least she knows that this is a nightly, regular ritual. And hopefully, this is one ritual she will do properly when she is a little older and needs to floss. At the very end of the activity, I will tell her I’m all done, and I’ll throw my used floss in the trash. I will ask her if she’s all done, and when she is, she will also throw her used floss in the trash, as well. These are the sweet moments of watching my Kaia Pookie baby grow up — the moments most people don’t really talk about, but we all relish.

The backwards back bend of all-knowing toddlers – if you know, you know

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While at the Central Park Zoo with Kaia’s friend Jacob and his parents on Sunday, we were exchanging notes and laughs about all the interesting things that we’ve learned as parents to a young toddler… like how smart they get very quickly regarding how to escape certain situations, whether that’s hair brushing or getting into a stroller when they don’t want to. Jacob’s parents were trying to put him in his stroller, and he didn’t want to get in. So on top of yelling and crying to indicate he didn’t want to, he also did the infamous backwards back bend/back arch that we all detest; Kaia does this when she wants to walk and refuses the stroller, and also when I am trying to comb her hair and she doesn’t want to (does she ever…?!). We all called it out and laughed at it at the same time because we were all too familiar with that back bend move.

Of course, it’s cute, and it’s a way that our toddlers are showing us that they are have strong opinions that may not always align with ours. But it’s nevertheless extremely frustrating in the moment and made even more infuriating when it’s in public, where everyone is watching your defiant child and you battling said defiant child. But, I suppose it’s something that in some way we should be happy about. Children shouldn’t always be obedient all the time; they should have opinions and different perspectives, and they should want to assert themselves even when their parents don’t want them to. As my friend said, “Our kids aren’t guai guai (Chinese for “good/obedient) like we were when we were their age.” But she also noted something else that’s true: we don’t really run our households like our parents did, and we aren’t parenting with the notion of instilling fear in our kids, nor do we want to. We’ve seen and felt the negative ramifications of that for sure.

“No, no, no! No new shoes!”

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If I had to stereotype my child based on her gender, I would say that she most definitely does not act like a “typical” girl in that every single time I have gotten her a new pair of shoes, she gets angry and fights putting them on. She always wants what she is familiar and comfortable with on her feet. Granted, I haven’t indulged her too much in this regard because she doesn’t seem to have a strong preference (yet) for certain types/pieces of clothing, plus I am just very practical with most clothing given she will eventually outgrow it all (or get it all messy at school). So she’s really only had two pairs of shoes she regularly wore to daycare that she has since outgrown; two pairs of sandals, and now, two pairs of shoes she regularly wears to school. Today, I introduced her to a new pair of snow boots since it’s a snow day and Chris is taking her outside. When I showed them to her, she kept yelling “no!” over and over again, insisting she wanted her purple glitter shoes (which she also initially hated). When I finally put the boots on, she seemed to calm down and not really care anymore.

But what I’ve heard at school is funny: when I have come to pick her up, her teachers will gush and talk about how cute Kaia’s new shoes are. They told me that she would walk up to them at the beginning of the day, point down at her new purple or silver shoes, and say to them, “Look at my new shoes” with a big grin on her face.

Got it. So, let’s just get this straight: She brags about her new shoes to her teachers and friends at school, yet she screams and yells at me for getting her the freaking shoes in the first place. I see how the gratitude already is nonexistent from an early age…

Kaia’s first real play date outside of daycare

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Yesterday, the three of us met Kaia’s bestie from her class named Jacob and his parents (and their newborn in a sling) and took a trip to the Central Park Zoo together. Jacob’s dad had reached out to Chris, as they usually dropped off the kids together in the morning and had become friendly. We all knew that Kaia and Jacob got along really well and could be seen frequently holding hands and running around class and the multi-purpose room together. While we enjoyed our catch up and seeing the animals together, it was actually a little bittersweet: though the two were close, it seems like a lot of these things have to come to an end, as Jacob and his family would soon be relocating to New Jersey. His parents are under contract with a new house, and with their expanding family, they will need more space. Plus, they’ll also be closer to both sides of their families.

I remember being in pre-school and elementary school and always being sad when a friend moved away and left. You inevitably knew you were never going to see each other again. But I wonder if that even resonates with Kaia and Jacob at their ages. Or who knows: maybe we as parents may loosely keep in touch, and maybe there might actually be future play dates after they move. Only time will tell.

Lunar New Year Day 2024 in Flushing

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The three of us went to Flushing on Saturday, which marked Lunar New Year Day 2024, or year of the dragon. When we got off the train and up to the street level, it was in the middle of a huge Lunar New Year parade, complete with fire crackers and endless music and manual fire crackers being set off. We ended up going to Jiang Nan for our main meal, where we enjoyed a fancy Peking duck with beautiful and delicate house-made pancakes, as well as an accompanying duck, tofu, and vegetable soup made with the bones of our duck. It was likely one of the most delicious and rich broths we’d ever tasted. Even Pookster gobbled up this soup and kept asking for seconds and thirds. She even gnawed the meat off of several duck leg bones.

What was also notable about our visit to Flushing was that we stumbled upon a very discreet and easy-to-overlook Taiwanese bakery. I poked my head in to see what was there, and unfortunately, a lot of seemingly popular items had already sold out since it was mid-afternoon. But I did pick up a loaf of white bread, a Taiwanese-style taro bao (it doesn’t look like the ones I usually get!), and two Taiwanese style pineapple cakes. All of the things we got were incredible: the taro bao was extremely crunchy with just the right amount of sweetness on the outside. The taro filling was light and also not too sweet, but very creamy. And the pineapple cakes were a stunner: super flaky and buttery on the outside, with a thick, chunky pineapple filling on the inside that was jammy with just the right amount of sweetness. This was as close to the incredible pineapple cakes we got while in Taiwan. I was obsessed. I still cannot believe it’s taken me this long to find this place while in New York! Taiwanese bakeries are a rarity here; I hope this place never closes!

Afternoon tea in New York City: Slowly but surely changing

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For as long as I’ve lived in New York City, I’ve never really enjoyed the afternoon tea scene here. It’s massively overpriced for what it is — a glorified dry, crusty sandwich spread with subpar fillings, overhyped British style desserts that are also boring and dry, with a mediocre pot of tea. And it usually has a $100/head sticker price simply because the ambiance and decor of the place appear to have an exterior poshness, and the ceramics that the tea and tiny bites are all served in are supposedly fine or bone china. Regardless, since I did it with a visiting friend in 2022, I’ve decided: no more, never again, and not in this city. I would happily do afternoon tea in Asia, the UK, or Australia, where the afternoon tea spreads are still pricey, but sumptuous and incredible in both the amount and quality of food you get. New York City is just not a city for afternoon tea as hard as it may try.

So I was intrigued when I saw a new Thai dessert place called Sarisa Cafe open in Midtown East that was supposed to be “Thai afternoon tea.” The spread on the tiered dessert tray was fully desserts, but with a pot of blooming tea, it would be $65 for two people, which seemed like a bargain price in the city. So my friend and I went, and while it certainly wasn’t a lot of food (we had eaten lunch before coming here for dessert), the quality of the desserts was top-notch: they have an open kitchen where you can see the workers hand forming and making each individual dessert. The tea spot is tucked away on the second floor of a building and even has an outdoor patio that they plan to open in the summer time. It felt like a tranquil oasis far away from the concrete jungle we were in the middle of. I love the way they decorated the place, and the service was excellent.

So, maybe I will just avoid the “traditional” afternoon tea places, but I am more than happy to try spots like this that are a bit different and add variety to the New York City food scene. This city definitely doesn’t appreciate Thai desserts enough and needs more of an education on this topic, perhaps by spots like Sarisa Cafe.

Evolution of closeness amongst friends as we get older

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When I was much younger, say during my K-12 years, “close” or “best” friends meant something much different than what they have meant in my 30s. Back in those days, close friends were those who spoke pretty much every single day, ate lunch together at school, and would hang out after school and/or during the weekends. I had a number of tumultuous relationships in my middle/high school days, one of which is with a friend who I still consider a friend today. I still remember one day, I came over to her house to hang out, and it had been a couple months since I had seen her outside of school. And she confronted me about it and said, “Do you think we’re actually still close? We’re not. You never hang out with me anymore.” I said I was there at that moment. That did not seem to help her hurt feelings.

Honestly, I can’t remember the reason we didn’t hang out for a few months. Part of it was I just didn’t make the effort. The other part of it was that during that time, I was in a romantic relationship with some idiot guy who didn’t deserve my time, and I was trying to make that work. And the other part of it was that I felt like she was just being overly difficult, and hanging out with her wasn’t as fun as before. But those are complicated teenage times when we had nothing else in our lives going on — no work, no bills to pay, no children to raise, no life goals to really hit. And thus, “closeness” cannot be defined the same anymore.

At most, I will see a friend once a month if they live in New York City. If they live somewhere else, I’m lucky to see them once a year. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we aren’t close anymore. Because we are still connected via text, calls/Zoom, and social media, we still are looped into what the other is up to. And when we do spend time together, we catch up and are comfortable as though no time has passed. And that’s really how I’ve gauged what “closeness” means at my current stage/age of life. It felt like that when my friend came on a side work trip to see me today. We spend a lot of time hanging out together, and even though she had to leave at 5:45am to catch her flight back home to San Francisco, we still stayed up late just talking about all kinds of random things. Some of those things were deep and sad, like my brother’s childhood and his passing, plus how that all informs how I want to parent now. Some were more frustrating life stage topics, like how my friend has noticed some of her child-free friends have seen her choice to have children as an inconvenience to them. But other things were just silly nothing-topics, like my peeling nails and skin on my fingertips because I was just too cheap and lazy to go to the salon to remove my gel polish. But regardless what the topic was, it just felt free and open and comfortable.

It takes a lot of time and investment to get to a stage with any person where you have this level of comfort. I’m lucky I can say that I have a small handful of friends where this feeling definitely rings true. Sure, we’ve had our good times and our bad, times when we’ve fundamentally disagreed with things we’ve done to each other or the respective person’s life choices. But at the end of the day, we all still love and respect each other regardless of how much time has passed since we last spoke or were in person together, and that’s ultimately what matters.

Peanut sesame candy

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Around Chinese New Year every year, my grandma used to buy a big plastic tray of togetherness with all the traditional Chinese sweets and candies that would bring in an auspicious year. While I always thought most of them were chalky and sickly sweet, occasionally, I did enjoy the candied coconut meat strips, as well as the red-and-gold-foiled candies that had a homey sweet flavor. One thing that we also had around Chinese New Year was a store-bought peanut-sesame candy, similar to peanut brittle. I see it all the time being sold around Lunar New Year in Chinatown today: It was always cut into long, thin, flat rectangles and individually wrapped. This was one Lunar New Year sweet I remembered eating and loving. The nuttiness paired with the slight sweetness from the caramelized sugar base was really addictive. Sometimes, the candy was made of just sesame seeds, while other times, it had a combination of peanuts and sesame seeds. I’m sure it’s one reason I had so many cavities at my first dentist appointment.

I was doing some research for my upcoming Lunar New Year lunch when I went to the Woks of Life website, one of my go-to sites for authentic Chinese recipes, and the feature recipe was for this exact candy – peanut sesame candy! I was floored. People actually MAKE this regularly around Lunar New Year? It only takes THREE ingredients? I was sold!

But me being me, I tweaked the recipe a bit, and I ended up mashing three different ones into the one I ended up using yesterday. And… it was a bit of a disaster. The rock sugar took ages to melt fully. The recipe said it would take only five minutes. I was standing there, stirring the pan for at least 40 minutes. And by the time the rock candy fully did melt, it seemed like the sugar had burnt a little. When I finally poured the candy mixture onto my silicone mat to roll out, it was a huge, sticky mess. I barely had enough time to roll it flat and cut it before it started hardening. I was not happy with the result. While the toastiness of the sesame seeds and peanuts came through well, Chris admitted that the candy had a slightly burnt aftertaste. This was just take 1.

Maybe, just maybe I should use regular granulated sugar and forgo the traditional rock sugar. That was a huge blocker in getting this recipe correct, as I spent too much time trying to melt the “rocks.” I will try again in the next week and see if I can perfect it so that I can have a nice, sweet Lunar New Year bowl of sweets to share next Saturday.

Stereotyping based on how I look

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The average person who looks at me will assume I’m Chinese. A more nuanced person might see that I actually look a bit Vietnamese. And when most people see my last name, they will know for sure that I am Chinese, at least partly. When others who are familiar with Vietnamese middle names see my first, middle, and last names, they will then know for sure that I must be Chinese-Vietnamese. That would be a very educated (and accurate) guess.

A few years ago, when I shared information with my wider team about my YouTube channel and Instagram handle for Yvonne meets Food, I scored a lot of new followers and subscribers on both platforms. A large number of my colleagues regularly look at my Instagram content every day. So when I was having a 1:1 chat with a colleague I don’t chat with much (and doesn’t follow me on Instagram), as she asked to speak about specific work related items, I was a little surprised when she ended the call with, “Hey! I haven’t forgotten about your food channel! Don’t forget to send me your chicken chow mein recipe! It’s my absolute favorite Chinese dish!”

The call ended so quickly that I barely had a chance to even respond to that other than nodding and saying bye. But it was such an annoying way to end. Here goes a White colleague stereotyping me regarding how I look and just assuming that all my content must be stereotypical Chinese dishes she’s aware of… like chicken chow mein, something I never order and cannot even remember the last time I ate. Why don’t I also just share with her my family’s top-secret recipes for General Tso’s chicken and beef with broccoli (hint: our family never made those dishes, much less ordered them at restaurants!). Maybe she will feel like she knows me and my culture even better then!

It would be nice if in 2024, I could chat with people who are from a culture different than mine and hope that they don’t stick me in a box, whether it’s regarding personality or food I eat/make, based on a white-gaze stereotype that they’ve contrived in their heads and need confirmation is actually “true.” I don’t exist to confirm harmful racial stereotypes other people have.