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.

Matcha and mochi muffins in the mail

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A package came in the mail today with edible goodies from a friend today. My friend let me know it would be arriving early this week and was my belated birthday gift. When I opened the box, I was excited to see the contents: a large bag of roasted matcha powder and a box including half a dozen mochi muffins to bake from Third Culture Bakery in the Bay Area. My mouth immediately started salivating.

I’ve been pretty spoiled in the last year: I’d already traveled to three major tea producing countries of the world: India, Sri Lanka, and Japan. So, I have no shortage of tea that I’ve brought back from all three countries. But this roasted matcha was a little different. I always thought that hojicha was basically the same as roasted matcha, but hojicha can actually be any kind of roasted green tea, whereas this was strictly roasted matcha tea leaves ground up. Even after all my tea travel, tea factory visits, and tastings, I’m still learning new things about tea every day! I’m excited to whisk this up and enjoy.

Mummy and Pookster’s fun Sunday morning of cooking and eating

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Yesterday morning, Chris had to go out for a dentist appointment, so Pookster and I would be home together. Sunday is usually my vegetable cooking day, so I made sure to get her involved in the cooking and prep. Plus, I had defrosted the shrimp stock I got through my local Buy-Nothing group, as well as kabocha squash I had roasted before we left for Australia, and I wanted to use that to make kabocha squash soup. Kaia was involved in the full process, as she watched me saute all the vegetables for the soup base and simmer the stock. She watched with intrigue as I poured the hot mixture into the blender to fully puree. And as I poured the pureed soup into my Instant Pot to reheat and simmer, while adding some frozen coconut milk cubes, she asked, “Want some? Want some?” So I gave her a spoonful of soup, which she happily grabbed and shoved into her mouth. She then took it out of her mouth and handed it to me and said, “Mummy have some soup?” But then, she took the spoon back, still with a little soup in it, and ate the rest. She handed the spoon back to me, asking “More?”

At that point, I decided that she could just eat lunch while standing on her little step stool at our kitchen counter. It would change up the context of eating, and she was already enjoying herself so much since I was involving her in the full cooking process. Pookster proceeded to have three decent-sized helpings of kabocha squash soup, a massive amount of freshly blanched and lightly seasoned yu choy (you cai) greens, as well as a handful of Cheerios, which she happened to see on the counter. She decided to use that as “croutons” to add to her soup. Interesting. As she ate the soup, she kept on saying “yummy soup, yummy soup.” And as she got closer to the end of her bowl twice, she asked for “more?” And once she was done with the soup and moved onto her greens, she always indicated she wanted me to cut the long strands of yu choy into smaller, bite sized pieces, and told me whether she wanted the stem part or the leaf part… or both. She finished her lunch with blueberries and strawberries.

While Kaia is obviously tiring at this two-year-old stage, with her demands and stubbornness, as well as her full out toddler tantrums that result in her body being splayed out all over the floor in a silent (or loud) rage, enjoying these moments with her always is a reminder to me how fleeting each stage is. It is so sweet to see her caring side, like when she wants to offer me a taste of something she thinks is delicious. I also love that she’s always curious about what’s going on at heights she cannot always see, whether it’s at the kitchen counter or above the stove. I do hope that she will love and embrace cooking, as well, and not just want to outsource it to someone else. Sometimes when I am cooking with her, I am reminded of all the delicious things my grandma used to make that no one can quite recreate anymore since she’s gone, and none of her recipes were ever documented. They are only a distant memory to those of us who were privileged enough to try her pro-level Cantonese cooking.

Homemade chili oil, revisited

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We finished the mason jar of chili oil I had made months ago, and for whatever reason, I decided to put off making a new batch until the new year. Even though I was decently satisfied with the recipe I was using (which was a mash of three different other recipes I had found), I still wasn’t fully satisfied. But I got reminded of the chili oil need when we had a number of different chili oils during our December travels in Australia, and I thought they were standouts. One of the hot chili oils I loved the most was at Shandong Mama, one of my favorite little restaurants in Melbourne CBD. We had ordered dumplings and noodles for takeaway to eat at home, and they gave us some small containers of their house made chili oil. Even though the chili oil containers were small, the chili oil packed a huge punch; it was not only extremely flavorful and clearly infused with multiple spices, but it was HOT. I still think about how fragrant and flavorful it was now. I needed to find a way to recreate this “wow” factor in my own version.

So I started looking up other techniques to infuse more flavor, and I came across a recipe that required you to steep and simmer whole spices (whole Sichuanese peppercorns, cloves, cinnamon stick) for a full hour. This seemed a bit scary to me because I was scared the oil would burn after such a long time over heat. Then, after the hour was done, you’d strain the whole spices from the hot oil directly into a heat-proof bowl with your choice of chili flakes. I used a combination of ground Sichuanese peppercorns for the “ma la” numbing heat, regular red pepper flakes for heat, and Korean gochugaru for color and smoky flavor. Because I was scared of the oil burning, I turned off the heat periodically after checking the temperature with an instant-read thermometer and just let the oil sit with the whole spices steeped. When I tasted it a couple hours later, it seemed like it had a slight burnt after taste — this is when I took a small spoonful and put it directly in my mouth (I love doing this, though it’s advised not to…). But when I drizzled the oil on top of vegetables and dumplings this evening, I didn’t get the burnt after taste at all, and Chris thinks I’m being overly critical.

My main goal is to recreate the multi-dimensional flavor of the Shandong Mama hot chili oil. So, after this jar is done, I will continue on the chili oil perfecting quest.

Shellfish cooking class with political commentary and a white gaze

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Yesterday night, I attended a shellfish cooking class that Chris gifted me for Christmas in Little Italy. It’s funny for me to even say that it’s in “Little Italy” because it’s just about two blocks away from the main Chinatown area I always shop in. I came in a little early and was the only person who was carrying massive canvas bags that were clearly stuffed to the brim with groceries. The teacher looked excited to see that I went shopping.

“Oh, yes! It’s so great to get your shopping done down here! Did you check out Eataly and Despana?” she asked.

I told her that I actually was shopping in Chinatown, and she didn’t have much of a response to that. It was like she had zero awareness that the majority of this surrounding area is NOT actually Italian, but mostly Chinese.

That was the first hint of the “white gaze” that I got even before the class started. I’ve been in a class at this same cooking school with this instructor, and while she certainly is not my favorite teacher, I never knew her to be so political during her classes. She made a number of random jabs at former members of Trump’s cabinet while he was president, and while I got all of them and chuckled a few times, no one else really had much of a reaction. When she made a joke about how incompetent Betsy DeVos was and how it was clear no one was in public school in this class during her reign and I laughed, she looked at me, then around at the other students, and said, “Well, at least one person here has been paying attention to politics!” I didn’t really mind these comments, but I’d imagine other people who might not agree with her would be bothered and caught off guard by these words, especially since this was supposed to be a cooking class.

The annoying parts came when she was talking about the production and farming of some of these types of shellfish, and she made some very big assertions that for seafood like shrimp, we should be buying “only” American shrimp caught in the Gulf because “it’s the best,” and she also made comments about how all farmed shrimp is questionable and produced with the equivalent of slave labor. It seemed like such a pro-American, anti-everywhere else in the world comment, plus she occasionally knocked seafood farms in Asia. First of all, I don’t think that Gulf-caught shrimp would be the undisputed “best” shrimp option one can eat or buy; that sounds not only ignorant, but also just racist against other places that produce it. Secondly, if you really want to have a conversation about slave labor, does she honestly think that the people working in seafood farms and catching “the best” Gulf shrimp are all paid fair wages that would afford them comfortable lives…?

We also talked about the eating of things like mussels and clams. She said that it’s customary, when serving bivalves, to always give diners an empty bowl to put their shells in after they finish. She mentioned how if we were in a country like Vietnam, you could just throw your shells on the floor, and some worker would rush to sweep them all up for you. A number of people (my class was 70% white, with one Asian (me), one Latino guy, and one Black guy) were shocked when the teacher shared this.

“Why?” some of them asked, truly astonished.

“Well, it gives someone a job, so why not?” she said, with a bit of an eye roll. It sounded a bit judgmental, and also disparaging to the Vietnamese businesses in that country for doing this. She also did not give off the tone that she approved of this being a job.

In general, I dislike commentary like this because it is almost always said with a “white gaze” in mind, the notion that the Western or American way is better or “the best,” and it doesn’t factor in cultural nuances at all. Plenty of judgment could equally be made about what we consider suitable jobs here in this country, or how people in different service roles are paid: Why do we have “bus boys” when wait staff could easily clear and clean your table? Why the hell should “front of house staff” have higher wages than “back of house staff” or kitchen staff when the kitchen staff are actually the people preparing diners’ food — you know, the reason people are eating out?!

I highly doubt she would consider the idea that seafood farm practices in countries like New Zealand, Australia, or Finland would yield higher quality seafood than in U.S. surrounding waters, or pay higher wages. I also doubt this instructor has probably ever even visited Oceania to make the statement that Gulf-caught shrimp are the best, just as another point of comparison.

At some point of my life when I was younger, I’m sure I was one of those same smart asses who thought I knew a lot, or at least, way more than I actually did. I have since gradually relented, and now, I’m more eager to say that every day, I realize more and more how little I know as I learn more things (sounds ironic, but it isn’t). But I do try to be intentional about sharing what I know and caveating it, and I rarely will make a statement like, “gulf shrimp is the best in the world” unless I’m just being hyperbolic — the best, according to… her?