The food styling contest that did not work in my favor

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My team had a virtual offsite the last two days (budget cuts in a sad economic environment), and one of the “fun” activities we did was a food styling/photography contest. At first, I didn’t think much of the contest. I wasn’t even sure I was going to enter it because I couldn’t be bothered to cook and style something this past weekend, but then I remembered all the other food photos I had styled over the years, and I decided to go back to them and see which one I might enter. So I chose a photo I had spent quite a while on: apple cider donuts. It seemed like a good idea given we’re now in September, so it would be very appropriately seasonal. I spent a while figuring out how to style the photos before you even factor in how long it took me to make and fry all those donuts! I even added some props: I put the donuts on a warm brown cutting board, added a mug of hot apple cider, and made a festive background of autumn squash and apples. I figured: this has to win SOME award; it was shot really well in perfect light, not to mention I used an Adobe program to do some light editing. I posted it on my food handle on Instagram over three years ago, and people really liked my shots.

Well, there were three categories where you could be considered in this team contest: most stylish, tastiest, and most likely to be eaten on our team. I did not win a single category. In fact, I later got told, when I revealed that the apple cider donuts photo was mine, and YES, I MADE those freaking donuts, that more than half my entire team (we’re about 33 people) thought that my photo was a “fake”: they thought it was a card stock image that someone threw in as a joke to confuse people, and there was “no way that anyone on our team could take a photo that perfect.”

This is what happens when you are good at something: you end up getting penalized for how good you are, and it gets used against you. I guess it’s the world we live in, so what else is new?

Omakase night out and reflections on how amazing NYC is

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I took my friend out for a much belated birthday celebration at a Japanese restaurant in Chelsea this evening. We sat at the counter for our 17-course omakase meal. As much as I love spending time with my Kaia Pookie and keeping her in a routine, it was nice to go out and get a little dressed up, and not have to worry about maneuvering a stroller up and down the subway stairs or into a narrow restaurant.

While at the restaurant, we sat next to a couple that was celebrating the wife’s birthday. We made some small talk and talked about Japan, California, food, and how we all got to New York City. They had previously spent the last eight years living in Japan, half the time in Tokyo and half the time in western Japan. Six of those years were spent teaching English. Though they are both from California originally, they decided to move out to New York after leaving Japan for job opportunities. They talked about how easy and affordable it was in Japan, no matter where they went, to get fresh, tasty, and affordable sushi, and how this is pretty much never the case here in the U.S. and how much they missed it.

I suppose when you live in a place for a long time, there’s always going to be things you will miss about it once you leave. It made me think about living here in New York, and what I would miss once we eventually leave this city. I think out of all the things I’d miss most, it would most definitely be the sheer diversity and variety of people here (which means, the craziest variety of food available!!); based on where I’ve traveled and what I’ve read and heard, I really do not think there’s a more diverse city in the entire world where you could probably be exposed to people from all ends of the earth in one single place. Queens itself is the most diverse place on earth, and that’s just ONE part of New York City! I will always have Queens pride and be proud of the fact that I spent my first four years in New York living in Queens. I’m even getting excited about going back to the specific area, Elmhurst, again this Friday to meet with friends for lunch. I feel like it’s always a mini adventure here in every neighborhood, and I’ve already been here for 15+ years.

My apple eating young toddler

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In June while we were in the mango capital of the world, also known as India, I was extremely dismayed and even embarrassed that my mango loving baby refused to even touch an Indian mango. My thought then, was, how did you so readily and happily eat all those Mexican ataulfo mangoes all these months in New York, yet now, you’re on some odd mango strike and just outright refuse to even look at a mango in the country with the best mangoes on earth?! How is this even possible?

Instead, and as though to insult her dad and me, when on a boat on the backwaters of Alleppey, Kerala, one of our servers offered a plate of cut mangoes and apples. And while completely ignoring the mangoes, Pookster turned to the huge slices of apples on the plate, skin and all. At first, I was initially wary of her eating such thick slices, but she seemed to manage them really well and even relish the fact that they were so fat. With each huge bite she took, she chewed and chewed, as though proud of herself and her amazing biting, chewing, and swallowing skills. On the one hand, I felt annoyed she refused the mango in favor of the apple. On the other hand, I was so damn proud of her eating skills. How many kids at her age would be trusted with apple slices that were that thick and fat? If anything, she likely could have handled them that thick earlier, but a) we didn’t really have apples in the house to test this out, and b) I was being a bit risk averse despite having her learn solids through baby-led weaning solely.

Today, she actually prefers fat slices of apple. And she rejects apple slices that are too thin! But alas, her eating habits have proven to be a bit different at home vs. at school. At school pickup today, her teacher let me know that Pookster prefers the slices fat, but cut in half horizontally. Say, what?! The weird toddler selectivity of my silly, cheeky Kaia Pookie.

Cute developments of my Kaia Pookie

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Every day, it seems like my Pookster is doing something to surprise us. It’s hard to keep track of all her new words, gestures, and habits given she’s developing so quickly. Some of the things she’s done recently that have made us smile, laugh, or marvel at how much she is learning are briefly noted here:

*When she is very fond of something and wants to keep holding it, but you try to take it away, she immediately starts saying quickly, “Let go! Let go!”

*If you ask her a question, and she doesn’t know the answer, she will immediately say, “Don’t know! Don’t know!” then put her hands up as though “I dunno!”

*When she wants you to finish doing something with her she doesn’t like, like brushing her teeth or putting her hair up in pigtails, she whines, “Come on! Come on!” Other versions of stopping said action also include: “All done! All done!” or “All good! All good!”

*She is singing full lines of her favorite songs, like “Move on back! Move on back!” from “Wheels on the Bus.” She’s actually sung broken parts of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” for a while now, but the lines from “Wheels on the Bus” have been new out of her mouth as of late.

*She is able to look at both photos and pictures of objects and things and name them without any prompting or assistance. She can also identify a handful of people, including her favorite Suma, Chris’s mom.

*She’s figured out how to open our kitchen cabinets — from the top. Yep. The time has finally come. Chris had to set up the magnet children locks on one, but I’d imagine in a short time, we may need to install them on *all* the kitchen cabinets.

*She knows how to twist open regular (not child-locked) pill containers. This totally freaked me out.

My baby is officially 21 months old today – not really a baby anymore, but regardless, she will always be my baby. How time flies. I’m so freaking lucky to have her and all her sweet cheekiness.

Albanian food off of Arthur Avenue in the Bronx

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Living in New York City, we are spoiled to have almost every ethnic cuisine on earth represented in this great, big metropolis. Chris and I are also just inherently curious about cultures other than our own, and especially their food, as food is the easiest gateway into learning about another’s culture. While there are certainly many cuisines we have yet to really try, one that we finally tried today was Albanian. And funnily enough, it was in Belmont right off of Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. As I was reading about the restaurant we visited (called Cka Ka Qellu, named after a proverb meaning “what we happen to have”), I found out something funny that I hadn’t even though about before: over 20 years ago, a number of ethnic Albanian refugees fled a genocidal conflict in Kosovo, and a lot of them ended up in New York City working in pizza parlors all over town. This explains why a number of the city’s pizza parlors had other side items like cheese and spinach bureks on their menus; it was the Albanians’ way of introducing a taste of their home to New Yorkers who were originally coming in for a slice of pizza.

We had our main Saturday meal at Cka Ka Qellu and had an assortment of delicious dishes, from tarator, like the Albanian version of tzatziki; fasul, a rich white bean soup; and mantia, which are veal meatballs with a choice of being served in a thick, white yogurt sauce (which we, of course, asked for). This quaint, farmhouse-like restaurant even had a pizza oven up front, baking all their fresh breads from scratch. The bread here was soft, pillowy, and incredibly delicious!

Most people wouldn’t guess we’d trek up to Arthur Avenue for Albanian food, but on this trip, we did. We did make sure to pick up some Italian staples, though, like dried pasta, canned San Marzano tomatoes, Italian pork sausage, and fresh mozzarella.

There are so many delicious things to eat in the world, yet so little time. If only we could try something different and new every day!

Kaia’s stubbornness and cuteness wrapped into one action: holding hands

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I am clearly biased, but I think my sweet Kaia Pookie is incredibly cute. She is so cute that sometimes, I just want to squish her little face and eat it. I still have no idea where the idea of “eating” someone or something cute came from, but alas, I use it when it comes to Pookster. I can’t help it; she is just super adorable. She doesn’t have her same fat rolls or chubbiness that I always admired from over a year ago, but sometimes, I still stare at her in wonderment and cannot really believe she is here with us. She is my sweet miracle baby, my bundle of joy that is growing and developing endlessly. She has lots of strong opinions and can be incredibly cheeky. She especially hates holding hands. She gets SO mad when you try to hold her hand while walking outside. It’s like she’s saying, let me be independent! Leave me alone! I will go where I want to go! The exception to this is when there’s a lot of strange, new people around, or when she wants help going up and down the stairs.

Oddly, though, since our Virginia trip last week, she randomly does want to hold hands. She will demand that her hand be held after getting out of her high chair at home post-meal time. She even wants her hand held while she’s in her stroller. She will either demand, “hold my hand!” or “hold me hand!” and then look up at us expectantly. I love these little moments so much because I know that sooner than we think, they will all be gone forever and just a distant memory. So I am still maniacally trying to capture all the moments as often as possible without totally running out of Google Cloud storage space.

Kaia counts in English and Chinese

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As much as I can hope and dream about it, it’s very unlikely that Kaia will ever be fully bilingual in English and Mandarin Chinese. I probably speak Mandarin Chinese at barely a 5-6 year old level, if even that, and as I’m teaching her Chinese, I’m learning and re-learning Mandarin Chinese through helpful YouTube videos and even on Udemy. She’s mastered a lot of fruit, like how to say grapes or cherries in Chinese. She knows what I am saying when I tell her to watch, look, or listen. And recently, I’ve been trying to reinforce how to count from 1-10 in Chinese because she’s been learning that in school for English. So far, it looks like during their daily morning circle time, they are sticking to counting from just 1-10 in English now. So I tried to mirror this for her in Chinese.

Kaia easily counts from 1-10 in English. She’s been doing this for the last two months. Sometimes, she randomly will skip one or two numbers in the sequence when distracted, but she knows how to say all of them. I recently started adding in Chinese, and while she’d look at me contemplatively, I knew she was absorbing what I was saying just based on her thoughtful facial expression. This week, she’s counted up to ten, though it’s clear she’s a bit shyer around this: her voice is much softer as she says the numbers in sequence in Chinese, and as she gets to ten, her voice is almost a whisper. But when she finally did it, I couldn’t believe how proud I felt; I could tell she was feeling victorious as well! She had this big smile on her face and started bobbing her head back and forth. She loves to seek our approval, but I hope to instill in her a sense of pride for her own accomplishments and that many times, that can and should be enough.

Wearing sweats or workout shorts as part of my daily uniform

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A lot of people speculated that after the height of the pandemic was over, people would tire over “athleisure” wear, like sweats, yoga pants, and gym shorts. While I have noticed on the streets that there are certainly more people dressing up, whether that’s for work, meetings, or fun evenings out, I still notice lots of people who dress exactly like I do: t-shirts, workout shorts, sweats (in the colder months), and really DGAF. Because I work from home full time, the most I will do to “dress up” is to wear a little makeup and perhaps change my top into something that is a little less casual. For more “serious” meetings or when there are higher level people on calls, I “dress up” by putting on a collared shirt or a slightly fancier blouse. That’s usually how you know I am making an “effort.” On the bottom, since no one on a Zoom call can see this, I will always be in shorts in the summer, or sweats in the winter. This is how I roll.

I’m very cognizant of this when I go to Kaia’s school for pickup. I notice the other working parents coming in, likely from an office, in their business or business casual attire. I also notice the ones who likely work from home or freelance wearing t-shirts and shorts like me. The owner of the daycare asked me if I worked remotely full time or was hybrid when he first met me. He obviously knew it was one or the other, and I definitely was not full time in the office just based on how I was dressed — then in shirts and a very casual t-shirt. But now that I work from home and am a mother at that, I genuinely will always prioritize comfort over fashion.

The deluge that is a four-day work week after a Monday holiday

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I cannot speak for other countries since I’ve only ever worked or lived in the United States, but I can say, without hesitation, that four-day work weeks after a Monday holiday are always brutal. I think about days like President’s Day, Memorial Day, and Labor Day, all federal holidays that land on a Monday, and historically how my work weeks have felt when I return on Tuesday. And I can say: I never feel great after. I feel like one day has just been taken away from me to be productive and just get shit done, and now, I need to scramble to make up for the day of productivity that was taken away. Not only that, but everyone else feels that way: everyone’s scrambling to get what they would have finished on Monday done, and what’s worse: When you have Type A people you are working with, whether it’s internal or external, whether they realize it or not, they’re taking out all their work-related angst… on you. What I thought would be a pretty uneventful week now has meetings up the yin yang and things that will likely bubble over by week’s end. The joys of being part of the rat race…

Kaia’s love for lychees

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I first introduced Kaia to lychees sometime in the autumn of last year, but there was a huge gap when she had no exposure to them until this summer. We bought them from a fruit vendor on the street in upper Manhattan, and then she totally got hooked on them. I got them once more in Chinatown, and since then, she randomly asks if we have lychees to eat (most of the time, we don’t, unfortunately).

When we were in Richmond, we went into a Vietnamese supermarket and found some at a reasonable price, so we bought a 2.2lb bag of them to eat back at the hotel. Given we had no high chair and no proper kitchen/dining setup, we’d undress her so she’d only wear her diaper, wash and peel the lychees in the hotel bathroom sink, then give them to her in pieces. She was always in heaven, constantly asking, “More? More?”

We brought some back with us when we returned to New York today, and we finished them off after dinner this evening. I’ve been teaching her how to say different food-related phrases in Chinese. So while she gets excited and wants to reach for the lychee shells and pits, I repeatedly tell her in Chinese “Bu chi! Bu chi! (don’t eat!). Now, after I peel a lychee, she points at the pits and shells and says gleefully, “bu chi! bu chi!”