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Recipe: pickled chinese cabbage

My good friends know that I have a rule about worrying – I try not to fret about things I have no control over. This comes in handy because I get several medical scans and tests and I generally do not waste an ounce of energy on worrying myself before I get the results. Life comes with her own stresses as it is, there is no reason for me to be heaping more on. The further I move away from my cancer treatments, the more they become a faded memory. With the exception of a few permanent issues that I’ll carry for the rest of my life, I am doing very well and I feel good! I feel normal.

kaweah loves her summer walks

I get one mammogram and one MRI every year to scan for new or recurring cancer. I don’t expect anything from the mammogram because it never detected my original cancer whereas the MRI did. So I had an MRI a few weeks ago… and I never heard from radiology about the results. I have been so busy I had essentially forgotten about it. It was on the drive to my oncology appointment that Jeremy admitted to me he was concerned about my MRI, because we hadn’t heard anything. At first I felt horrible that my dear man – the fellow who was my only caregiver during my entire ordeal – was quietly worrying himself sick over me. Then the thoughts crept into that dark part of my brain. Perhaps radiology only calls you with results when everything is fine, but wants to give you the bad news in person? Well no – my surgeon gave me the bad news over the phone. What gives? And so went my internal conversation.

heart-leaf arnica dot the forest understory

It’s hard to describe what I felt. I powered through chemo as best I could, but I found myself dreading that last infusion because each one did more damage than the previous. It’s not just the treatments, but feeling as if your body is not your own as your condition deteriorates under the chemicals. I look at my friend, Barbara, and think what a lion she is for enduring chemo not once, but THREE times and yet she is so grounded and strong.

i always welcome the arrival of the brilliant green aspen leaves

But my appointment was a happy occasion because my oncologist was back. He had been on leave for cancer treatment – a horrible treatment far worse than mine, and yet here he was looking great and joking and smiling and being his awesome self. My onc is one of the finest human beings I have ever had the privilege to know. Truly. We adore him. I asked about my MRI results and he pulled them up on the computer (electronic records ROCK) and read them out to me. Negative. No cancer detected. He sent a copy to the printer for me to have. He smiled at me and I smiled at Jeremy who squeezed my hand.

last light over the local peaks

By my estimates, we’ve experienced about 7 days of spring between the last snow storm and the onslaught of hot weather. 80°F on my deck is hot and not in the good way. Even Kaweah is sprawled out in the cool office instead of roasting her brains in the great room right now. Despite the heat, our house is in a particularly good mood this weekend – more so than usual. Part of that could be the MRI results and part of that could be this pickled Chinese cabbage I’m noshing.

start with a head of napa cabbage

wash, shake off, and blot dry the leaves

It happens more often than you might think. I’ll describe a dish to my parents and ask if they know how to make it, but when they describe the recipe I’ll say, “That doesn’t sound like what I’m talking about.” I can imagine their frustration because if I were them I’d be all “Okay, whatever, I can’t help you.” But they insist their recipe is correct or Mom will call Grandma for her recipe (which is invariably different from Mom’s or Dad’s recipe) and I’m just confused. I went with intuition and a little help from each of their recipes to come up with this salty, sweet, vinegary, spicy, fragrant, cold pickled cabbage.

slice up the leaves

mix and boil the pickling liquid

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: savory chinese soybean milk soup

Hi hi hi hi! We up and left town a few days ago…

denver international

across the sierra nevada

I’m in California, spending a quiet evening with my mom, my aunt, and my grandmother. We’re having a really sweet visit together. Jeremy picks me up tomorrow morning to head into the sticks. Before he drove south to meet with colleagues at UC Santa Cruz, we had a lovely lunch with Lisa Is Bossy at Sushi O Sushi. I love sushi. I love Lisa. She gave us some of her special passion fruit French macarons. There are no pictures because they were THAT delicious (thank you, sweetheart).

sashimi for me me me (and lisa and jeremy)

the something something roll – exceptionally wonderful

You just can’t have a visit with family without some GOOD Chinese food (at least you can’t in my family). We’ve been enjoying the noms in between running errands for Grandma. I swear it blows me away that these three beautiful women each look several years younger than they really are. Mom just told me I couldn’t divulge her age on the blog, but I think it’s okay to say that Grandma is 88 and still kicking ass. In fact, all three of these ladies kick ass.

mom (left), my aunt (right), and grandma (bottom)

beef noodle soup

soup dumplings (tan bao)

I thought an appropriate recipe to share this time would be a Beijing-style Chinese breakfast. It’s my Daddy’s favorite. He used to make this on weekends when I was in high school. So I’m posting this in honor of Dad since we’re having a girls-only visit this time. It starts with Chinese doughnuts.

chinese doughnuts – not quite what you were thinking

soybean milk

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Recipe: bean curd rolls

Hey there. It’s Friday. I hope you all have a fun weekend ahead of you. There’s something GOOD coming up on Monday, so definitely check back in when you’re trying to avoid that email in-box.

Remember all of those photos I posted of hills covered in wildflowers? The only reason I shot those on our March road trip was because Death Valley and Antelope Valley weren’t ready. We were early on the blooms. That’s why Jeremy and I detoured out to the Coast Range in search of wildflowers (and thankfully, we found some). That’s also why Jason and I were in Death Valley and Antelope Valley this week.

desert gold in death valley

a carpet of gold at the base of the black mountains

When you have limited time and long distances to travel, planning your shoots becomes a sort of gamble. High winds made for tough shooting in Death Valley, but the weather was supposed to nice up in the next two days. We drove south to Antelope Valley and agreed if the flowers weren’t awesome, then we’d return to Death Valley for our third day.

the poppies, they were awesome

California poppies are my favorite wildflowers. FAVORITE. They were essentially at peak bloom when we arrived, so we spent our third day crawling around in the fields. We (and by we, I mean Jason) got swarmed by a nest of giant black ants and nearly stepped on a baby rattlesnake. Fun times!

totally worth it

Some of my Death Valley shots are up on the photo blog. I’ll get around to the Antelope Valley photos this weekend. I processed the photos I was less enthused about first because I knew if I didn’t, I’d never get to them. Do you ever do that? In the meantime, let’s get to a recipe… If you’ve ever had good dim sum, you might have encountered these tofu skin rolls – fu tse juan. [As my “more Chinese than me” friends know, I can’t ping ying to save my life.] It’s a favorite dish of mine: pork, bamboo shoots, and Chinese mushrooms wrapped in sheets of bean curd skin and fried then braised. I made these rolls forever ago after casually asking my awesome Chinese grandma how to do so.

i start with chinese tree ears (left) and chinese black mushrooms (right)

and don’t forget the pork

**Jump for more butter**