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Recipe: chinese scallion pancakes

I’ve been able to resume my cardio workouts this week and it feels great. It helps alleviate some of the lingering side effects. My body and mind are much happier for it too, albeit a little tuckered out. That’s okay with me. I am a firm believer in the no pain, no gain mantra. Did I mention that I’ve dropped two sizes? Crazy – I know. My oncologist mentioned that I hadn’t gained any weight as most of his chemo patients tend to. It’s hard to gain weight when food 1) tastes like ass and 2) plays havoc on your insides. At least the endorphins from my workouts are flowing – w00t!

Jeremy made it home late this afternoon. Even though I don’t get bent out of shape when he’s on travel, it’s always nice to see my best friend again. Some folks require time away from their partner, but we can get along 24/7 indefinitely and that’s a good thing to know. Actually, we can work together 24/7 in adverse conditions – read: vacation. I literally trust him with my life (well, he used to be high-angle Search and Rescue).

It’s now 1 am and Jeremy just woke up to operate that giant radio telescope… My astrophysicist is hot. [I was about to say astrophysicists are hot, but that is a totally untrue and completely laughable statement.]

This afternoon, I made a recipe I’ve been wanting to post for a while. I usually make these in small quantities when I need to use up leftover dough from Chinese dumplings. It’s something my mom always used to do when I was little. I never learned how to make these outright from my mom – the technique just sunk into my head with all of my visual memories of my childhood. Same with the dumplings. To see how the dough is made, I’ll refer you to the dumpling recipe.

chopped scallions

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Recipe: chinese stir-fried flank steak

I don’t have a beef with winter. Nor do I have a beef with spring when it turns the trees in my front yard into this:

these are my kind of april showers

I got my turns in today. There were ten fresh inches of powder at the local hill. Spring has been good to me.

jeremy discusses which run to ski next

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Recipe: rui tsai (lucky ten ingredient vegetable)

Chinese New Year fast approaches and it is time to prepare for the festivities which almost always revolve around food. When I was growing up in Southern Virginia, I hated being Chinese because I looked different from everyone else. We ate food that was completely foreign to my friends. My parents spoke to (yelled at) me in Chinese in front of my friends and I just wanted to disappear. I endured plenty of teasing and bullying because, well… kids are assholes. I did everything in my power to avoid being seen in public with my parents. I wanted so badly to be Not Me.

I won’t bore you with my path to accepting my identity, but once I was there and donned my status as an ABC (American Born Chinese) you couldn’t stop me. Happiness comes from within and baby, I got it. That’s not to say that living the balance between western and eastern cultures is easy, but I’ve come to embrace what I used to reject as a child. Okay, I could do without the constant *guilt* in the never-ending quest to be a Good Chinese Daughter, but otherwise I have to say my Chinese culture enriches my life and I’m glad for it.

Which leads me to the food and superstitions and traditions. There is a veritable boat load of foods you eat for the Lunar New Year and each one means something! I am probably familiar with a mere fraction of them. My family does a giant hot pot filled with ingredients that all signify good things: money, health, happiness, luck, promotion, success, more money… You get the idea. Dumplings, as I’ve mentioned before, are supposed to represent money and in some instances having sons, but let’s not go there. Tofu is luck. Rice cake means a “higher” (better) year. A whole fish means happy starts and endings (head and tail, get it?). Eat something sweet first thing on New Year’s Day so sweet things come out of your mouth all year (I can hear the guffaws of all of my friends…). And there is a lucky ten ingredient vegetable dish called rui tsai. Ten is the lucky number. Eat this dish and all good things will come to you in the new year.

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