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Recipe: chicken sizzling rice soup

I promised Woolly that I’d post a chicken soup favorite of mine and by golly, I’m doing it. Seems fitting as it has been snowing since this afternoon (big grin here). What did I tell ya? March means psycho weather: sunny and warm, stormy and snowy. It’s all good to me. Sort of like a degustation.

Apologies to Sarah and Kevin. For some reason, my spam filter keeps tucking your comments away as spam until I go and rescue them. Just to let you know that you are not flagged for my black list or anything! xxoo

See here now, my good man installed new blinds in our great room this week! There was a sale at [twenty] three-day blinds and we made the move to replace those old ones that came with the house. No offense to M&B, from whom we bought the house because we love those ladies like nobody’s business, but these dual cell honeycomb blinds are soooooo energy efficient and the diffuse lighting Rocks My World. Whooooooo!

**Jump for more butter**

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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Recipe: mu shu pork

It’s actually mu as in mu shu pork. When I was a kid, I ordered this at Chinese restaurants and my parents would exclaim, “Why do you order this? We make it at home much better!” They were right, but I loved the pancakes. I was also the one who ordered chicken strips at the seafood restaurant. My, how times have changed. I now refuse to order any Chinese dish that I can make at home. I usually go for those plates that make a fantastic mess to prepare… better their kitchen than mine.

Mom’s homemade mu shu pork (and yes, she always used pork – no chicken, no beef, no tofu, no shrimp versions) included homemade pancakes – the mu shu shells. We called them bing and I have no idea if that is the proper Mandarin word or just some nickname my parents made up. I learned that one of the terms of affection they had for me translates into “stinky egg” and not “dearest daughter” as I had assumed, so you will forgive me if I am cautious about littering the page with what I *think* is accurate Mandarin terminology.