Kung Hei Fat Choi

Chinese New Year has never really meant much to me. In fact, my banana-self probably wouldn't have known that it was today if not for one of my white co-workers asking me what I was doing to celebrate. Or, my more Chinese relatives sending out a Happy Chinese New Year email.

In any case, yesterday we inadvertently celebrated by going to dim sum in the International District in Seattle because of my friend Jen's new year's resolution to go to dim sum more often. We have already gone twice...so she is doing pretty well. The food wasn't as good as it is in Toronto, and the deep fried calamari that had impressed me so much last time was of lower quality this time. And my end of meal congee experience was ruined when I realized that it was contaminated with pei dan (thousand year old egg). Yeah...as you can imagine it tastes about as appealing as it sounds. Like many elements of Chinese cuisine, an "acquired taste", in the same category as red bean anything, durian, shrimp heads, and the pasty orange stuff inside the crab. I am proud to say, and to my father's dismay ("You don't like it?? Good, more for me!") in the last 2 years I have acquired the taste for the last two elements on that list. It appears that my palate is maturing, and my father will have to fight me for the crab bodies. Oddly, he has never fought me over brussel sprouts...

Still, I love going to dim sum with people that have never been before. Mostly to watch their reaction to what gets put in front of them. I remember going with some co-workers in Winnipeg for my farewell lunch, and one of them exclaimed upon looking at the ha gow (shrimp dumplings), "They look like embryos!". Haha! I had never thought about it that way, and seeing it through her eyes was an interesting experience. Too me, it tastes too good to think about what it looks like. As a child living in a Chinese-Canadian home, you learn quickly to taste first and ask questions later (or not at all)!

I realize now that this entire blog thus far has been dedicated to dim sum. In non-food-related matters, exciting things that are happening in my life currently include learning how to snowboard (oscillating moments of pain and frustration as I fall repeatedly, and exhilaration and a sense of accomplishment when I don't), and learning how to cable knit and the making of my first cable knit sweater. The pattern that I am working off of is here. Will post photos of my progress on the snowboarding and the sweater.

So, as you can see, in response to accusations from a certain English engineering miner cum environmental health consultant (not to name any names), my snowboarding-caused wrist injury has not prevented me from blogging, laziness has. After sitting in front of a computer and a 300-page deposition during the day, it is preferable not to sit in front of the computer and write a blog in the evening. Better to go to the gym, eat dinner, then knit while watching Six Feet Under.

P.S. Wikipedia rocks...they have definitions for everything!