I wish I could tell you – after an exhausting trip in the quest for the only MRI machine for animals in China – that the kids are all right. That we are all right.
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Dear shrink, I’m… wondering if I can now be qualified for that zoloft + xanax prescription we talked about last time, you know, and let’s throw in a couple of diazepam for good measure while we’re at it? I assure you that I have no previous record of substance abuse, in fact, I hardly drink alcohol for God sake, oh why because I’m naturally fun. But you see, it’s my kids… my kids who are competing in a race to my emotional hell by turning rotten-sick on me one after the other. Oh HELL, it’s even making me babble uncontrollably about it on my food-blog, right, a FOOD-blog that’s supposed to be about escaping to gastronomic neverland, not… Anderson Pooper on real world shit… Damn it! What the hell am I talking about, you see? I need meds!
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It’s been almost 16 months since the moment I sat my lame ass down before a computer, and pessimistically inserted a few doubtful letters down at the domain-registry… “ladyandpups.com… hmph, yeah right.” Well, turned out I sort of was. Disregarding any form of success measured by any numeral digits (it’ll come it’ll com…), this place has been an unexpected release for my moderate creativity and infinite opinions, to vent itself in the form of a blog. As unconvincing and self-indulgent as I formerly thought it would be, much healthier than a reckless Ebay spree as it turned out… (I confess nothing).
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I’m never much of a person of faith and spirituality. Evidently since Jason and I started slowly leaving our footprints around the world, we left an obvious trail seeking gastronomic truth instead of spiritual babble, pinning destinations on the map not for the yearning to hear the echoes bouncing off the cold marbles of St. Peter’s, but to sink our teeth into the godliness of a cool, fresh Roman burrata. Not to hear the chanting of monks on ancient scriptures, but for the serene noise coming from the skin of a Balinese roasted pig cracking in between teeth. The antiquated pagoda from a time bygone can wait, my Vietnamese bún chả in the now is getting cold.
We go with our guts.
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Have I mentioned how unapologetically cheap I am? Right… to elaborate we must understand that “cheap” is a strictly relative term and I am saying that strictly relatively-speaking, I am incredibly cheap. I negotiated a 30% raise in my daily allowance in the past decade which is to say that I am spending only 30% above the average of college-quality life. I gloated over the booking of a 69 euro/night ” beach hotel” in the mediterranean to Jason who, to say the least, did not share the same sentiments and boy, you should see their pool. I almost always buy non-organics only and after almost 5 years away from the states, I really really miss sinking my face in a pint of Ben’n Jerry’s that’s going $8/pint in this part of the world. Yes, I am saying technically I could afford better than the above. I’m in China for God’s sakes.
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No lattice-top? No pretty dashing colors of summer berries? Not even the scarce possibility of a scoop of ice-cream on top (people will eat anything with an ice-cream on top these days)(how’s that heatwave going)? Just when my latest favorite creation was traffic-vetoed because of its less-than-fashionable appearance (A’ight, it may look Susan Boyle but that rice can fucking sing!), I can’t believe I’m preparing to feature this visual question-mark… If you have the urge to gush out, Oh Lord this poor woman dropped that labour of a pie in the kitchen sink!… I assure I have not. It’s this stubborn nerve of mine, you see. I want to cook for traffic I really do. I’m not playing cool. But it’s this nerve for curiosity… this damn nerve…
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I am sitting at my parent’s dinning room table in Taiwan, clicking anxiously on my mother’s laptop… scrambling to get this new post out. I’m gonna quickly leave you with these little suckers I made before leaving Beijing, what I consider to be the ideal ratio of meat and cheese when it comes to cheese burgers (in this case mini-sized), as I call them, the 2:1 sliders.
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Had I anticipated enough courage to pick up the topic of peach and mascarpone again this summer, I probably wouldn’t have cashed that sob-story so early. After that horrendous disaster of a pie, if that pile of slumpy menace could still be called that…, I was determined to quit peach forever, total rehab. After all, they quit me first. You see, that’s the other side of the story. Years ago, peaches decided to join the alliance of fruits that were waging an allergy campaign against me by inducing itchy mouth every time I tried to reach out a friendly lick. As I was addicted to rejection, every summer since was a struggling anniversary of our separation. Even after more than a decade… that day when I picked them out of the mascarpone-puddle-of-death and ate them, the peaches still made damn well sure that I was reminded. I saved them from the fate of the eternal dumpster and they repaid me with crawly esophagus… lil fuckers.
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Previously on Lady and Pups, the bloodthirsty 9-days marathon of recipe-massacre was mercifully ended by the heroic Jasmine green tea granita, thus temporarily closed the tormenting gap between culinary imagination and reality. But the narrative failed to mention the other type of food blog-limbo. One that’s even more ill-hearted, ironic… a humorless prank that leaves the subject, in this case me, in a helpess panic with all hope diminishing after each and every other attempts to right it. In this episode, we are going to closely examine this type of sucker.
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Truth is, I was a tiny bit amused by the flock of defenders, friendly or hostile, who rushed to my incidental black tea cake to affirm America’s tea presence. To the flag-swinging crusaders, amused at how unreceptive people are to a relative comparison and because the upset words validated just as much as saying… Asians eat burgers. Lots of it at that, too. Doesn’t translate to Asia having as much burger-culture as America. And the rest tea-lovers – who were nice enough to comment (thank you!) and certainly more gracious of a human being than I ever was, who simply wanted to inform this blunt-mouthed cook that there’s a growing tea-culture in America (thanks again!) – made me feel a bit undeserved because I would totally, upmost whole-heartedly agree with you if not because of the fact that… I was too busy drinking coffee to notice.
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The agony of making creative effort in the kitchen is, more often than not (and don’t tell me otherwise), we fall into the tormenting limbo between imagination and reality and sometimes the plunge feels eternally lasting. My current episode has been ruthlessly stretching into its 9th day-anniversary, on-going, in cold blood. Do feel bad because here it comes…
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Before I met Beijing, there was another affair I had a brief, bitter-ending engagement with and his name was I believe, Hong Kong. We spent an abusive 18 months together right after New York… ah New York. It was such a transcendent love, great love, Mr. BIG-GREAT that anyone else who followed was predetermined to never live up. Without the enlightenment of other perspectives, I couldn’t love a city with EVEN SMALLER living-square footage than New York… EVEN MORE CROWDED streets than ant-hills, EVEN UGLIER buildings than Taipei and many many EVEN-MORE-NESS to feel sorry for myself about. Like I said, I had no perspective. I had no idea that Hong Kong was already Aidan.
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