Wonton Soup
My affinity for all things Chinese has been flirting with the cultural appreciation/ cultural appropriation line in recent years, and I started writing this entry with some nonsense about perspective taking and Eastern culture that began to sound very othering and offensive. So I'm going to stop theorizing and just start talking about why I love this week's beguilement, wonton soup.
A lot of those pleasant memories ended when I moved to Tennessee in second grade. The houses were more spread out - disconnected. Instead of playing with diverse children, I went to what basically amounted to an all-white school. My family became more insular. There were more siblings to take care of, more computers to waste time on, more space to fill with unnecessary junk. I don't have any more really positive memories until high school. But, even in Halls there was a Chinese buffet (or two). Even then it became a comfort food - a memory of what things were like and maybe would be again. (I should have known better when we mostly went to the one that did not have wonton soup even when I asked.)
In high school I turned more to Japanese food for comfort, as it became more of a tradition - from creating a fan-page for Kobe sauce to making more memories than I can count at Kanpai. Now both Chinese and Japanese food serve as a comfort for me. But then, well into some major difficulties in my marriage, I read The Joy Luck Club. This book has meant so much to me (that's a story for another time), but I was hooked from the first chapter in which Amy Tan describes the making of a wonton saying, "she is stuffing wonton, one chopstick jab of gingery meat dabbed onto a thin skin and then a single fluid turn with her hand that seals the skin into the shape of a tiny nurse's cap" (30). I knew I wanted to experience that - it sounded soothing to expertly prepare dozens of little dumplings. I wanted to make them then, but I had a deep and abiding fear of the kitchen from years of being told I was a poor and messy cook and housekeeper. I tried something like it once. I used rice paper, and my meal turned out poor and sloppy - a self-fulfilling prophecy that kept me subdued under a "more capable" husband.
Through my divorce, China Lee, a restaurant on Middlebrook, became a sanctuary. It was a place I could get my coveted comfort food to go. I could go back to my apartment and eat alone without anyone watching me. When I started school, I could call in an order before I left campus and pick it up on the way back. I usually ordered enough where they would give me two fortune cookies, reminding me of another childhood comfort - the takeout ordering scene from Two Weeks' Notice. Anyway, to this day I still tip them every time I go in, just because I'll be emotionally distraught if they ever go out of business.
I still wanted to make wontons though. I've been learning a lot recently from several different areas of my life about materiality and presence. On my own, I've discovered *surprise* I'm not as terrible at housework and cooking as I was led to believe all my life. I spend so much time in my head because of my job, my education, and my nature, and doing something practical for myself, using my hands, like cooking and baking, has become a major way to re-center for me.
Today was a hard day for me. I spent it way too far in my head. But then I stepped out, got myself together, and made these beautiful wontons.
I have several fond childhood memories of my life before I moved to Tennessee. There were diverse neighborhood kids in our side-by-side townhouses, and we had story time, cookie making, and trick-or-treating in painstakingly created homemade costumes. All I did in school was read and create books with other children, many of whom spoke other languages like Spanish and Swahili. All that, and, though we didn't eat out very much in general, we often went to a Chinese buffet after church on Sundays. I remember looking up my birthday on the bright red calendar and discovering, with some disgust, that I was a snake. I remember almond cookies and beautiful white and blue plates and bowls. Most of all, I remember my favorite dish - wonton soup.
In high school I turned more to Japanese food for comfort, as it became more of a tradition - from creating a fan-page for Kobe sauce to making more memories than I can count at Kanpai. Now both Chinese and Japanese food serve as a comfort for me. But then, well into some major difficulties in my marriage, I read The Joy Luck Club. This book has meant so much to me (that's a story for another time), but I was hooked from the first chapter in which Amy Tan describes the making of a wonton saying, "she is stuffing wonton, one chopstick jab of gingery meat dabbed onto a thin skin and then a single fluid turn with her hand that seals the skin into the shape of a tiny nurse's cap" (30). I knew I wanted to experience that - it sounded soothing to expertly prepare dozens of little dumplings. I wanted to make them then, but I had a deep and abiding fear of the kitchen from years of being told I was a poor and messy cook and housekeeper. I tried something like it once. I used rice paper, and my meal turned out poor and sloppy - a self-fulfilling prophecy that kept me subdued under a "more capable" husband.
Through my divorce, China Lee, a restaurant on Middlebrook, became a sanctuary. It was a place I could get my coveted comfort food to go. I could go back to my apartment and eat alone without anyone watching me. When I started school, I could call in an order before I left campus and pick it up on the way back. I usually ordered enough where they would give me two fortune cookies, reminding me of another childhood comfort - the takeout ordering scene from Two Weeks' Notice. Anyway, to this day I still tip them every time I go in, just because I'll be emotionally distraught if they ever go out of business.
I still wanted to make wontons though. I've been learning a lot recently from several different areas of my life about materiality and presence. On my own, I've discovered *surprise* I'm not as terrible at housework and cooking as I was led to believe all my life. I spend so much time in my head because of my job, my education, and my nature, and doing something practical for myself, using my hands, like cooking and baking, has become a major way to re-center for me.
Today was a hard day for me. I spent it way too far in my head. But then I stepped out, got myself together, and made these beautiful wontons.
It was more than delicious. It was having the power of comfort at my fingertips.
Excessively diverted,
BBP
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