The Cookies are Crumbling (But That Doesn't Stop Us From Eating Them)

My love of baking comes from my Aunt Dot. She owned one of those 1950s era Betty Crocker cookbooks bound in a three-ring binder with full color spreads of the most beautiful food I have ever seen.

Otherworldly, fanciful delicacies that I as the daughter of Chinese parents never saw. I was far more used to rice and duck and soy sauce chicken and bitter melon soup. Not rows upon rows of iced cookies shaped like snowmen and bells and rocking horses; or three-layer yellow cakes iced in white with flaming peaches on top; or brunches with fat doughnuts, sugar and nut crusted coffee cakes and pancake stacks heavy with syrup and butter.

My mom, being from Hong Kong, cooked mostly traditional Chinese meals; my Aunt Dot did too, but Aunt Dot had a strong streak of Southern in her. Aunt Dot wore printed shirtdresses, sounded like a Southern farmwife (she called scuppernongs scuffledimes) and introduced me to fried chicken dredged in a batter of flour and water then fried in an inch of oil. I loved her very much.

She was also the one who introduced me to the sweets I salivated over in her Betty Crocker cookbook. Having a sweet tooth herself, Aunt Dot's favorite Saturday afternoon pasttime was making cookies and I was always her willing assistant.

One of her best cookies was actually a recipe that didn't come from Betty Crocker. I'm not sure where it came from, but we still have the original, written in a flowing cursive with a slightly shaky hand. I love how she instructs us to bake the cookies at 350 or 375 degrees. These were the cookies she made for each of us during holidays or as college care packages.

I made them recently again for the first time in years. Pulling the sheets out of the oven with their familiar brown sugar, nutty smell brought back memories of Aunt Dot, all buttoned up in her red and blue kitchen smock, with a spatula in hand and a big smile on her face.

Cornflake Cookies

1 cup of unsalted butter (2 sticks)
1 cup of white sugar
1/2 cup of brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp of vanilla
1 1/2 cups of flour
3 tsp of baking powder
1/2 tsp of salt
1/2 box of cornflakes
1/2 cup of nuts

Preheat oven to 350 or 375 degrees (or compromise like me to 360 degrees).

Cream softened butter with both sugars. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well. Add flour, baking powder and salt and mix. Add cornflakes and nuts and mix one more time. It will seem like there are way too many cornflakes for the batter, but don't worry! It will mix in.

Using a large tablespoon, drop half spoonfuls of cookie dough on baking sheets. I usually fit 12 to a sheet. Bake for 15 minutes; cookies should have flattened and be lacy and golden brown.

Cool for a moment then remove from baking sheets. Yields about 4 dozen crisp, crumbly and delicious cookies.

Chasing Chitlins: A Thanksgiving Folk Tale

A couple years ago, I worked on a travel story for a local magazine. I had always wanted to attend the annual Chitlin Strut in Salley, SC, and this offered the perfect opportunity.

The chitlin, for the uninitiated, is the intestine of a pig. Rinsed, scrubbed, this white rubbery organ (I hesitate to call it meat) still is never quite released from the pungent odor that you might imagine it would hold after being intimately associated with, let's face it, pig poop. Yet, roughly 25,0000 people descend on Salley (pop. 398) every year at Thanksgiving time to ride carnival rides, shop for arts and crafts, and eat literally miles of the stuff.

As Asians, you can imagine we've dined on our share of innards. My aunt and mom have served us pig stomach (tripe), chicken feet (with the fingernails still on!), deeply burnished ducks that stared back out of one glaze-covered eye. My mom once gave my husband, who is not Asian, a pig tail in soup, and like a trooper, he ate it.

So the whole family caravaned to Salley to try our luck at chitlins. As we crept along downtown Salley's narrow streets, narrowly missing striking pedestrians, my husband rolled down his window and shouted out to the crowds filing past, "Where are the chitlins?" And they shouted back, "This way." "No, over there." "Try that church over there, they're the best!" We were surrounded by hordes of helpful tourists who seemed to know what they liked and were eager to initiate us.

We soon found ourselves standing on a crowded lawn ringed by food vendors of all description, but classified in that category known as fair food. Where were the chitlins? While my husband and brothers went to investigate, the rest of us scoped out and staked our claim on a patch of green grass.

Success! in a rectangular styrofoam box! And terror! as my sister exclaimed, "Oh my gosh, I thought that smell was the port-o-potties, but it's the chitlins!" Yes, the rank smell that we had caught a whiff of every now and then was eminating from the innocent and attractive box of deep fried nuggets (with a side of hot sauce).

My sister, my brother and my husband all made it through one bite and one hard swallow. I spat out my mouthful after two chews. My second brother on the other hand, snacked his way through an entire chitlin nugget and even went after more. My sister, looking at the photos later, said, "He smiles his biggest smile ever...while he's eating a chitlin?"

Yes, the fair food was there to wash down the taste once you tried the chitlins. Yet we couldn't tear our eyes away during the first annual Chitlin Eating contest, where contestants were given small buckets of boiled (yes, not even given the helpful flavor and crunch of breading), bare, hideously white chitlin tubes, that they shoved down in massive quantities.

The Salley Chitlin Strut is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity--not to be missed, for the bragging rights alone. But the takeaway? Know your limits, always carry hot sauce, and when in doubt, don't stand downwind.

The 46th Annual Chitlin Strut takes place in Salley, SC, on Saturday, November 26. The event features a parade, bands, carnival rides, tractor show, chitlin eating contest, hog calling contest and strut contest. For more information, visit their website at www.chitlinstrut.com.

They Call It TATER Salad (Lee Brothers Style)

If there's one thing that's important growing up in the South, that's potato salad. Forget about sweet tea or fried chicken or anything else. It's the almighty tater, and how it's dressed for the occasion, that is a hotly debated topic. The wrong or badly made potato salad can ruin a picnic on the sunniest day of the year and get in-laws into a standoff.

Everyone has their own favorite recipe and special fixins. Do you add mustard or not? Onions? Slivers of ham? Chopped hard-boiled eggs? Dill pickles? Special spices? And most everyone's potato salad recipe is proudly proclaimed "the best" of them all.

Despite being Chinese, my father and his brothers and sisters (having been raised in the South) were firm believers in this as well. "Our" potato salad eschewed mustard, and had a flavorful but simple mix of onions and celery, diced small, combined with hard-boiled eggs and potatoes, dressed lightly in mayo and salt and pepper. The onion gave it heat and spice, the celery added crunch, and the rest was just a creamy heavenly mouthful.

My first attempt at making it was an absolute failure. My family is one of those who don't have measured recipes, and in my 12 year old confidence, I added this and that, mimicking my Aunt Dot who was our family's potato salad connoisseur. "Too many onions," my father growled after one bite, never one to mince words. I tasted, and he was right...the salad was just overcome with the heat of the onion and was almost inedible.

Fast forward some 20 years, and my recipe has been perfected...the right balance of onion, celery, dill pickles (my father would NOT approve), eggs and taters. So who messes with perfection? Since I have a bad habit of clipping almost every recipe in the weekly food section (and even the recipes in the coupon clipper), I would have to own up that it's me. The recipe that tempted me is in the Lee Brothers' new cookbook, Simple Fresh Southern (what a great title!) and the recipe is Green Goddess Potato Salad, another simple recipe that smothers hunks of freshly boiled taters in that rich, tangy herb-green dressing. My tweaked version (leaving out the white wine vinegar, which I didn't have, and with a few other small edits) is below. My husband, who is another die-hard potato salad lover and devoted to the dill pickle version, was crazy about it. "But next time, let's add eggs," he said. Perfect recipe, version 2.

Green Goddess Potato Salad (adapted from the Lee Brothers)

About six medium potatoes (enough to make four healthy servings--roughly 1.5 to 2 pounds?)
1/2 cup mayo (Hellmans)
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup finely chopped parsley
1/2 cup finely chopped scallions (green and white parts)
Teaspoon of dried tarragon
Juice of 1 small lime
Salt and pepper to taste
Chopped hard-boiled eggs (optional)

Peel and cut potatoes into 1 inch chunks. Bring to boil (you can boil eggs at the same time if you're using them), add a couple teaspoons or so of salt, and boil for about 8 to 10 minutes, or until tender when pierced with a fork. While potatoes are boiling, combine the remaining ingredients in a bowl for the dressing.

Drain the potatoes, and peel and chop the eggs. Add to the dressing and mix to combine. Let cool in fridge, and add salt and pepper to taste before serving.

Photo credit: oprah.com

I See Dead People...

We'd signed up for a ghost tour while in Charleston this weekend, and knew we were in for it when the guide started right in on the "scary" ghost stories, complete with startled eyes and dramatic voice inflections. "I've actually seen a ghost....RIGHT on this very tour!" she intoned.

WE doubted that we'd be "in tune" with anything, until we stopped at a cemetery. While the guide was in the middle of another riveting tale, suddenly one of our tour mates said, "What's that?" Her face peered through the iron bars of the cemetery fence. "I see something!!"

We all craned to look as she continued, "I saw a glowing circle...it was flashing different colors!" Our guide said, "Wow, you probably saw an orb...it's the sign of a spirit!"

Cameras clicked. Then, the same lady said excitedly, "Look, I see a man in a white shirt!!" Pause. Then, our guide: "Um, that IS a man in a white shirt."

Turns out the "orb" was a flashlight.

The Cake That Took Two People, Three Hours and a Bushel of Peaches

It started with a box of peaches from the Saturday Market on the River.

Actually it was a bushel of peaches, which my brother and I ridiculously decided to split for our respective households. Ridiculous because a half-bushel of peaches is actually a good 25 to 30 peaches and in my household there's just the two of us. But the peaches were irresistable, that perfect velvet rose gold, and smelled heavenly even from a few feet away. And since our experiment earlier this year of ordering farm-fresh vegetables delivered to our home, we've had a lot of experience coming up with ways to use up massive amounts of fruits and vegetables.

First, we counted out 10 for us to eat just as snacks. 15 to go.

Then 2 for my special chicken curry that I usually use canned peaches in, instead of the mango that's called for. 13 to go.

Then 2 for homemade peach ice cream. Creamy, perfect, and so much better than storebought. 11 to go.

Then the cake.

It was my mom's birthday and I was determined that she would get something with peaches (luckily, she likes them!). I didn't want to do a cobbler--too expected!--so spent a Saturday morning googling recipes. Did you know that peaches aren't used very often in cakes? In my mind's eye, I imagined a tall proud cake, layers golden and rich with chopped peaches, and five perfect peach halves gracing the white-iced top. The reality was just so...mundane. There was a peach pound cake and even a peach cake, but they all sounded like desserts from the back of a package, baked in a bundt pan and meant to be dumped out on a table with a bunch of other desserts at a potluck. And you have to have frosting with a birthday cake!

Then Texas Monthly appeared on the seventh or eighth search page. A former boss of mine loved the magazine, so I knew this had the potential of being very good. And the name, Dulce De Leche Cake Peach Cake, was magical.

It was also very long and rather complicated, with steps for the icing, filling and the cake itself, so my husband pitched in. (When a recipe calls for you to boil an unopened can of sweetened condensed milk for two hours, you know it's going to be complicated!). While he peeled and chopped the peaches, toasted and chopped pecans and made the filling, I mixed up the light, buttery batter. Cooking together hasn't always worked for us, but somehow this did. As my husband said later, "We were both working...hard!...for three solid hours!"

While the cake baked, the dreamy dulce de leche icing--the milk cooked into a creamy caramel sauce that strangely smelled like Kraft Macaroni and Cheese but tasted sweet and delicious--came together. Once the cake cooled, my husband was almost like a little kid as he carefully iced the cake and I placed the decorative pecans on top.

It was a solid hefty cake that my family oohed over and despite a heavy steak dinner consumed a good half in a matter of moments. While we really only used up about 4 peaches, everyone agreed that it was one of the best cakes they ever had (thanks, Texas Monthly!).



Unfortunately, we got a little peached out and the remaining six are making some nice compost in our backyard. But we still have a little dish of the frosting in the fridge. I'm thinking of making another cake.

My First (and Only) Halloween Memory

My family almost never celebrated Halloween.

But one time, when we were very, very small--and because my sister and I were the only ones old enough to understand what it was all about--the two of us got to celebrate Halloween. My dad bought us matching Wonder Woman costumes that we wore for months afterwards--we both were crazy about Lynda Carter and spinning until we were dizzy, imagining that we too could have magical powers. I remember squinting through the small eyeholes of the pressed paper mask, struggling with the elastic that went around my head. The painted black hair on the mask, which fanned out from our painted faces, wasn't enough to satisfy my sister and me, who both sported short, easy-to-wash haircuts. So we snatched up some old towels, tied them on with headbands, and preened with our long "hair" draping over our shoulders.

The costumes themselves were basically big plastic bags with arm and legholes, and painted to look like Wonder Woman's bustier and star-spangled underpants. We struggled into them, uncomfortable and probably a little sweaty. But we thought we looked fabulous. There's a picture somewhere in an old photo album of us in our towels and plastic costumes and paper masks, vamping for the camera.

Then, we stood in our tiny hallway, just the two of us, with all the doors closed around us, bags in our hand. I remember feeling inexplicably scared and timid. The light seemed too bright, the house too eerily quiet. Then we knocked on the door to our living room. "Trick or treat!" My dad opened the door and smiling dropped some candy in our bag. Next, to the kitchen, where Aunt Dot stood waiting with more treats. I don't remember, but I'm sure my uncle and my mom were behind the other doors too.

Looking back, it was such a strange and oddly sweet thing for my dad to do. I wish I could remember why he did it, if we'd been talking to him especially about Halloween or he had just caught us wistfully looking at costumes or if it was just a crazy idea he thought up, a fun thing for his girls to do.

We never did it again. But as my only Halloween memory, it was, and is, absolutely perfect.

What Do You Want To Do?

When I was little, figuring out what I wanted to do was so easy. At first, I wanted to be a dentist, until my dad mentioned that I'd have my hands in people's mouths all day (My reaction?Eeeewwww! I was about 5 at the time.) Then I wanted to be a country music singer, and belted out some pretty good tunes in the living room, at the dining room table, in the bathtub, in the backyard..... But when I first figured out that I could get a pencil and fill up a notebook with stories--real stories like they had in books--that is all I really wanted to do. 

Then came the roadblocks. I was painfully shy (and often still am) and just getting up the nerve to let anyone even read my stories was tough. But our school did have a newspaper for a semester or two (we were tiiiny), and I can't even remember what I wrote, but I do remember the thrill of seeing my name in print, officially. In college, I was sure that I wanted to write novels and poetry and draw too, but before he died, my dad really drummed into me that I needed to really do something practical. I remember sitting in the hospital room with him before his final round of chemo, and us talking about my future. I wanted to write; and he was supportive of my choice (being so shy, I seldom offered any) but gently told me to think about money too.

For a while, it was easy not to think about the money and just get lost in the dreams. I was a journalism major as a backup, but I knew that after college I was going to go to New York and be a writer. So naive! Until my sister started asking where I would live and how I would support myself and how I'd even eat, moving to New York with no job and just a few hundred dollars in the bank.

So I came home. I feel like my career so far really has been serendipitious...I got my start working in magazines, then got an interest in PR and now marketing. But I started thinking too much about the money and not enough about what I really love. So now I'm full circle again, dreaming dreams that I haven't thought about in a while.

Will I make the right choice? I don't know...heaven knows I've made plenty of bad ones already. But one thing I've always said and always believed in is that certain things aren't worth it unless they make you happy. Even if they ensure you're in a certain tax bracket and can take vacations to places you've always wanted to go. Day-to-day happiness, that's what I'm wishing for. We'll see what happens next. 

A Room With a View

People always seem to be a little surprised when I tell them I also do a little painting. To be honest, sometimes I feel like I'm playing the role of an artist, mainly because I don't do it very often, and "almost being an art major" isn't much of a background.

But it's something I enjoy when inspiration hits, as it did when my sister asked me to paint a mural for her nursery. It actually became a family project, with me as lead painter and my brothers, sister and husband all helping. "I painted that hill," my brother Piers still points out proudly. "That's my picket fence," says Sean.

I also did a portrait of their dog, Bonnie, on the opposite wall. I think my best review came from Bonnie herself...after I had finished, I called her in to take a look, and she barked at herself there on the wall.

Most recently, for my new niece, my sister asked me to paint something to go over her crib. We chose bluebirds; my sister, who has the best handwriting in the family, would later add her daughter's name in gold ink.

Such a fun project!