January 9, 2009

• Missing My Grandma

  I've really been missing my grandma lately. In the two years since she's passed on, I've thought about her every day, but lately, the heartache is even stronger.

  It all started with my cravings for hot and sour soup. I have really been craving sour stuff this pregnancy -- to the point of eating two whole bags of See's Sour Stars chewy candies during the holiday season in only three days -- and have been dying for hot and sour soup. In the last few weeks, I've probably drank five gallons of the stuff. Johnny's brought it home from every Chinese restaurant in the vicinity; I've even made it from the mix they sell at the store, but everything is sub-par. Then I realized that what I'm really looking for is Ah-Ma's hot and sour soup that she made from scratch, filled with different types of chewy and crunchy mushrooms, silky strands of egg, thin strips of tofu and tiny, tender pieces of pork, in just the right proportions, seasoned to perfect hot- and sour-ness. Of course, I will never have this soup again. Ah-Ma never used a recipe; she just knew how to do it, so no one else learned how to make it. It's a really complicated soup to make correctly, but she made it seem very simple.

  That got me thinking about all the other food she used to make. At first, I chided myself for missing my beloved grandma because of something as trivial as food. I mean, this is the woman who is a second mother to me, and I miss her cooking? But, upon further thought, it's actually quite appropriate. Ah-Ma loved to cook for us, and being from a pretty traditional Taiwanese family, "I love you" wasn't said very often -- it was shown. June and I never doubted how much we were loved, and when I first went out into "the world," I was surprised that families (not just the ones in sitcoms) actually said "I love you." Johnny asked me, very early in our relationship, "Well, then, how do you know that they love you?" I didn't quite know how to answer that; it was just never a question in my mind, how much I was (am) loved by my parents and Ah-Ma. She listened to all the minutiae of my day at school with great interest, stuffed money into my pockets with alarming frequency and (much to my mom's dismay) hurried to my rescue whenever I was being scolded or disciplined, and most of all, she made the world's best meals and snacks, day in and day out, until she was in her 80s. Even when we told her that she shouldn't be standing in the kitchen each day, she wanted to.

  It wasn't until I got married and began making the household meals that I really appreciated what Ah-Ma did for us. Growing up, we had family-style meals, and I just took it for granted that we would have at least one vegetable dish, one type of seafood, one type of meat, a "novelty" dish for us kids (like chilled, crisp boiled bamboo shoots to be dipped in mayonnaise) and a big pot of soup, along with the requisite steamed rice. And often, because it was Ah-Ma, there would be two types of meat, or three types of vegetables, and even on a routine weeknight, it was common to run out of room on our dining table. Again, I thought this was how all families did things. Imagine my surprise the first time I went to a non-Asian friend's house for dinner and saw a single solitary plate with three things on it in front of me.

  Of course, these days, I know how much loving care and work went into those meals. The meals I make definitely fit only on one plate, and we're lucky if we have three things on that plate. These days, I'm a fan of the one-pot meal. As long as there's a protein, a vegetable and a carb on the plate or in the bowl, I call it a successful day. I really enjoy cooking, but I get tired just planning the weekly menu for me, Johnny and little Jack. Whenever Johnny suggests getting takeout or pizza, I jump at the opportunity to take a break from cooking. Yet, Ah-Ma always churned out a feast, day in and day out, never repeating dishes in a week, and always putting at least five items on the table. And she would not hear of my mom cooking, or of us getting takeout. On the rare occasion that we did go out to eat, or brought food in, it took a lot of convincing.

  I try not to think about it too often, because of how sad it makes me, but there are so many foods that make me think of Ah-Ma, and that I'll never taste again. Yet, when I'm pregnant, I really crave those foods of my childhood. There's the fatty pork braised in soy sauce and shallots, with stewed hard-boiled egg; octopus, scored so that the pieces curled up prettily when boiled, dipped in a garlicky soy sauce; omelettes filled with chopped-up preserved daikon radish; "hollow-heart" vegetable (kind of like a Chinese version of spinach, if you will) sauteed with lots of garlic; perfectly steamed fish; bowls of silky steamed egg filled with shitake mushrooms and shrimp; homemade sushi rolls; eggy potato salad (yes, Ah-Ma made a mean potato salad!); and my favorite snack food, mochi toasted so that it's golden on the outside, gooey and melty on the inside, with a generous pat of butter inserted in the middle and all wrapped with nori. There are a lot more, too, but those were some of my favorites. Whenever I'd plan a visit home from college or, later, from New York, Ah-Ma would ask me several days in advance what I wanted to eat for my first meal home, and all of the dishes I named would show up on the table, waiting for me when I got home. I don't know how to make the majority of those dishes, and even the ones I do know how to make just don't taste the same. Part of the magic is having her make them for me.

  So, anyway, it's about food, but also so much more than the food. It's about all the things that my grandma did for us, and about how very much she is missed every day.

  • 3:34 pm
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