I have not the proper words to describe my mother, so I’ll let the following picture and her the “Interests” from her Facebook profile page – “Teaching, Learning, Shopping, Watching Movies, Decorating, Knitting, Reading” – do the talking.

Mommy and Doggy wearing homemade Xmas sweaters. I'll let you guess between the two of them, whose idea this was.

Actually, this post isn’t about my mother at all. Rather, it’s about motherhood, and a conversation I had about it with my own mother the other day. The discussion eventually veered towards one of her favorite topics – the crucial importance of getting married and getting started on my baby-making years before the age of thirty. Similarly to every time we broach this issue, I rolled my eyes and retorted with some remark about how I’m young, there’s a lot I want to do with my life, I don’t even know whether I truly want to have children, and that we live in a time and a place where medicine – and our life expectancies – have evolved such that we women no longer need to rush-rush to pop ‘em out. The ensuing exchange:

Mom: That’s the problem with you girls nowadays,  always reinforcing these baseless theories amongst each other. Anybody who tells you that having babies past the age of thirty-five is a wacko.

Me: But lots of people do it!

Mom: That doesn’t make it a good idea. Medicine doesn’t erase our evolutionary records which tell me, and should tell you, that having babies too late is not what your body is meant to do.

She had a point. Both statistically and scientifically, women who give birth after the age of thirty-five are shown to put both their babies’ health and their own in greater danger. I know many an exception to this rule, as I’m sure do you. But the conversation got me thinking – is it really worthwhile to depend on medicine to challenge our biological clocks? I didn’t want my mother to be right, but part of me must have conceded to her side of the debate, because I was left feeling pretty lousy afterward.

For the past long time, I’ve looked at the idea of having kids the way I look at, say…developing arthritis: so far into the distance that it’s teetering on the edge of irrelevance. As they stand, the (many! great!) plans I have arranged for my future, career and otherwise, conveniently afford me a good many years to continue doing what I’m doing now, which is to play chicken with my health in such a way that I could potentially be disqualified from the basic human function of giving birth.

There’s nothing more disempowering to me than a woman who cannot claim her womanhood. So many females in our world are subjected this kind of circumstance by external forces and yet here I am, pushing it to its literal embodiment by choosing to eat for meals what my ovaries will probably look like in a couple of years:

That was an exaggeration. But you get my drift.

I don’t even know that I really want to have children. But I had always assumed that if I ever wanted babies, my body would be ready in a way that it is not currently, because those lurking issues that render it captive to my mind would have *poof!* magically disappeared. Putting off babies until a much later point in my life was my way of giving myself time to fully heal. Problem is, even if I do one day reach that elusive point of maturity and happiness, my lurking um…issues, could physically debilitate me from starting a family.

When I take an honest look at my behavior, it’s obvious that unless I give up this charade of health that characterizes my life presently, it’s not going away on its own. This realization struck me hard. There is actually a time pressure to fix myself, and it certainly won’t happen without a great deal of my own effort. So maybe, if just for now, those imaginary babies that I’m not sure I want, can provide the little kick in the butt I need to get my act together.

Anybody else like to assume that you’ll eventually just grow out of your same old habits? What do you use a motivational excuse to get yourself in order? Or, on a lighter note, who wants babies?! Who has ‘em?

Asian countries have really pushed beans  – particularly those of the mung variety – to their edible limits. Not only is it standard to steam, squeeze, and squash them into sweet pastes, but you might even catch yourself eating them in unexpected – if not altogether unrecognizable – forms, such as noodles and popsicles…!

Mung beans are nutritionally cracked out. They are good for your heart, your blood, your brain, your metabolism, and your fertility, and are low in everything that the health-conscious of us would want a food to be low in.

But mung beans were considered vital to one’s physical well-being way before all of its nutrients were scientifically dissected. See, Chinese medicine subscribes to the concept of certain foods contributing to varying levels of ‘heat’ in the body which can in turn, totally affect the condition of one’s health. The heat in your body ought to be balanced for optimal health – too hot and you might find yourself with feeling feverish and dry, too cold and you’ll be weak and lethargic. Mung beans are a ‘cold’ food, meaning that they’ll restore cool down your body, which is particularly susceptible to over-heating during the summer. So keeping with the theme of super simple bean recipes, what better way to cool yourself down than a sweet, cold, and refreshing soup?

Mung Bean Soup Recipe

Time: 1.5 hours + chilling time, 99% of which requires no conscious thought.
Equipment: Strainer; large pot
Ingredients:
Makes 12 servings

• 1 (14 oz.) package dry mung beans
• 4-5 cups water, depending how you like it
• 1/2 cup sugar (any kind), or to taste

Instructions:

1. Rinse mung beans
2. Dump them in the pot with the water; bring to a boil
3. Reduce heat; simmer for 1.5 hours. You want to continue simmering until the  beans to have cracked out of their shells, but stop before they lose their form and become mushy.
4. Add sugar and stir until fully combined
5. Pop in the fridge until completely chilled, or add ice cubes to expedite the process.
6. Slurp up and enjoy for days, ’cause this recipe makes a lot.

Anybody have any family recipes based on old wives’ tales about health? Do they work?

Clockwise, from top left: marinated seaweed with beancurd; pickled string beans with vegetarian ground pork; napa cabbage, carrots, and beancurd sheets; kalimeris with braised tofu

Stuffed breads of both steamed and baked varieties

Seaweed rice rolls stuffed with fried bread sticks and dry onion (I know!)

Not to be outdone, the homemade delectables:

Zongzi (sweet glutinous rice and red bean paste wrapped with bamboo leaves and steamed)

Slow-cooked peanuts with star anise

Plus a few other appetizers, and we had ourselves a meal!

The food was delicious, and recipes are forthcoming. But today, I’m more interested in sharing with you the people who graced me with their presence as I ate away.

The bearers of these yummies were my second aunt (mother’s younger cousin) and two girl friends, who traveled quite a ways to drop an impromptu feast on our family. This is my second aunt:

Beautiful, isn’t she? She was holding her iPhone at the time because she was busy explaining and looking up videos of Paul the Octopus (how by the way, did I know nothing of this fellow until now?!) She was wearing a hat because she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer six months ago, and has since been undergoing chemotherapy treatments.

Health-wise, things aren’t looking great. Her cancer was serendipitously discovered during a routine check-up, at which point it was already in its third stage. Her tumor count is growing quickly and she was put on a doubly-intensive chemo schedule that might have incapacitated someone less strong than she.

My second aunt has always been one of the strongest, most optimistic and independent people I have known. Until I came back home last week and met with her in person for the first time since she was diagnosed, I wasn’t aware of the severity of her condition. In our online correspondences while I was away, she had evinced nothing but pure positivity. Even last night, if it weren’t for her bald head and conversational references to her treatment, she would never have let on that she’s actually seriously ill.

I respect her so much for that. I respect that while the other women at the table (who had full heads of hair and lacked the dark stains that chemo leaves on the skin) begged me not to photograph them for fear of unflattering angles, my second aunt looked into the camera with a smile, and said: “You might not like the way a picture looks when it’s first taken, but you’ll never regret it when you look back on it even as little as a month later.”

Demonstrating how to determine your dominant eye

I respect that she savored every bite of her dinner and didn’t shy away from dessert, even though her treatment has left every food bitter to the taste. “I don’t eat it for the taste anymore,” she said, “but just because I want to.”

I respect that even as a divorced mother who lives alone, she carries no bitterness nor self-pity in her heart. “If I’ve learned one thing from this experience it’s that your health and your body aren’t yours to own, they’re yours on loan until they decide to go on hiatus, so there’s no use trying to control them. Just try to use them well while you have them,” she whispered to me as she left.

I respect that even with her life being in as fragile a place as it presently is, she’s still not afraid of living it. And these are not changes that I’ve seen since she’s become ill. Since I can remember, my second aunt has always been this amazingly radiant source of inspiration in my life. But it wasn’t until last night that the enormity of her character struck me. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately – about appearances, food, my body and my health, and within a few short minutes she made these concerns seem just absurd. Her visit reminded me that a life lived in fear of the simple joys that make it enjoyable, is not a life worthy of respect.

And now I’d like to know – who inspires you to live your life better?

Beans are a funny food. I don’t know about you, but where I grew up beans were not a cool food. Eating beans at a barbecue was the equivalent of eating a banana at lunch during high school, eating chow mein at your work desk, or eating KFC as a food blogger: delicious, but you wouldn’t want to be the one caught doing it.

Well, those days are over now . Today I present to you a bean dish that is lightly flavored, easily transported, and shockingly sophisticated. This bean  is appropriate for most any occasion, and leaves behind no mess like edamame does. Instead of a little black dress, I give you the little black bean:

Sexy, huh? This dish is most commonly seen in Korean fare, and called kongjaban. It’s served as a side dish along with an assortment of lightly pickled vegetables to accompany your main meal. These (unlimited! free!) side dishes, called banchan,  are actually my favorite part of any Korean meal. Oftentimes I’ll just order a bowl of rice to eat with the banchan. This is highly – and understandably – frowned upon in Korean restaurants and I recommend that if you want to do the same, you dine with a large group of people who will order real dishes. But since I don’t have large groups of people with whom to eat Korean food regularly, I’ve committed this summer to learning how to make some of my own favorite banchan to keep in large quantities at home.

First on my list was the incredibly easy kongjaban. These beans can be purchased uncooked at any Asian grocery store:

The traditional recipe calls for a ton of soy sauce aud sugar, but I rummaged around my kitchen to see if I couldn’t healthify it a touch. This is what I came up with:

Kongjaban Recipe
Time: 40 minutes (plus optional 2-hour pre-soak)
Equipment: Small boiling pot; small bowl for mixing
Ingredients:

• 1 cup beans
• 1 cup water
• 1/4 cup agave
• 1/3 cup soy sauce
• 1/2 tbsp. sesame oil
• additional water, as needed
• optional: sesame seeds, for garnish

Instructions:

1. Optional: rinse and  soak the beans in water for 2+ hours, to soften them and reduce cooking time. If you forget, you can just start with Step 2.
2. Bring the water to boil in your small pot.
3. Add beans, cover, and reduce to simmer.
4. Simmer for 20 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, mix agave, soy sauce, and sesame oil in a small bowl.
6. Add agave/soy/oil mix to beans.
7. Continue to simmer for 20 minutes. There should be nearly no liquid left by the end of the process.
8. Remove from heat and and mix in sesame seeds, if desired.

You can store these babies in the fridge and eat them cold alongside or on top of any meal for a dose of protein.  Versatile, healthy, and otherwise inoffensive, you can eat little black beans anywhere without attracting weird looks. Though, I can’t make the same claim for their after-effects on the digestive tract…har har…

Any foods/venues you can think of that are incompatible? Anyone else get self-conscious like me to eat certain of your most beloved foods in public?

So, Katie’s post today was about makeup. Actually, more like lack thereof. Katie challenged her lady readers to post pictures of themselves with nudey faces and, never one to turn down a challenge, here goes:

Potola Palace, Lhasa, Tibet, 2009

Guangzhou, China, 2009

Genting, Malaysia, 2010

Legion of Honor Museum with Dad, San Francisco, 2009

Well, that was fun – though, apparently not for everyone else. It both saddened and astonished me to see how many commenters had self-deprecating things to say in reference to their own appearances, and that there was a general lack in desire to post nudey face pics on their own blogs. Some congratulated Katie on actually looking good without makeup, as though there was a possibility that she – or any other woman – could have looked significantly less gorgeous without it.

I suppose that this should not have surprised me, given the mass mediated world that we live in today. Of all the aspects about my appearance that frighten me, my nudey face is actually not one of them. Generally I assume that I have a pretty dismal score in terms of looks-wise confidence, and for this reason the cloud of self-consciousness generated from Katie’s post took me by surprise.

My relative confidence required investigation. One possibility I entertained was that having swam competitively from the ages of 5-20, learning to become indifferent to makeup was second nature. One tends to look ridiculous with mascara streaming down her face while doing the Butterfly. But my swimming theory was quickly nixed when taken in conjunction with the fact that having danced competitively from the ages of 6-16, learning to become dependent on makeup was also second nature to me. I wore makeup every day in high school. These days I wear makeup to work, but on the weekends I like showing my un-makeuped face around town. This development that took place only within the past couple of years. Don’t get me wrong, I still like makeup. I like the way that it smells and that it’s shimmery and it can be used as an artful medium of expression.

I wouldn’t say that this newfound embracing of my nudey face is at all because I’m more secure about my body image now than I was in the past; certainly, a lot of what I see in the mirror these days is distorted. But for me, my nudey face represents youth. It represents freshness, confidence, freedom, girlhood, and innocence. The pictures I posted were taken during a few of my most memorable moments throughout the past year, and I’m glad that the above qualities were captured therein. Perhaps my perspective has been influenced by the cultural norm in China that makeup is for grown-ups; something that can bring color back into their faces after the youth has slipped away, and otherwise irrelevant to a young, glowing face. I’ll take that view and run with it, at least as long as my youth permits me.

And you? Are there any arbitrary standards of beauty in society that you just don’t care about?

Today, My Bedroom, 2010

The neighborhood I lived in was a street food jungle – skewers, dumplings, noodles, savory pancakes, chestnuts, chicken feet – you name it. (Yes, chicken feet. Pickled. From what I’ve heard, they’re good.)

But I had something particular in mind – steamed buns. Chinese steamed buns can be eaten for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and are pretty easy to find in America; just check out the frozen food aisle at your local Asian grocery market. Sure, prepackaged buns can satisfy a starchy craving. But there’s something about freshly made, bamboo-steamed buns made by a smiling lady and sold at a shoddy street stand that really hit the spot. While I don’t have any pictures of the stands themselves (or the nice ladies), the steamers look like this:

Oodles of buns are steamed together and the steamers are stacked, one on top of the other (as per the right side of the picture). Buns can be either sweet or salty, and generally the street vendors sell the following flavors: red bean, pickled vegetable, regular vegetable, and meat. The fancier vendors might have black sesame or chive and egg, but my favorites are red bean and regular vegetable.* So, red bean and regular vegetable I got, with an ear of corn that was steamed alongside the buns.** The damage? A cool $0.50, which I paid for with the remaining change that I was trying to use up before leaving.
I enjoyed my unadorned meal alone in my empty apartment on my mysteriously stained bed (it came with the apartment).

Neither photogenic nor fancy, but I really didn’t miss either of these qualities as I munched away the last meal of a monumental experience…especially not with a bedroom view like mine.

*I call this kind of bun “regular vegetable” to differentiate it from the pickled vegetable variety, but in Chinese, it’s simply called a vegetable bun, and each vendor has a different take on it. Some use lettuce, some carrot, some mushroom – my favorite vendor makes her veggie buns using lightly fried cabbage and shitake.

**A word on Asian corn: it’s good, but it takes some getting used to, if your corn palate is American. While American corn (bless you for being so delicious) is sweet and juicy, corn found in most Asian countries is drier and subtler in both taste and color. The first time I had it I hated it kind of a lot, but after a few go-arounds it grew on me, to the point that I truly believed it rivaled my love for American corn. Then I came back to America and remembered what I had been missing.