Holiday egg rolls

Shanghai style eggrolls under construction

Happy holidays, Rice Daddies!

It’s that time of year already, and its been a while since I’ve blogged about my favorite rice daddy topic: great food!  After all, nothing connects you to a culture more than eating your way through it.  Also, an old high school friend recently emailed me for a recipe (hi JS), so I thought this would be the best forum for sharing it.

This recipe almost, almost brings me all the way back to family holidays when I was a kid, where the table was always loaded with an overfull plate of my Shanghainese grandmother’s eggrolls.  I didn’t get this recipe straight from her, but its fairly close to what I remember, and good enough where we have them on special occasions in the thisislarry household.  I invite you to enjoy some this holiday season, and bring a little bit of Shanghai to your table:

    Shanghai style eggrolls
    Makes around 2 dozen

    1 package egg roll wrappers. Thin kind is the best
    2 lb pork, julienned
    1lb shrimp, coarsely chopped, can be precooked
    10 shitake mushrooms, destemmed and thinly sliced, can be dried mushrooms resoaked
    1 medium head of napa cabbage, julienned
    4-8 oz glass noodles, soaked to soften, then drained, and very coarsely chopped.
    Salt, garlic salt, pepper, soy sauce to taste.   

    1. Sauté the pork & shrimp together until both are cooked, drain the liquid.
    2. Sauté the napa cabbage and mushroom until the cabbage is cooked.  Press out ALL the liquid.
    3. Toss together the meats, veggies, glass noodles.  Drain any remaining liquid.
    4. Season to taste.  I use about 1t salt, 1t soy, 1/2t pepper.
    5. Wrap em up, fry em up, eat em up!  I like mine with sambal olek & soy, or mustard! 

    Note: draining the filling is crucial, otherwise the eggrolls will leak and come apart while frying.

Alright, get your holiday eats on, everybody!   And, please, if you've got some holiday recipes that would make my grandmother jealous, let me know, I'm hungry already!

So I Must Kill You!

While cleaning the house, I found this book that my parents brought back from a trip to Asia as a gift for my kids. Either something's lost in translation, or children's stories in Hong Kong are just straight-up hardcore:

"In a hot summer day, there was a little thirsty lamb drinking water in the river."

"A wolf was passing by the river, too. He felt so happy when he saw the lamb."

"The wolf said to the lamb: 'I can't drink clean water because you make the river dirty. So I must kill you!'"

"The frightened lamb explained: 'Can't you drink clean water as you stay at the upper stream?'"

"The wolf replied angrily: 'I know you always spoke ill of me last year. So I must kill you!'"

"The little lamb argued: 'Mr. Wolf, I was not yet born last year!'"

"The wolf said impatiently: 'Your master and friends all want to kill me. Isn't it true?'"

"The little lamb still wanted to argue. But the fierce wolf had already pounced upon and ate him."

THE END.

The moral of the story: Lamb is super-tasty.

Faith

I had dinner with someone recently who complained that her mother was not supportive of her life decisions. I pointed out that everyone else around her (personally and professionally) believed she was making smart strategic decisions about her life. She said something to the effect of: “I know but it would just be nice if she (her mother) supported me too. After all she is my mother.”

I was reminded of an incident between my eldest son and me. It happened several years ago at a Christmas party. Without reliving the uncomfortable details, it was a situation where I took someone else’s word over his. The incident is a poignant one for me because as it turned out my son was right and I realized the devastating impact my doubts can have on my children.

I have since ceased believing in absolutes and my own infallibility. Being a parent does not automatically validate advice as being good or opinion as being informed. It does however stress the necessity of open minds and open ears for both fathers and their children. I failed as a father that Christmas. I failed to listen as I’ve often told my son to do. And I forsook the fact that my children “know” things too. In fact, they might just know more than us “Grown Ups,” as their unfettered minds absorb the many new and exciting experiences from the burgeoning world around them.

When did it happen? When did we become so dull, gray, and “grown up”? I can’t help wondering about the tipping point. When was it where I became so “Grown Up” and closed up and stop considering the infinite possibilities of living and just settled for the simply finite ones tethered to the observable world? And what pushed me over that edge?

I remember it was somewhere around high school/late middle school my father became obsessed with telling me I had “to respect the reality.”  I remember how stubbornly I clung to my dreams – my beliefs – my idealism then. The Christmas incident showed me just how misplaced my values had become. I valued the grown up notion of being right over listening to someone important to my very being itself.

Digging around the Web and Googling, I couldn’t find anything on the direct impact of parental doubt on a child. However, there were several resources on addressing self doubt and if you liken to parental doubt to failure there was an abundance of information on that. Most articles on failure that 'I’ve come across focus on the restoration of confidence like this Parent Zone article, “Handling Fear Of Failure in Children,” and this Associated Content article, “Help Your Children Deal With Failure.” I even found this video on the On the Ball Parenting Blog:

I couldn’t find any direct advice on when a parent is wrong or the impact of parental doubt but I would imagine a post on the subject would offer the same advice on restoring confidence as the articles on failure. It might also offer advice on restoring trust.

“If you’ve never failed, you’ve never lived” that’s the closing statement of the video. After I learned I was wrong I apologized immediately to my son that Christmas night. I told my dinner companion what I wish I would have said to my son.

I told my companion that sometimes as parents we get so caught up in the ways we’ve been seriously hurt that we’ll do anything to keep our children from having even remotely similar experiences (even though quite rationally there is very little we can do to control the experiences our children will have).

I told my companion that regardless whether her mother understood the decisions she has made, I am certain her mother is proud of her regardless of the path she’s chosen.

My Swearing In

I am Nels. Some of you may know of my web site, AArisings. I'm a father of two children - a son who is 7 years old and a daughter who is 4 years old. This is my first entry on Rice Daddies.

During the summer, the big buzz in the music world was Cee-Lo Green's song "F**k You." I shared the catchy song and video via YouTube with my wife because I thought she would get a kick out of it. We were in our home office watching the video while the kids were playing together in the living room. Every so often the kids would pop into the office to see what we were doing and my wife would quickly stop the video so that the kids' virgin ears would not be exposed to the F-bomb. Little did we know that our son would be exposed to the F-bomb in other ways, however.

Last month my son and I were sitting on the couch when he declared, "I know a bad word."

I replied "oh really? What is the word?" thinking it would be something like the word "stupid" or "idiot" or even "fat" (which we had declared a not-so-nice word when referring to people).

He said "it starts with F," to which I was sure he was thinking of the word "fat." But then continued spelling the word with "U-C-K."

For a moment, I was speechless but then put my eyes back into their sockets and immediately reacted with a "that really is a bad word! You should not say that word." My son shelved that discussion away quickly after that, as if he had never spelled the word.

Since that time I've thought about the moment and thought about my own moment when I first dropped the F-bomb in front of my mother when I was 10 years old. My mother's reaction was to yell and scold me verbally for using the word. That made me fearful of using the word at home but surely did not stop me from using the word at school with my friends around. In fact, it encouraged me to use it even more outside of the home. There was a time between when I was 10 and 18 where I probably dropped the F-bomb many thousands of times. But something around the time when I finished high school made me realize that I was really using the F-bomb much-too-much and since then I've used it quite sparingly, opting for other less incendiary words to express my own frustrations.

I doubt my son, all of 7 years old, will have that same sort of enlightenment any time soon but I do wonder if he'll end up using the word more now that I've told him it is not appropriate to use. Ultimately, it is a word and really I think the lesson to teach my son is that the word is fraught with meaning and emotions which often make it a word best used, if at all, sparingly.

As a father, the simple response is always to tell a child not to do or say something, but really does a child ever really listen to that warning? The way I see it, my responsibility doesn't end there. I have a duty to, at the very least, share the lessons I've learned with my children and to teach them the value and meaning of words, even if it is the F-bomb.

Like a 4-Banger

Quick plug to a thing I did for KQED yesterday. It's a "Perspective" on the Far East Movement and the song "Like a G6." It's about waiting our lives to experience this moment to see Asian folks on the charts but being too damn old to appreciate it fully. :)

On a side note, it's inspiring how our kids will grow up in a time when it's completely normal to have a black president and to see Asian folks on the top of the charts. It definitely wasn't like this during my youth, let alone five years ago.

Speaking of, an old family friend phoned my mom after hearing it. I haven't heard from the friend in like 35 years! Take that new media!

Enjoy! And don't autotune me! :)

UPDATE: The Original Rice Don Dada and homey Poppa Large weighs in on FM at the LA Times.

SD

NYCC 2010: Marvel Superhero Squad

Once a year I indulge myself (and my kids) in spandex and uwangis at the annual New York Comic Con (NYCC). It’s a fun distraction for me to consider the longevity of some of my favorite heroes and learn about new ones. If I had to pick a single highlight from this year’s NYCC, it would have to be Marvel’s Superhero Squad.

In addition to the usual video game offerings (new Spiderman and X-Men games and new Captain America and Thor games), Spring 2011 will mark the beta test of Marvel’s first MMO: Superhero Squad Online. My kids and I had a chance to play the beta at this year’s NYCC.

Choosing to target a younger audience for its first MMO is an admirable choice. There are unique challenges to producing an online experience for younger audiences. There are issues of safety, age appropriate content and situations that you do not have with a teenage audience. There are also issues of engagement outside of the immediate action. Is the objective of the play engaging enough to maintain the desire to play? What a teenager values can be vastly different from what a 12 year old or 6 year old values.

The Superhero Squad MMO follows the traditional objectives of collecting ”things” - coins and objects and team members - with the added dimension of being interactive. While the play may be single player, we all participate in the experience like raging fans or backseat drivers. We root each other on and shout out directions and choices at each other. The experience is sometimes frustrating for my youngest because he has not developed the hand-eye coordination or the coordination to work multiple buttons.

From what I saw, where the Superhero Squad MMO succeeds is its simplification of physical play for the younger members in its primary target audience (boy ages 6 –12). My youngest had none of the frustration he usually does playing a videogame. As an educator, I see plenty of opportunities to enhance the learning in the Superhero Squad MMO and am curious to see if the development team at Gazillion pursues them.

One of the points the Superhero Squad Gazillion panel made consistently was the environment of the MMO provided great potential and flexibility for growth. The educator in me wonders if the growth includes increasing complexity in the physical play as players traverse to higher levels? The educator in me also wonders if the cognitive complexity of the play will also increase as players move up levels?

The parent in me wonders if the storyline for the game play will address the real world social challenges of being pre-teen like the current epidemic of bullying? I wrote more about Marvel’s MMO and the NYCC at Cranial Gunk. Click Here to read it.

ABCs v. FOBs in Flushing Queens

Last week on WNYC, there was this very cute story by Rookie Reporter Helen Peng, on her observations of the differences and occasional conflicts between ABCs (American Born Chinese) and FOBs (Fresh Off the Boat). I'm not Chinese, nor have I had the chance to check out Flushing, so I was surprised to learn about the differences between the various waves of immigration within the Chinese-American community.

Challenge Update: 2 new proposals added

HOLY CRAP, would you believe that it's been almost TWO YEARS since we added some new proposals to the RiceDaddies Empowerment in Diversity Challenge? Since that time, all of our educational proposals have either been fully funded, or have expired.

I'm not even gonna try to make up any excuses for why I dropped the ball on this. Anyway, this morning ThisisLarry finally gave me the kick in the butt needed to update our Challenge.

The following two proposals are currently in need of funding:

Help Us Learn About The World's Cultures Through Art! (Asia)
- New York, NY - Grades 6-8 - Poverty Data Unavailable -

"The resources requested include books and art supplies that are to aid us in our exploration of ASIA. Our first assignment is going to be to read the book A Thousand Paper Cranes, and try to make just that to display in our school."

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Peacebuilding in Middle School - Race to Understand Race
- Ventura, California - Grades 6-8 - Poverty Moderate -

"I am requesting 35 copies of the graphic novel "American Born Chinese." By reading this fun, high interest novel, students will have opportunities to explore how it feels to be seen as different. Students learn to empathize with others and they will have opportunities to explore how they see themselves, as well."

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Launched in June 2007, the RiceDaddies Empowerment in Diversity Challenge aims to mitigate the marginalizing effects of diversity-negligent pop culture and media by funding innovative educational programs that do the following:

• Promote positive images of ourselves for our children
• Promote positive images of ourselves for other people and their children
• Develop skills in our children that empower them to be leaders in the world in which we live
• Promote pride in one's culture instead of shame
• Promote self-respect and appreciation for others like ourselves
• Develop our children's ability to use their imaginations in an empowering way
• Encourage our children to be who they truly are

Tweet

Help underprivledged kids in NYC enjoy "American Born Chinese"

Update: Rice Daddies rule!  Less than 5 hours after this post went out, the project is funded -that's like $20 an hour!  Take THAT Malcolm Gladwell!

Now let's keep the ball rolling!
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Hey Rice Daddies, excuse the intrusion, its just Thisislarry rising from limbo.  I was on Donorschoose.org and came across this funding project from Ms H. at a high-poverty school in NYC:

"My Project: I am asking for a set of Gene Luen Yang's fantastic graphic novel American Born Chinese to complement our year long study of outsiders and fitting in. We are also reading The Outsiders, House on Mango Street, Romeo and Juliet and Enders' Game. This novel would fit in wonderfully with the them, as well as introduce students to graphic novels. I would weave in elements of the theme and encourage students to see the connection between pictures and words. Students will be asked to compose their own graphic story upon completion of the novel."

I personally loved ABC, and so does my son, another ABC.  I think it would be awesome to put this story in front of more kids, and I'm supporting this project on Donorschoose.

Ms H's class is less than $100 away from their goal, can we help them get there?

OK, back to limbo, peace out!

Tell Me More: Dad as Teacher

There was an interesting discussion on NPR's Tell Me More about fathers getting involved in their children's education. I didn't respond in time to be on air but wrote a post accompanying the segment.

After the fact, I began thinking about the things my dad taught me. I love my father but we don't exactly have a Brady Bunch type relationship. I wondered how much of my relationship with my father is cultural - traditional and/or pop - and how much is just personality?