Tragic Sandwich

Tag: mother

  • Thoughts on Measles

    I have been vaccinated against measles four times.

    FOUR!

    The first time, I was one year minus three days.

    The second time, I was going into the third or fourth grade, and my school required that I get the vaccination again because they required that you get it on or after your first birthday, and as I mentioned above, I got it three days shy of my first birthday.

    The third time, there was a measles outbreak at colleges in the Midwest, and my mother decided that this put me in danger in California, and insisted that I get the measles vaccination again. The student health clinic asked me if I wanted the MMR, and I said, “No, just measles, please.” (The outbreak did spread. This in no way prevented me from being irritated with my mother.)

    (Then, when I applied to grad school, they required that I also be vaccinated against mumps and rubella, but I couldn’t get the MMR because I’d gotten the measles vaccine that fall, so I had to get two more shots separately, which I also found irritating.)

    (I am easily irritated.)

    The fourth time was in 2011, when I got the MMR.

    So that’s four measles vaccinations, which seems like plenty.

    If I get the measles, I am going to be so pissed.

    toy syringe from child's doctor kit

  • Thankful Thursday: Family

    I’m really not sure I can express how thankful I am for my family.

    • For my parents, who taught me their values and how to determine my own.
    • For my brother, who loves me even though I may have been guilty of psychological torture when we were children.
    • For Mr. Sandwich, who sees everything I can be, and tells me what he sees.
    • For his parents, who welcomed me into their family long, long before he and I became a couple.

    And of course for Baguette, who we feared might never be—but is.

  • Traditions: Chinese Food

    Fortune Cookies - version anglaise

    Yesterday was my mom’s birthday. She would have been 75. She should be 75. She should be here to see Baguette grow, and hear stories about what we’re doing, and pay long visits in which we’d spend time cooking together (or, given the way things work right now, she’d cook and I’d keep Baguette out of the kitchen).

    But she’s not. So we made sure to have Chinese food yesterday in her honor.

    Growing up, chow mein was never one of our family’s dishes. But my mom would have been delighted with how absorbed Baguette gets when she eats it. I know I am.

    Photo by maza34, via Flickr.

  • Compassion

    A few years ago, I would have read this story and thought, “What a terrible person. How irresponsible and uncaring.”

    Today, I thought, “She must have been so overwhelmed.”

    Don’t get me wrong. I don’t condone her actions. But I know how exhausted I am, with lots of support. And I would bet that this mother has nothing like that.

    I hope she gets what she needs. I hope her son gets what he needs. But right now, at this moment, I can’t condemn her the way I would have.

    Maybe if we all cut each other a little more slack, this would happen less often.

  • My Favorite Sandwich

    In a sitcom, this reveal would come in the series finale. And it would probably be a disappointment to many viewers, because of course the earlier episodes would have featured increasingly complex concoctions with discordant and occasionally obscure ingredients.

    When I started second grade, my mother said, “What do you want for lunch tomorrow?” I paused–because it had never before occurred to me that I might have a say in the matter–and replied, “I don’t care, as long as it’s not bologna.”

    Every morning in high school, my mother would say, “What do you want for lunch?” And every morning I would give her the same answer, which finally led me to say, “Peanut butter and jelly, and I’ll let you know when I’m tired of it.” (Yes, my mother made my lunch in high school. I think she felt guilty because I was up in the morning before she was, and her vision of the “perfect mother” was someone who was up early and made her kids’ lunches, even if they were old enough to manage that themselves. Hopefully we can all get past this shocking revelation.)

    PB&J and “not bologna” are still very high on my list. But my real favorite sandwich can be traced back to a trip to the UK that we made when I was 10. In the course of traveling through England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, we had a few high teas. At one of those teas, I discovered a wonder: the tomato sandwich.

    This is a delightfully simple sandwich: sliced tomato between two slices of bread that have been brushed with mayonnaise. (Do not tell me that mayonnaise is “gross.” I’m telling you what I like, not making you eat it.) I’m sure that at the long-ago teas, the sandwiches were made with white bread. We don’t have white bread, so I make mine on Roman Meal. To a lot of people I know, that’s practically white bread. For the mayonnaise, I used Best (Hellman’s to you East Coast readers). For the tomatoes?

    Ah, that’s where the magic comes in. The tomatoes are from our garden, which was dug, planted, and harvested by Mr. Sandwich. Last year the raccoons got all of the tomatoes (or, at least, part of each tomato), but this year he’s actually been able to find some that are both ripe and untouched by vermin hands.

    So last night I sliced up the tomato, put it on the mayonnaise-y bread, sprinkled just a little salt on it, and ate. Delicious.

  • Remembrance of Black Bean Sauce Past

    All of my life, we’ve eaten a lot of Chinese food. When my brother and I were very young, our family didn’t eat out much. One of the few excursions we could afford on a semi-regular basis was dinner at a Chinese restaurant. I think there were two reasons for this. For starters, Chinese food was proportionally cheaper than it is now. And also we would only order three dishes–one for my mother, one for my father, and one for both my brother and me (that one was usually Beef with Oyster Sauce).

    Later, it turned out that we just liked Chinese food, although the restaurant name wasn’t supposed to be that all-encompassing. In my mother’s opinion, a restaurant that didn’t specify its region wasn’t going to be any good. It wasn’t enough to advertise “Chinese food,” it had to specify Szechwan, Hunan, Cantonese, etc. We liked them all, so a specific region wasn’t the deciding factor. She felt that if the restaurant didn’t have a predominant regional identification, the owners and/or cooks didn’t know enough about the food they were making. Interestingly, many of our favorite restaurants did not meet this standard.

    In Rockville, Maryland, the Far East Restaurant was our establishment of choice. Although the naming principle doesn’t seem to have held here, we always noticed that the Chinese patrons got porcelain teapots, while the European-descended patrons got plain metal teapots. These days that policy has changed, and there is equality of teapots at the Far East.

    We moved to San Antonio, where we found the Wah Kee Seafood Restaurant. After several years in San Antonio, a multiplex movie theater opened near us, and the Wah Kee opened up in the adjacent shopping center. Another favorite was the Chinatown Cafe, which we liked so much that in 2004 J and I had our wedding rehearsal dinner there.

    I found good Chinese food right away when I moved to New Jersey (good Mexican food proved more elusive). Unfortunately, several months later the restaurant burned to the ground. While that was definitely a loss, I can recommend Lotus Cafe in Hackensack and Taipei Noodle House in Teaneck.

    There is a surprising lack of good Chinese food on the Westside of Los Angeles. About the best you can do is Hop Li. It’s pretty good, but not what it could be. No doubt this is largely because the center of Chinese restaurants in the area is in the San Gabriel Valley, but it’s still surprising that so densely populated an area can’t do better. When my grandparents lived in Monterey Park, my favorite restaurant was the Dragon Regency, where one night the chef made me a special dish of lemon cod fillets. I never ordered anything else, and eventually they put it on the menu. My grandparents and I were such loyal patrons that not only did they make me special dishes, they also gave me impromptu birthday celebrations, complete with bean cakes and gifts. Prior to our wedding, J and I went to Engaged Encounter (we will never get that weekend back), and I suggested that we have dinner at the Dragon Regency on our way to the seminary. I was devastated to find that the restaurant had closed, and I have yet to find anyone who can make that perfect lemon cod. Not even the excellent NBC Seafood, where we had dinner with two of J’s friends last year, can manage that particular dish.

    So Chinese food has always played an important role in my family’s meals, although these days I haven’t got the slightest interest in Beef with Oyster Sauce. Chinese food was my brother’s comfort food when he was home sick from school, and I love it so much that one year I gave it up for Lent. And it’s one of the ways that my brother and I choose to honor my mother on her birthday. The two of them both loved Peking Duck, so that’s one of the dishes he’s sure to order. I don’t order any particular dish–but aside from the Dragon Regency’s lemon cod, I’ve never had one.

    Tonight J and I had dinner at Yang Chow, in L.A.’s Chinatown. We found it a couple of years ago with my brother and his girlfriend (now his wife), and it seemed like the right place to celebrate my mother’s birthday this year. That was a good choice, as was the Beef with Black Bean Sauce that the chef made on request (oddly, the menu does include black bean sauce–but only on squid).

    I just wish she’d been there to join us.