APA Month Conclusion Vlog!

Welcome to a special TUESDAY post at A Nudge! I hope you all had a fun, relaxing Memorial Day weekend filled with good company and good food.

Today's post is brought to you by Sophia the Writer and me, Krispy. We both have been wanting to try out this vlogging thing, and as you know, I've been celebrating Asian Pacific-Islander American Heritage Month all of May. So we thought it would be appropriate to combine our first time vlog with our conclusion to the APA Month celebrations.

So without further ado, I give you our first vlog where we talk about boba, living in fantasy worlds, and random reveals. Hope you enjoy (and hopefully we'll get better at this vlogging thing)!



(cross-posted at Sophia's blog: Boba-go-go APA Month Vlog)


P.S. I won't be blogging tomorrow since I'm blogging today. So see you all Friday!

Foodie Friday: Foods of Taiwan

Oh, I managed an alliterative title and everything! As promised, I have another picture-filled post of the delicious morsels I gorged myself on in Taiwan during the trips I took in recent years. They may make you hungry. You have been warned.

Taiwan: Food

Drinks

Pink Boba (tapioca balls) to go in Milk Tea

Chrysanthemum tea with Ai Yu & Boba Milk Tea

Street Food

Popular street food dish: oyster omelette

Taiwanese Sausages

Actual Food

Tu Hsiao Yueh: a famous noodle place originating from Tainan

Tu Hsiao Yueh's signature dish: Dan Dan noodles

Tu Hsiao Yueh dishes

Din Tai Fung: signature dish xiaolongbao (dumplings with soup in them)

Split Pot Hot-Pot: You get 2 different broths to cook things in!

Desserts

Douhua (soft tofu dessert) with boba

Grass Jelly with various toppings

Donuts at Mister Donut, a Japanese donut chain

My favorite: snowflake shaved ice! (The shaved ice is extra fine and super fluffy!)

Gigantic regular shaved ice w/ fruit topping.

This place is famous for giant bowls of shaved ice, as you can see.

That's all! Hope you enjoyed this food tour. Have a great Memorial Day weekend! What are you up to this weekend? Have I wetted your appetite?



P.S. Sophia and I will be trying very hard to figure out technology this weekend so we can give you a vlog when you all come back! We're still open to questions!

Wordless Wednesday: Taiwan

I'm back from Berkeley and had a wonderful but tiring weekend in San Francisco. So in place of a word-filled post about my ancestral homeland, I will simply show you. (You know what they say about how many words pictures are worth.)

Taiwan
(not to be confused with Thailand. Yes, I've had someone ask me before if I was Thai when I talked about Taiwan.)

Northern Taiwan

Taipei 101

LingJiushan: where a temple to Matsu, the sea goddess is located.

Hualien / Taroko Gorge

Danshui waterfront at sunset

Sudden summer rainstorm in Taipei

Shilin Night Market: food, clothes, cutesy accessories...

Example of a night market stand for cutesy accessories.

Remains of Longteng Bridge, part of the Old Mountain train line.

Central/Mid-Taiwan

Inside a temple in Taichung.

Southern Taiwan

Tainan: Chikan Towers w/stone tablets from the Ching Dynasty

Ancient remains I studied during my internship in Nanke.

On the Ferry from the Chijin District of Kaohsiung

National Scenic Area in Kenting

Very southern part of Taiwan: Kenting, known for its beaches.

Lastly, some of you may recall an old profile pic of mine where I'm glancing off to the side all angelic-like. Well, here's the actual pic, which I had done in Taiwan. So yeah, all that is professional camera & make-up magic.

There's a whole trend for studio pics in Taiwan that started with wedding photography and grew into other areas - family portraits, glamor shots for young people. A few of my friends did it, and it seemed fun, so I did it too. I bring this studio pic thing up because not only does it seem to be a recent Taiwanese pop culture thing, but Grace Lin's author photo in the jacket flap of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is also a Taiwanese studio pic. I thought it'd be a fun fact to share.

See you all Friday when I will continue the pic spam, but this time with FOOD! I had way too many pictures of that to include here. LOOK FORWARD TO IT!

P.S. If you've got any burning and/or random questions, there's still time to ask me or Sophia, and we'll vlog you our answers!

Recipe: Spicy Tuna Hand Rolls and A Call for Questions!

Happy Friday, friends! As you read this, I will be at my alma mater, celebrating my cousin's graduation. So I apologize in advance if I'm a little scarce from the blogosphere today and weekend.

Also, before I get to today's recipes, I have a teeny tiny favor to ask. For APA Month, Sophia and I wanted to do a joint vlog. We've both been separately contemplating with the idea of vlogging, but neither of us knew what to vlog about. So we thought we'd go into it together and in MAY for APA Month.

So, if you would be so kind, throw your best QUESTIONS at us. You can ask APA-related questions, writing questions, book/reading questions, or really random questions (like what's our favorite pair of shoes or if we have a favorite font or what it's like living in LA). We will do our best to answer, and maybe we'll try to answer them as fast as possible. I don't know. Would that be entertaining? Rapid-fire questions?

In any case, we need QUESTIONS first. You can leave them in the comments or in my email or in my Tumblr Ask box (it can be anonymous there) or send your questions Sophia's way. THANKS in advance!

Now, here's the recipe as promised, and it's actually somewhat related to my return to campus this weekend because this recipe is from my one of my roommates, Shelly, who is a crazy good cook. It's because of her that I neither starved nor ate only instant noodles in college. She's another amazing Asian American lady I'm so glad to have met.

I hope you enjoy this, and have a fantastic weekend!

For more recipes, restaurant reviews, and food tours, check out her blog: Shelly in Real Life.

(Long post below)

SPICY TUNA HAND ROLLS
Recipe by Shelly

makes about 10 hand rolls

Warning: The measurements listed are kind of arbitrary as I don’t really measure everything out, and it’s all up to you and how creamy & spicy you want your tuna to be.

Ingredients
SUSHI RICE
1.5 cups of sushi rice
.5 tablespoon of mirin

SPICY TUNA
.8 lbs of raw sushi-grade tuna, defrosted, partly frozen
1.5 tablespoons of kewpie mayo (see right)
a healthy squeeze of sriracha (depending on how “spicy” you like your tuna)
1 spring onion, thinly diced
a dash of sesame seed oil, less than 1/8 teaspoon (optional)

GARNISHES
1 avocado
1/2 of a cucumber, julienned


Instructions

First, cook your sushi rice. Make sure you wash the grains until the water runs clear, basically that means you’re washing all the starch off of the grains, which helps it from sticking together later in the process. I cook my rice in my rice cooker with a 1:1 rice, water ratio.

As your rice is cooking, start preparing your spicy tuna. I found that it is easier to dice your tuna when it’s still partially frozen, so that you don’t turn your tuna into mush. If your tuna is completely defrosted, then pop it in the freezer for 10+ minutes. Now, add the kewpie mayo, sriracha, sesame oil, spring onion to the tuna. The kewpie mayo has a completely different flavor than regular mayo or miracle whip, so please don’t substitute. If you have a taste of the kewpie, you will know what I am talking about. After you mix your ingredients, have a taste of the tuna, you can adjust the seasonings as you like, some might like it more creamy (add more mayo) or more spicy (add more sriracha). Now pop it in the fridge while you make your other preparations.

Wait until your rice is done cooking and let it cool down to room temperature. I like to cover my rice with a wet paper towel to prevent it from drying out. Once it is cooler, you can add the mirin to the rice. The mirin helps separate the rice into individual grains. You don’t want your rice to be drenched, just lightly coated. Also, I don’t add mirin to all the rice, I like to make it in batches, just in case I don’t use it all, that way, I can still eat the sushi rice as regular rice later on.

Final step – now that the rice and spicy tuna is prepared, it’s time to fill, tuck and roll! For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out how to make good looking hand rolls, which direction to roll, how to fill it up, etc etc. Now that I’ve finally figured it out, I hope these pictures will help you guys!

STEP 1 - Fill

Cut your nori sheet in half, and start on the lower right corner by filling it up with a bit of rice. Just a little is enough as you don’t want to overstuff your hand roll! Next, layer a few pieces of cucumbers and avocado. I find that cutting the avocado in quarters (the long way) helps in cutting prettier looking avocado pieces. Finally, spoon in the spicy tuna mixture. Notice in the picture above, I have an arrow for the direction in which you should fill your roll. While I used to think that it was pretty intuitive in how a hand roll is rolled, I learned that it is not! Masago is optional – if you like to add that bit of crunch, you can, but I don’t even taste it when I put it in so I choose not to.

STEP 2 - Tuck

The key to making a “tight” roll is to use your thumb to tuck that corner of the seaweed into the roll, it really does help, so tuck that baby in!


STEP 3 - Roll

Finally, after tucking your sushi, just roll it and then help the last bit of seaweed stick to the roll by putting a grain of rice at the end. That will help you seal your roll together.

Volia, you’re done! Just repeat steps 1-3 until you finish all your tuna, or you can refrigerate and eat it again later. As a warning though, the sushi rice is probably not gonna keep as well as the spicy tuna mixture, so be careful of that!
Serve with soy sauce and wasabi (Did I really need to write that?). We finished these rolls so fast that I didn’t even get to take a picture of my finished product!

(re-posted here with permission; originally posted on Shelly's blog: Spicy Tuna Hand Rolls)

From a Different Shore...

Okay, friends, here it comes - my SRS business post for APA Month. You might get another before the month is over, but we'll see if I have another one in me.

This post is going to be a personal reflection that kind of has to do with Asian American identity and self-image. (EDIT: Gennia's comment makes a good point that it also kind of relates to the national conversation on immigration.)

---

In the summer of 2008, I packed my bags and went to Taiwan, the land of my parents and ancestors, for an internship that involved "digging stuff up" as my fellow interns and I liked to say because it was an archaeology internship. The reality was there was less digging and more cataloging. This is also how I found myself taking afternoon naps for a week in a warehouse full of ancient burial pots (used for the burial of babies). Yeah, creepy.

I hadn't been back to Taiwan for a decade, and I had never been there alone, without my parents or relatives. It was also my first time in the southern region of Taiwan, and I was rooming and interning with completely new people. So my experiences going back this time around were very different from my experiences of the place when I was last there as a child.

My internship group became fast friends, and we'd venture out in pairs and groups after work to try new restaurants and explore night markets. We helped each other with our varying levels of Chinese literacy (my language skills are kind of shameful) - by which, I mean, the one guy in our group who could actually READ Chinese translated menus for us so we could decide what to order. The experience was tiring and fun and dang, did it improve my speaking skills!

But something my new friends and I realized while we were there was that being in Taiwan, in the place where, based on appearance, we were the majority, we felt more American than ever.

For one, as I've mentioned, most of us aren't Chinese literate. If you ever want to know how sucky being illiterate is, go to a country where you can't read the signs or order things at McDonalds when there's no picture because you can't read what's on the menu. But that aside, the feeling of difference was more prominent when it became clear to the locals that we weren't literate. They almost always reacted with confusion or surprise because we more or less looked Taiwanese/Chinese.

Continuing on the language topic, for some of us, our accents gave us away as non-natives. It became a game my roommate and I played every time we went somewhere and someone asked where we were from. We kept tallies of how many times someone thought we were Korean or Japanese, from Hong Kong or Singapore. No one ever guessed the U.S. because hey, we sounded foreign but we sure as heck looked Asian.

We dressed a little different and acted a little different. We wore tank tops and flip-flops, strolled bare-armed and bare-legged in the sweltering, summer heat when most Taiwanese girls wore outfits that were much more put-together (flip-flops? way too casual) and made sure to cover their arms and faces to avoid getting tanned. We were loud - talked, laughed, shouted loudly, and when we were together, we spoke to each other in slang-ridden, organic, fluent English and called each other by our English names, which for most of us is the name that counts, the name with which we identify ourselves.

I'd never felt more American than when I was there that summer, surrounded by people who looked like me and watching people on TV and in ads that looked like me (hey there, Asian beauty icons and pop stars and movie starlets!).

To all those people in the U.S. who like to throw around the phrase, "Go back to where you came from," I'd like to say, how can you ask that? Taiwan was not where I came from, and going back there now would only emphasize how AMERICAN I am. The U.S. has always been a land of immigrants, and by rights, I could tell an American descendent of one of the original colonizing families to "go back to where they came from" because his/her forefathers came from England. And let me pose this question here, how would that descendent feel back in England? Would they ever think of themselves as English, as belonging there? Could they possibly think of England as home?

Because I love Taiwan and maybe if I weren't so Chinese illiterate, I'd like to live there for a bit, but I could never call it home.

On the flip side, when I'm back here in the U.S., where I was born and raised, I'm very aware of my Asian roots. I'm very aware that I'm Asian-American or Asian American, but not since I was very young have I thought of myself as just "American".

How can I when I have childhood memories of kids in my class slanting their eyes and making jokes (nevermind that I don't even have small or slanted eyes)? How can I when I hardly see Asian faces as part of mainstream media? How can I think I'm just "American" when people will still, often innocently, ask me where I'm from and when I say, "California," they'll say, "No, I mean where are you really from?"

I don't get offended about the latter because I know most people don't mean it in an offensive way and they just want to know my ethnic heritage, but really, think about this. Do people commonly ask you "where are you from?" and are unsatisfied when you answer with "New York" or "Minnesota" or "Las Vegas"? When you're asked "Where are you from?," do you ever expect the asker to actually mean "Are you from Ireland/Spain/Russia/South Africa/France/Ethiopia?"

"HERE, I'm from HERE," I want to say in answer to that question, but usually, I just smile and say, "I was born here, but my parents are from Taiwan."

A question as innocent as that ("Where are you from?") reveals the persistant societal attitude in the U.S. that Asians will always be some kind of "other."

So yeah, I'm aware of my Asianess in America, but I'm aware of my Americanness in Asia. And so there's always this push and pull to Asian American identity and self-image, this inextricable duality. I don't angst about it (no identity crises here), but the awareness of the duality of my identity is there and I acknowledge it.


Thanks for reading my somewhat more serious piece. Hope it was interesting. I'll see you all on Friday with another recipe, courtesy of my awesomesauce college roommate!


P.S. For another personal perspective on the topic, check out XiXi's Asian-American Self Image post at From Elysium.

Recipe: Ai Yu Bing - Taiwanese Dessert Drink!

Good Monday, friends! As you probably experienced, Blogger was mostly down on Friday, going around eating posts and comments alike. So, you get my intended Friday post today!

We're talking about food today, specifically making it. I have 1 recipe for you for a delicious summer drink/snack. I learned this one from my mom, and it's so ridiculously simple that even I can't screw it up.

Ai Yu Bing

Photo credit/ JUN on Flickr

Ai Yu is a clear-ish jelly made from a variety of fig found in Taiwan. I've only ever seen it as jelly, so I had to go to Wikipedia for this tidbit. Anyway, it's common in Taiwan (and Singapore too apparently). You can go to any night market and there will undoubtedly be a stand selling the Ai Yu drink, which I'm going to teach you how to make now.

This is basically the Taiwanese equivalent of lemonade for those hot summer days.

Ingredients

1 can of Ai Yu (preferably made in Taiwan)
1 lemon or lime
1-2 cups of water
Ice cubes
Honey / Some kind of sweetener (sugar, agave nectar)

Optional substitute for sweetener: 1 can of 7-Up / Sprite / Canada Dry
Optional ingredient: 1 can of almond jelly

Directions


1. You can get cans of Ai Yu (and almond jelly) at most reasonably stocked Asian supermarkets. When you open the can, the jelly will be one big slab (column?) of jelly.

Photo credit: Protocol Snow

2. My mom usually makes enough for 4-5 people, so that's like a regular pot-sized amount of this. I think she uses an entire can of jelly. If you're just making one bowl of it, use half the can-slab.

Cut the jelly into smaller pieces (whatever size you like for eating/drinking).

Do the same for the almond jelly if you're using that too.

3. Add as much water as you want. This depends on how much you want to drink/eat and how many people you're serving.

4. Squeeze lemon juice into the mix. Again, this is to your taste. If you like more lemony flavor, use the entire lemon. Stir a bit.

5. Add honey/sweetener to taste. Stir it all up.

5a. Instead of using a sweetener, my mom adds a can of 7-Up/Sprite/Canada Dry. The sweetness from the soda works as the sweetener, while also giving you more liquid (you can use less water). It also has the delightful side effect of making the drink bubbly.

(Traditionally, the drink is made without the soda.)

6. Then ice cube up the entire thing like you would lemonade.

Then you get a nice bowl of this:

Photo credit/ Benny2006 on Flickr

Enjoy! See you all Wednesday!

Random- Oh heck with it!

As most of you know, Blogger was out of commission all of yesterday. So try as I did, I could not put up a blog post today, alas! I guess Friday the 13th was bad luck for Blogger.

Instead of writing a post, I went out for boba and chatted with Sophia about her trip to South Carolina and Tennessee.

However, fear not, dear friends! I will be back on MONDAY with the post I was going to put up today. It will be filled with deliciousness!

Have a great weekend, and see you for a special Monday post, May 16th!