Happy Mother’s Day!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there and all those who still have a mother! I hope we will all take a moment to think about the mothers of the 267 Nigerian girls who were kidnapped in such a violent way and have not been found.  There will continue to be so much sorrow and many broken hearts around the world until they are returned to their loving homes.  We can only pray for their safety wherever they are.

The other day I had a discussion about Mother’s day with Troy the trainer and we agreed it is not just a “Hallmark” Day when you are supposed to get some flowers and a card for your mother.  It truly is a day when most of us should take a moment and think deeply about the one person who gave us life.  I don’t think, however, that we should only call and check on our moms on Mother’s Day.  How long would it take to chat with them every few days, or even every day?  They gave us so many years of their time and hard work.  What would 5-10 minutes of our time a few days a week amount to?  Not too much, I would say.

I remember the last few years of my mother’s life, when I tried to make a phone call at least every other day to check on her.  She lived in Fairfax, Virginia, about 25 minutes from my house.

“How was your day, Ma?”  I would ask her.

“It’s the same, nothing much.” She would say with a dry laugh.  Why did I keep starting our conversation this way?  How did I expect her days to be different, as she was already in her late 70’s with many medical problems?  Maybe I just wanted to acknowledge her existence.

She then went on to let me know if she had sat out in the sun, to get all the vitamin D that I wanted her to get, to make her bones strong and to make her happier.  She knew if she didn’t tell me, she would have to listen to the same questions of how many minutes she had sat out in the sun that day and what had she cooked or eaten.

My mother was an adventuresome woman.  She liked to travel, to explore, to experience, to inhale life with her deepest breath.  I got that “genetic marker” from her, one that can sense how time is fleeting, of a river flowing in one direction, the one with no return.  Her life itself was such an adventure, all the ups and downs through her tough childhood.  She was forced to be an independent girl at a very young age.  It made her grow up a very strong woman, too strong-willed and stubborn at times but, sadly, somewhat suspicious and bitter.

“You trust people too much.  Trust them only 50%.  At the end, you have to take care of yourself.  Don’t depend on anybody but yourself,”  she often reminded her daughters.

That was her life philosophy.  Trust your instinct.  Be nice and be kind but beware that not everyone is as kind as you are; they can hurt you.  She, however, often contradicted herself by telling me how kind deeds always bring you good luck at the end.  I used to scratch my head as a little girl, wondering if that meant I should be nice even to those I was suspicious of as not being nice to me?  Shouldn’t I run away from them?

Were you a good teenager when you grew up?  I have told all my American friends how I was such a perfect teenager, as were most Asian teenagers who grew up in the same era.  I was respectful, quiet, never talked back.  I helped around the house without being asked.  I did all my schoolwork and handed everything in on time, in as perfect form as I could.  After moving to the U.S., my siblings and I would sit side by side doing homework late into the night.  My father was working too hard during the day; my mother didn’t know enough English.  We somehow survived our high school years without our parents being called into the principal’s office.  We were the most well behaved teenagers, maybe too quiet, but we never disrupted the still water of our school. 

How could my siblings and I haven been such good teenagers?  It could be that we had such a difficult time adjusting to a new country that we knew we could not “act out” like modern teenagers.  I knew my parents were having a horrendous time with their new lives in the U.S. and that they didn’t need more problems with me “acting out” like a western teenager.  I think all of my siblings left our childhood the day we left Vietnam and instantly entered adulthood.  To see how all the teenagers are “acting out” around me, whether they are my patients or in my family, I keep telling myself:

“They would never survive the Asian culture!  There would have been so many Greek tragedies!”

The phenomenon of teenagers changing their behavior in this era seems to be serious enough that, when Sandy started middle school at Sidwell Friends, a list of books was given to all the parents from the middle school’s principal.  One was highly recommended and I have just began to read it this year, four years behind the schedule.  I wished I had read it earlier to recognize that my teenager is not extraordinarily odd.  Well, maybe he’s still extraordinarily odd since he turned fourteen, as compared to how I was at his age, but not extraordinarily unique for a teenager, as all the teenagers featured in this book act just like him!  I have since recommended this book to many patients who have been struggling with their teenagers and questioning their parenting skills.  The book is called Get Out of My Life, But First, Could You Drive me & Cheryl to the Mall: A Parent’s Guide to the New Teenager,  by Dr. Anthony Wolf, a Harvard psychologist.

To think of it, maybe I was not as perfect a teenager as I remember.  Now and then, my mother would say to me, in a disappointed tone: 

“You will never understand me until you have a daughter yourself!  Then I won’t be there anymore to remind you how you were.”

If I was such a perfect teenager, why would my mother say such a thing?  Could it be that most teenagers have amnesia as to how they acted as a teenager once their teen years are over, or could it be that my mother didn’t know how good she had it with me as her teenager?

If you want to see what I got for my son Sandy on this Mother’s Day, look at one of the photos attached at the end of this blog.  I have always managed to give Sandy a teaching point on special holidays or occasions.  Maybe I need to reread Dr. Anthony Wolf’s book?

Yesterday, on the eve of Mother’s Day, my older brother Quan drove his two good friends, Kay and Tony, my father and my nephew Logan to Chesapeake Beach to spend the afternoon with my family.  I had been frantically thinking about what to serve the guests since Thursday.  Like my mother, I believe guests should never go home hungry.  Unlike my mother, however, I have tried but can never be as fabulous a cook as she was.   She used to complain about my cooking skill, how the carrots were not julienned enough; the meat was not too tender; there was either too much or too little salt.  She was a “Goldilocks” chef!  She urged me to watch her carefully whenever she cooked, although she never measured her ingredients using measuring cups or spoons!  It was always a dash of this and that.

“It doesn’t matter who you are or how important your job is, a competent woman has to know how to cook!”  

My mom was an Asian version of Gloria Steinem, except for the cooking issue.  Women have to cook for their families, period!  She always considered men who cook while their wife is sitting around with a glass of wine as “men with no spine.”  It was difficult for her to see this common situation in America.  Deep down, she was a traditional Asian mother and wife.

Since she died more than two years ago (how time has passed), I have started cooking some of her more “simple” dishes, and wish I had watched her more, as she was my favorite chef.  Last Sunday, when my boot camp friends and I had a cooking event with Joe Yonan, the Chief Editor of the Food and Travel Section of the Washington Post, I made Vietnamese vegetarian summer rolls.  They were among my favorite dishes of those made by my mother.  I had these rolls when I was young every time the moon was full, as it signaled a Buddhist Holiday.  I, however, didn’t remember all the ingredients my mother used to make these rolls.  I had David surf the internet for recipes and he found one called “Bac Gai’s Vegetarian Summer Rolls.” 

“Bac Gai” is an endearing term for “my mother,” so I immediately approved of the recipe.  It sounded like a family’s recipe, often the best kind for a dish.  Well, my vegetarian rolls were a huge hit.  All 40 rolls, cut in halves, were gone by the end of the get-together, and I was given so many compliments by my friends and Joe Yonan himself!  I told them, however, how this “Bac Gai” obviously had a lot of time on her hands, as she asked for “a thousand” ingredients, making me travel up and down the vegetables aisles at the Asian grocery store.  There was fried tofu, sweet potatoes, yucca, carrots, radish, cucumber, fresh shiitake mushrooms, toasted rice powder, crushed peanuts ….and everything had to be in julienne style. 

Yesterday, in my mother’s memory, I decided to make her vegetarian rolls for my brother and his guests.  I know the moon is not full tonight, but the rolls are excellent in any moon.  My mother would have been pleased that I picked a dish in her honor to serve the family and my brother’s friends.  I decided to make it her way, a more simple way.  She would have laughed at Bac Gai’s recipe.  

“Lon xon qua!” she would have said, a way of saying “Too confusing!” 

My version of Bac Gai’s vegetarian summer rolls and dipping sauce are easy to make; I ended up making almost 30 rolls in less than 10 minutes.  However, you still have to julienne this and that vegetables, and stir fry them, so you will have to add another 20 minutes or so.  I hope you will enjoy the summer rolls as much as I did when I was young.  Don’t forget to make a few for your mother!  It’s also a tasty and healthy appetizer for Father’s Day, coming up in June.

Vietnamese Vegetarian Summer Rolls

Make about 30-40 rolls, depending on how “fat” or “skinny” you wanted your rolls to be. All the ingredients can be found in an Asian grocery store.

Again, any ingredient in the recipe can be modified depending on your family’s tastes.  To me, cooking is a mixture of art and science!

Ingredients:

2 medium carrots, Julienned style

2 sweet potatoes, Julienned style

1/2 cabbage head

1 radish

1 yucca (optional, not in my mom’s rolls!)

8 oz fresh shiitake mushrooms (or Cremini) sliced

8 oz either fried tofu or bean curd (can use bean curd or tofu “sheet”), julienned style

Some fresh Basil and Mint leaves

Lettuce leaves (Boston lettuce is great)

1 Tbsp or more of salt (depending on your taste)

1Tbsp of pepper

2 Tbsp of vegetable or olive oil

1 or more packages or rice wrapping papers, in round shape (each package tends to come in more than 20 sheets of rice paper) 

Dipping Sauce: Mix all ingredients below together and set aside.  To marinade the cucumber and carrots in the dipping sauce, you can make the sauce while waiting for your stir-fried ingredients to cool down.

1/2 cup of water

1/8 cup of sugar

1/2 cup soy sauce

1/4 cup of sweet white vinegar (I have used other vinegars such as rice wine vinegar)

juice of one lime

2 red Thai chilies, seeded and minced (my mom and I left the seeds in which makes the sauce more spicy)

2 Tbsp of toasted peanuts, finely chopped

1/4 cup of peeled and shredded carrots 

1/4 cup of peeled and shredded cucumber 

Directions:  

In a hot frying pan, on medium to high heat, add vegetable or olive oil.

Add cabbage, carrots and radish together.  Stir fry for 2-3 minutes.

Add mushroom and sweet potatoes.  Stir fry for 2 more minutes until al dente i.e. not too soft.

Add sugar and pepper.

Add tofu and stir fry for 1-2 minutes.

Turn off heat, take ingredients out of frying pan and set aside to cool down.  Drain excess fluid. 

Note: the filling can be made the night before, as the cooling down time can take quite a bit of time!

To make a roll:

Soften the rice paper, one sheet at a time, by dipping it quickly into a plate/container filled with water.  To speed up the process of making rolls, I have learned to dip two sheets at a time and place one on a dry dish while making the first roll.  Once the first roll is done, I use the second sheet after dipping the third sheet into the water and placing it on a dry dish.  This way, your roll making process doesn’t get interrupted, as it takes 30 seconds or so for the rice paper to be soften when wet.  As a chef, you will have to be clever to save your cooking time!  

On a cutting board, place a softening sheet of rice paper.

Place at the top of the rice paper a piece of lettuce.

Add a few mint and basil leaves.

Add 2 Tbsp of filling

Roll the top of the rice paper until the ingredients are all covered.

Pull the side edges inward to cover each other.

Roll the rest of the rice paper downward until the roll is done.

Set it on a plate and start your second roll.

Leave a small gap between the rolls so that they don’t touch each other until they are a bit dry.

Set rolls aside for half an hour before serving your guests.

Divide the dipping sauce into small dipping dishes for your guests and family members.

 Bon Appetit !!!