Ordinary Time

Since we celebrate both Tet and Chinese New Year here, we have both the Year of the Cat and the Year of the Rabbit. The Vietnamese zodiac has two animals that don't match the Chinese zodiac and this is one of those years. We celebrate mainly by eating food. As I mentioned, Y. spent all day yesterday making homemade baozi (steamed buns) starting with homemade dough. She made a lot. She made so many that everyone ate their fill and we have over a dozen left. (I'm quite sure they won't last through the day tomorrow.) We also had a steak and broccoli stir fry that uses a black bean sauce served over long noodles (because long noodles at new years symbolizes longevity.) The Tet celebration always involves fresh fruit, so I splurged on dragon fruit. Dessert was sugary preserved fruit and candy. Well, it was wrapped like candy. There was some disappointment when we discovered that it was merely preserved plums wrapped in candy wrappers. Not really what everyone was expecting or ho...

Last Sunday TM texted me and J. a photo of a bowl of phở with a message saying that he needed to take us out to dinner at this Vietnamese restaurant he found. Dinner out? With one of our children? Vietnamese food? It took me about two seconds to accept the offer. Tonight was the date and we had a lovely dinner with TM and a friend of his. And the food... We love Vietnamese food. We try to make some ourselves, but it is rare to find food that matches what we had on our trips to Vietnam. Even now, sixteen years later, it takes very little for the family members who have been there to spend more than a little time reminiscing about our favorite meals there .  When we were in Evanston, we had multiple Vietnamese restaurants that we enjoyed going to... a couple little hole in the wall places and some more upscale restaurants. I had actual Vietnamese markets nearby where we could stock up on favorite snacks and vegetables. And I admit I took it all for granted. Then we moved out here wh...

As the day progressed and I thought about the week ahead, I realized that it would be wise to go to the Asian market to get what I needed for Tet/Chinese New Years on Tuesday today rather than trying to squeeze it in on Tuesday. I'm glad I did because my trip to one store became a trip to three stores. The first was Park to Shop. Being a mainly Chinese store, I was pretty convinced that it would have everything I needed. I could go, grab the things on my list, and head home to be back in time for tea. When I got there I realized that this was not going to be a fast in and out trip. It was busy! I've never had to park so far away and there were no shopping carts available. This last turned out to be okay because the one thing I really, really needed wasn't there. Earlier, when I had asked my people what they wanted to have for dinner, they chose a stir-fried dumpling dish that they all love and Y. really wanted some stir-fried lotus root. I don't know if you've notic...

Since we started back to school, we started back in on our round the world tour. The first stop has been Vietnam. The food aspect to our tour has proven so popular, that even before we began school again, I was getting questions as to when we would be eating our special dinners and when they would happen. Now, the trouble with Vietnam is that we have Vietnamese food somewhat regularly, and the things I cook have become just a part of our family repertoire of meals. To make it special, I needed to come up with something new and different. So I started thinking. I have a lot of quail eggs. Many people love any variation of meat in dough. TM had been missing the steamed buns from the Vietnamese bakery which was just 20 minutes away from our old house. All of these things together meant that I decided it was time to try making my own steamed buns, or banh bao in Vietnam. The girls from China call them baozi. Pretty much everyone calls them something different. In prepar...

Last night we had a 'make your own spring roll' dinner, based loosely on a meal we had at a Vietnamese restaurant. I have no idea what the real name of the dish was called, but essentially they provided things to go into rice paper wrappers and you rolled them up. It's a little bit of prep work at the beginning, and a little tricky to sort out how to serve it, but everyone enjoyed it. Here's what I did. Make your own spring rolls (there is no way I can give you amounts... you're just going to have to guess based on how many people you have and what you think they'll eat) Sliced beef (I found some great pre-sliced stir-fry meat at H Mart the other day.... meat sliced for Bulgogi would work, too.) Marinate this for a while in a mixture of equal parts soy sauce and oyster sauce. Then while it is marinating, slice some green onions and chop some garlic. Set these aside. Before you cook the beef, you will want to prepare the other toppings. I shredded some ca...

The day has escaped me and I can't even tell you what I did. Certainly not put those piles of books away that I showed you yesterday, that's for sure. So enjoy these instead. First, two articles that I had published recently which I can't remember if I shared here or not. 5 Things You Should Know about how Orphanage Life Affects Children and How to Help Someone Who Doesn't Want Help with Adoption Challenges Then there were these articles I came across that I thought were interesting. One about reading and brains: Bedtime Stories for Young Brains And one about music and brains: Science Shows How Piano Players' Brains are Actually Different From Everybody Elses' A somewhat snarky article about large families: The Ultimate Status Symbol for Millionaire Moms on New York's Upper East Side is not What You'd Expect And finally a brief and not so wonderful update on the current status of adoption from Vietnam: Warning Regarding Partner Agencies...

Number of days we have lost with our daughter due to the negligence of the state of Illinois: 13 Last night we celebrated Tet and Chinese New Year, though we were a day late. We spent the evening with the H-S family and ordered in Chinese food, which thrilled H. TM has stated for future reference that Vietnamese food is better and we should have ordered that. The objection was noted and will be kept in mind for next year. I will pause here for a brief digression. In our defense, it is far, far easier to order Chinese take-out than Vietnamese as the only very close VN restaurant closed several years ago. You would think in a city of 75,500 people that has over 90 restaurants in its downtown alone, that there could be one Vietnamese restaurant. Is there Ethiopian? Yes. Thai? Yes, many. Mexican? Yes. Chinese... French... Spanish... Italian... Japanese? Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. Vietnamese? No. Now, back to the topic. The evening was pretty low key. We ate and there might have be...

We interrupt this blog for a brief, but important message. On a whim, I thought, "Oh, fall is coming. I'll just look to see when the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival is." So I did. Ack! It's September 8th this year. It feels really early. Does it seem early to you? I guess it's time to go find some moon cakes and see about lanterns. Do you need to make some lanterns? I wrote a tutorial for making your own paper lanterns. It's not too late... though it is getting really close. Paper lantern tutorial Now you may all go back to your regularly scheduled summer activities. At least those of you for whom this is still summer... like us. Not to rub it in or anything.

I have been putting off writing this post, but I don't like what I see, so I guess I just have to get it out. In the various adoption forums and groups I am a part of I have seen a rise in discussion about ethics violations in countries whose adoption program was ethically inviolate. I know it surprises and saddens many people that fraud happens everywhere, but it does. This is especially true when you are dealing with the toxic cocktail of parents who either desperately want a child or desperately want to help a child, poor families in poor countries, and a large amount of money that changes hands. As a parent of two sons from Vietnam, the stories of fraud, trafficking, unethical agencies and facilitators, and ostrich-like parents are not new. In fact, a country I love is closed to international adoption because of it. Other parents have similar stories about the countries of their children's birth. It is sadly the same story. Here is how it goes... fill in the country nam...

Several weeks ago, TM and I were in a local Vietnamese market and while browsing, saw packages of cooked, frozen clams for very little money. TM (who loves seafood in all forms) was instantly smitten by the little shells. As they weren't very expensive, I bought a pound and took them home where they sat in the freezer. Usually something like this would then be forgotten for months on end, except that a boy I know, when he is captured by an idea, is a wee bit preoccupied by it. In self-defense, I had to come up with a way to fix them. Thanks to my favorite Vietnamese cookbook, The Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table by Mai Pham, I found what I thought was a solution. It was a recipe for mussels in a lemongrass broth, but it said you could use clams as well. The other thing that has been going on around here is a cooking bug that has infected several children. I have had numerous requests that each of them be allowed to cook dinner. (Shame, isn't it? You probably couldn't cl...

On Saturday, we all went to the annual Tet party put on by our local Families with Children from Vietnam group. Well, all of us except J. He was driving home from Indianapolis and joined us in time for the lion dancers. Before I show you pictures, you want to hear about his crazy three days, from Thursday to Saturday? Staying home with 9 children was the easy part. He had a conference in Colorado Springs that he was presenting at on Friday, but the complicating factor was that he had an in-person class for his doctoral program on Saturday. In Indianapolis. So this is how he worked it out. On Thursday, he drove to Indianapolis, put the car in long-term parking at the airport and caught a flight to Denver. In Denver he rented a car and drove down to Colorado Springs. On Friday he spent the day at the conference, after which he drove back to Denver and caught a late flight to Indianapolis and spent the night. That put him in the correct city for his classes. They ended mid-afternoon and ...

Yesterday was the lunar new year. Usually we do something to observe it and I had even planned on doing so this year. I had special food, was going to make a cake, and even had a craft planned. But we ended up pretty much ignoring the day, though we did eat some of the food. Why did we do this, particularly since observing the lunar new year is a 'thing' (as in practically a requirement in order to be considered a 'good' parent) among adoptive families with Asian children? And since we even had made a special trip down to the Vietnamese market to purchase some of the food? Well, the short answer is that sometimes you need to let go of something that is good in order to accomplish something better. I think it all begins back in that Vietnamese marker last Friday. Parenting children with a trauma history is all about knowing triggers. And I'm usually pretty good at knowing what TM's triggers are and how to avoid (or at least mitigate) them. Early on, anything ...

Yesterday was the moon festival which is celebrated in both China and Vietnam. It's handy for us that there are similarities between the major holidays of the two countries. As I had mentioned before, we were going to set about making our own paper lanterns this year. They turned out pretty well and were fairly easy, so I thought I would share how we did it. The first thing you need is some paper. I went to the paper store (a really nice, but pricey affair which I rarely go into for that reason) and found some thin, nice paper that we could use. I first picked some really beautiful papers with Asian designs, but put them right back after I looked at the $10 per sheet price tag. Here is what I ended up with. The next step is to make your lantern base. We used both heavy paper plates and chip board boxes (like cereal boxes). You can see the thermos in the picture that I used to make the pattern. Either find something with a nice size or make a 5-1/2 inch diameter circle. ...

We have been doing other things around here.  For instance, last Sunday we went to a Tet party sponsored by our Families with Children from Vietnam group.  It is always held a little after the actual lunar new year because that way the local troupe of lion dancers can come and perform. There were dragon puppets to make: K. And lots of good food to eat: L., A., and G. And of course the lion dancers: Everyone loves the lion dancers.  Well, almost everyone.  There were a couple of little girls who weren't convinced that they were a good thing.  When the lions first came out, G. started to scream at the top of her lungs.  Eventually, she calmed down and decided she liked all the fluff and shiny stuff on the lions.  Of course, at that point, one of lions came a little too close which terrified L. who started to scream. The fun thing is that after the performance, the children are allowed to come and try to be lion dancers.  K. LOVES lion danc...