Category: Lifestyle

When the temperature drops, back in NY, my go-to meal was a big bowl of pho or congee. Since moving to Colorado, the best trick I’ve found to combat being homesick and having the blues, is learning to cook comfort food, which is everything that brings me back home. 

Congee, or rice porridge, brings back some of my oldest memories. Big bowls for breakfast in Shanghai with grandma and grandpa—my favorite, most cherished memories fading fast but gelled by the remembrance of the taste of savory congee. 

Grandpa, my yieyie, alway made a pot of the thickest porridge from the previous day’s rice. He would pair the biggest bowl of congee, instead of rice, with every meal. That’s what he ate in the last few weeks of his life.

My dad inherited the love of congee. It has always seemed to me the ultimate “poor man’s food”—make a bowl of rice last longer by adding water. I remember my grandma’s story about my dad getting sent to the “countryside” to work. I would imagine him eating and living off of rice porridge.

When Chris and I lived together by the Seaport, we would always eat in Chinatown. Whenever we were in the mood for congee we’d go to XO, Noodle Village, or Big Wong’s. One of our first business ideas before the weed was our idea for the “Crazy Congee House.” You would order your base congee and then add whatever toppings you wanted like the Hong Kong Noodle Station that he loved so much. (Hey, you never know, maybe one day!)

Like oatmeal, everyone has their own preference for how thick or thin you like your congee. For example, I love it thick like a paste, and Chris likes it thin like a soup. So whenever I make it, I’ll make it super thick, the way I like, and then water it down later for Chris. 

I start first with making a beef bone broth. Every month or so I make a big pot of beef bone broth. I try to pick out the beef bones with the most marrow, because Chris and bb both love bone marrow. I’ll cook the bones for up to three days, and remove the the blood and fat from the surface as it rises. 

Whenever I ask any of our parents about measurements, they will never tell you in cups or ounces. Everything is by eye or sense. So to get it right, I’ve had to rely on a book that Chris’ cousin Jonathan left at our place when he left Denver, “The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen.” When we moved from our condo in Aurora to Evergreen, we cleaned out the storage unit and found the book buried at the bottom of a box Jon left with us. 

For every half cup of uncooked rice, use a quart of the bone broth. If my bone broth is concentrated, I’ll thin it out with some water. You can also just use water, but the broth makes the congee richer. Cook on medium high until the broth boils, then bring to a low simmer for a few hours, stirring often, and scraping the bottom of the pot. If it gets too thick, add more water.

There are a few favorite things I love to use for toppings that we get mainly from the Pacific Ocean Marketplace on Alameda in Denver. Thousand year duck egg in soy sauce, salted duck egg, green onion, toasted crullers (a long fried chinese savory donut), pickled radish in toasted sesame oil, pickled cucumbers in soy sauce, fried egg, white pepper, hot chili oil, fried fish skin (if we can find it), shredded pork or vegetable laver if you’re a loose vegetarian like me. My mother-in-law also adds peanuts and slices of ginger. The best thing about building your bowl of congee is you can make it your own, and leave out the pepper, chili and onions for the kids.

There are a hundred variations you can do with congee, and you’ll get different congee from different regions of China. Chicken congee, pork congee, fish congee, etc. For me, this is my chicken noodle soup. Weather is cold? Make congee. Kids are sick? Make congee. Feeling sad? 

Make congee.

One of the toughest challenges I’ve faced in the last few years is feeling “burnout” and it’s worsened by a year like 2020. I see it all around me, especially in my friends with new families. Having a four-year-old; an 18-month old; a business that just turned 3 in an emerging and highly regulated industry; a relationship that is also a business partnership; then add on my own particular dash of perfectionism, plus a pandemic—it’s overwhelming to say the least. 

After my latest fight with Chris, I scrolled upon an article in Elle, entitled “Stop Telling Women They’re Amazing.”

“It’s really time for us all to stop telling women they’re amazing. I saw a cartoon recently that summed it up well: A haggard-looking woman is attempting to work, clean her house, and watch her kids, while the people around her say, ‘You’re amazing!’ ‘Please, I need help,’ she begs.” 

There was a lot in the article that you could relate to. Is it because we’re women that we feel the need to do it all, without asking for help, without saying no, without setting boundaries? 

I’ve been crashing and burning one too many times to not realize, something’s gotta change. Just because I can do it, doesn’t mean I should do it. Just because you can’t do it, doesn’t mean you can’t learn to do it. And just because you realize change needs to happen, doesn’t mean it will be easy, quick and painless. Most likely, you fail repeatedly and give up a lot, but the best and most persistent beast in you will push you to keep trying.

Owning a business, I have to take responsibility and be accountable for everything, and I mean, E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G, especially when something goes wrong. Someone else make a mistake? My fault because I didn’t train them enough. Someone doesn’t come in on time? My fault because I didn’t set rules and consequences. Someone didn’t do what I asked of them? My fault because I wasn’t clear enough in my direction.  The product went out mislabeled? My fault because the processes need improvement and there is lack of oversight. Oh fuck, the insurance lapsed a week ago?

Mistakes will always happen. Things will always go wrong. But not learning from them, not fixing them, not OWNING them, is the deadliest mistake. And it’s the hardest part. 

Chris and I used to watch shows like Kitchen Nightmares, Bar Rescue, and The Profit back in NY. The shows underneath the premise and editing were always about the dysfunctional people and relationships that had to be fixed in order to fix the business. That’s the entertainment of this type of reality tv, and by far the finest, IMO: flawed characters with a chance for redemption, and the more dysfunction, the greater the payout for the viewer if they get fixed, and the better the tv. After our fight last month, Chris said to me, please get high and watch this episode of kitchen nightmares. I had to laugh at the wife screaming, Fuck you, I quit! But on another level, I also felt deeply uncomfortable and disturbed that, no, the thick Italian accent isn’t you, but to some degree, at your most emotional, this was a caricature of you on your worst days. Who knows what was left on the editing floor, or what was a set up, but at the heart of every single problem, in the arc of every show’s story, the source is always traced back to the deeply flawed owners.

Of course, everyone is flawed in some way, but when you do a crazy thing and decide to start a business, the flaws are reflected in it (just like when you do a crazy thing and have a kid). And you can either choose to stick your head in the sand, or decide it’s time to redeem yourself. 

One of my biggest flaws is my inability to control and cope with my emotions, and then responding to situations with emotion instead of rational thought.  With two young kids, I’m learning quickly that emotions are hard to handle, and if it’s something I never learned to handle as a kid, or never learned to handle effectively, then I bring that with me into my adult life. And greater than the need for great television, greater than the need to succeed in business, is the greatest mission of all: to learn, so I can teach my children all the things I always needed to learn.