This is the last of the pizza bread, and I swear this half was totally different than the other. This one had potato, peas, ham, onion, green pepper, crab, mushrooms, cheese, and who knows what else. Some yummy grapes and a tapioca pudding that didn’t make the shot here.
I originally wrote this as a comment to Diana’s post about this topic, related to interracial couples.
I think there are fetishes and then there is cultural compatibility.
I found myself dating Asian people because they understood my life better–the way my family worked, the food I ate, the littlest lifestyle things–not to mention that my family accepted only Asian people (all others were seen as “phases”, even to this day). I never was attracted exclusively to Asian people, but I found my ration of Asian crushes to non-Asian crushes skewed considerably.
Somehow I became friends with Dan (my current boyfriend of almost five years). Somehow my family doesn’t accept him because he’s not Asian. And somehow I dont care because he sees me for me, the full 100% me, not the Asian culture or the American culture. He understands the mixture of cultures and embraces it, often accompanying me to functions where he/we are the only “white people”, but he does it for me, and it doesn’t care because he’s with me. And that’s the reason he’s going–to make me happy and to be with me, making a new memory with me.
I don’t think Dan wanted to go to the Hawai’ian Cultural Festival’s advanced lei making workshop, but he helped me make my lei and helped me document the outcome. I’m sure he doesn’t want to go with me to the Asian supermarkets to find the specific ethnic ingredients I need, or visit dive restaurants because ‘I heard it was good’. He specifically recommends authentic Japanese restaurants or shops and suggests sitting at ‘the bar’ to encourage me to speak Japanese, just because he knows once I get over my shyness, I’ll be beaming at the night’s end.
Unabashed selfless-ness. what more is there?
It’s quite unfair if you look at it this way. I never underwent any cultural hazing on his side of the family. They readily accepted me as myself, not Asian/American/whatever. They’re genuinely warm and welcoming to me, more so than my own family at times. Wheras my family doesn’t even acknowledge Dan and have never even invited him over to dinner in the past years of our relationship.
In fact, I think that dating Dan has taught me more about myself and helped me develop more as an individual. I’m not only defined by my culture, I have a more complex and developed identity now, one that is more stable. Culture can be a dealbreaker in some cases, but in others it can be an opportunity to share and learn from each other. If both sides are understanding and have open minds, I think it only helps foster the relationship and make it richer.
I guess in the end, this is quite the opposite of yellow fever. Yellow fever is being obsessed with the culture for no reason other than the fact that you “like it” and exclusively dating someone because they’re Asian–as in, the first selective factor is whether or not they’re asian. Not necessarily the ethnicity that you’re enamored with or studying per se, but just ‘Asian’ in general.
Finding only one race as attractive. What a broad generalization. There’s actually more DNA variance within races than across. I understand finding one race over another as attractive, but exclusively? They’re only doing themselves a disservice.
What are everyone elses thoughts on race or ethnicity and its role in relationships?
love him
Wow, I just realized this is my four-hundredth post! Sorry there’s nothing more exciting for this, but it’s my bento for today! I think I did a good job of filling in all the extra spaces and having a good balance of fruit, vegetable, and carb.
This is a new bento that I purchased from Rakuten (via Crescent Trading). It’s hard to find sandwich case bento when you’re on a mission! There are only like two readily available designs and I didn’t like them.
The top is lined with wax paper (I took some small sheets from my local store’s bakery section) and contains Pizza Bread from my local Korean Bakery. Pizza bread is actually quite common in Japan and I ate it many times when I was there. This one seems more like a “leftover” pizza, and it has a weird layout of plain bread + ham + toppings. The toppings are also weird, and seem to have no rhyme or reason. I saw onions, mushrooms, cheese, crab, and sauce. It tasted pretty good and was quite filling.
The bottom holds dragonfruit stars, a chinese leek & scallion bao (xie ke huang 蟹殼黃), pretzels, raisins, and apple cinnamon “cheerios”. I’m struggling to find out how much food I actually eat because even though I only had half of the pizza bread today for lunch (the other half is already cut and will be used for later this week), I am incredibly full right now. Sometimes I pack more than this and I’m hungry throughout the day!
P.S. the furoshiki is from Japan and has Chu-Totoro and Chibi-Totoro on it with flower blossoms. I really must get/find more furoshiki~. I’m sure I bought more than two in Japan! I guess I can make some out of the fabric I bought in Japan as well.
| CHATEAU GATEAU CUPCAKERY http://www.chateaugateau.com |
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May 30th, 2009
Chateau Gateau only sells their cupcakes at the Old Town Farmer’s Market or via catering. Because they are just a simple table admist many other tables, the decor score here is N/A. I say “they”, but CG is just one person: Serina Luangkhot. She’s very nice and quite personable. She says right up, apologetically, what they’re out of (I arrived at the market relatively late. I say “relatively” because the market opens at some ungodly hour like 5 or 6) and also mentioned that she gives tupperware containers with cupcakes to regulars, but she was also out of those.
I had the 3rd Date Magic and Pucker Up. The 3rd Date Magic was a nice change from a traditional cupcake. Unfortunately, the chocolate melted all over me and the cake was a bit dry. The Pucker Up was decent. The lemon curd with lemon zest was better than the rich chocolate/chocolate drizzle combo in the 3rd Date Magic. It might be because the actual chocolate in 3rd Date was too sweet for me (I’m a dark/extra-dark chocolate kinda gal). Overall, the lemon cupcake was sticky-ly sweet, too sweet. I inhaled it in 2 bites or so and was glad I tried it, but didn’t want another.
These cupcakes are a great treat if you’re already at the farmer’s market, and they’re only $2 each. I’d buy another just because Serina is so sweet, but I’d be buying them for the wrong reason. I recommend Buzz Bakery or Lavender Moon if you’re in the area.
| LAVENDER MOON CUPCAKERY CUPCAKERY Yelp Page |
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May 30th, 2009
I had actually heard some bad things about Lavender Moon, and thought it wasn’t worth going out to Old Town Alexandria to try some. Boy was I wrong. Right across the street from the Farmer’s Market, you know they have to have the freshest ingredients possible. In fact, they only make cupcakes that day and close when they sell out of cupcakes.
Though there were many delicious flavors to choose from the printed menu of the day, we went with S’Mores and Blood Orange Dreamsicle. The S’Mores cupcake was absolute heaven-in-the-mouth. I thought it would be too sweet and too heavy, but it was perfect. The icing on top is actually marshmallow, so it condensed perfectly with the chocolate cake and graham cracker crust.
For the Blood Orange Dreamsicle, I was a little scared at first. I had never had blood orange before, but thought that the medium of cupcake would lend itself well to trying flavorsr. The icing was a bit too sweet, but it went well with the cake. I liked that there wasn’t too much icing like with many other cupcakes I’ve tried. The cake itself had a nice pronounced orange flavor that wasn’t too subtle yet not too strong. I couldn’t really discern orange from blood orange, and I was expecting much bolder flavors or maybe a filling since it was supposed to be similar to the ice cream bar of the same name.
The decor here is slightly barren but well meaning. The service follows in the same thread. The display case doesn’t have labels as to what each cupcake is and the cupcake flavors don’t have an explaination of ingredients, so I had to ask for clarification for every single cupcake. Instead of going through the display and answering all my questions in one fell swoop, I had to ask the same question over and over again for each cupcake: “What’s this one?”. The cashier answered me monotonously and curtly, as if she was tired of working at a cupcakery. I then repeated the question over and over, receiving the same flat response. I didn’t care since I loved the cupcakes!
Lavender Moon only takes cash and checks, and changes their menu daily to have in-season flavors. Cupcakes are $3, including tax (which is 9%!). The day I went the menu was as follows:
I almost got the Mexican Chocolate Pudding and the Boston Cream, but refrained. Though, I did relive my childhood by grabbing a Yoohoo from the refrigerated drinks case for $2. Much sweeter and more concentrated than I remember.
