Blog 6 – Chinese Food

Blog 6 – The significance of Chinese food

Not all, but certainly many, points in my life have involved Chinese food; our current point of being in London is no different.

When Aj lived at home, it seems like he attended Sunday evening religious school forever; so proud, but that is a different topic than this one. While he was at school this was my chance to clean the kitchen, do the week’s grocery shopping, and make lunches for the upcoming week, this did not leave time to actually make a dinner on Sundays – so the Chinese dinner tradition took root. Over the years we had several favorites based on the assessment of their Hot and Sour soup, Dumplings, and Orange Chicken.

Within our TESCA arts group someone said once that the plans were a result of Jay (Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen: https://www.wolfschlossberg-cohenstudio.com/ ) and I meeting over Chinese food. This may be true. There were many nights when the two of us, the three of us, the four of us, the five of us, would meet at one of the various Chinese restaurants that could accommodate our meeting and food requirements. We could all find something we liked, as spicy as we liked it. Sharing of food begat the sharing of ideas: we could make Tallit (prayer shawls), we could make invitations, we could make candlesticks, we could make ruah panels, we could make a difference. And, we did.

When working on the College’s Middle States Accreditation report in 2013/14, it was the weekly delivery of Chinese food from New China II that saved our sanity. As the accreditation saga continued, so did the reliance on Chinese food to be the break that tough days need. Eileen reports that the New China II delivery is still her basis for any workgroup that is anticipating a long day.

Moving to London, a very international city, we never even thought about access to Chinese food. We hadn’t seen any in our neighborhood, but we assumed we just hadn’t looked. Last fall, as Christmas day approached, we began searching for Chinese food in earnest. What is Christmas without Chinese food and a trip to the movies? Apparently, that is “American”. They don’t do that here; almost everything is closed including trains, busses, restaurants of all nationalities, and all but one movie theater. It didn’t matter that we couldn’t find a Chinese restaurant, we couldn’t get to city center for the one (Leister Square) movie theater that was open on Christmas day anyway. We barbequed on Christmas and watched Netflix.

And, the restaurants we found didn’t pass the Soup, Dumpling, Orange Chicken test. We kind of let it go. There is plenty of Thai food, Indian food, Italian, and burgers to last us for the duration. But, this past week was the start of Chinese New Year – the year of the Pig!  The pig is not my Chinese zodiac symbol, it is my, for lack of a better phrase, my spirit animal. Pigs are smart, they are good tempered, kind, and positive – and they only go forward. I still aspire to hear the words: “That will do pig”.

Off we went looking forward to ‘the largest Chinese New Year celebration outside of China’, so said the publicity for Sunday the 10^th. (https://www.visitlondon.com/things-to-do/whats-on/chinese-new-year/about ) We arrived in plenty of time for the parade and found a great spot behind four little kids so I could see over them. It is not for me to critique the hard work of many people to create such a parade, but at the end we were looking forward to what else there may be to do. In the end, we spent the day going between Trafalgar Square, Leister Square, and Chinatown. Our day ended with a dinner of the best Chinese food we have had here. They passed the soup test and dumpling test; no Orange Chicken, but the Chicken with Ginger was very good.

We had our Chinese, we made some plans; another circle is complete.