The Empress of China is a venerable Chinese restaurant down the street from our house. I don’t know how many years it has been there, but it came under new management late last year, and they freshened up the menu by adding dim sum.
CVH and I love dim sum when we’re hungering for Chinese, so we’ve taken advantage of this handy source. The congee soup is addicting, the rice crepes satisfying, and there’s really no substitute for a fried taro root when you really want one. We always order much more than we can eat at one sitting, and end up taking another meal or three’s worth home.
Today, after we had filled ourselves up with all the above, as well as shrimp stuffed eggplant and lettuce wrap chicken, the new manager came out to say hello. When our order had gone back to the kitchen, she’d asked if some Asians had come into the restaurant. Told no, she looked at our order again, and said “Oh, it must be them!” She said we were the only Americans (I knew what she meant) who asked for dim sum, but she didn’t know our names. We introduced ourselves, and said that we’d spread the news about their tasty dim sum to more people like us. Her thanks were clearly sincere, and I felt like an honored gringo.
Nothing quite like young children on Christmas morning. The eldest granddaughter (GC1) got up and immediately wanted to know if Santa had eaten the cookies and milk that had been left out for him. Once that fact had been established, then her attention turned to the stockings on the bookcase which had become (magically) filled with treats. Then, clearly, it was time to wake up her parents and get down to the serious work of opening all the presents. Soon there was a pile of boxes and wrapping paper as tall as her stacked up in the living room. Meanwhile, her little sister was having trouble with the concept that some of the presents were for her, while others were destined for other people. But eventually she had enough toys to distract her.
GC1 got this cool moon lamp that casts a dim, some might say moon-like, glow in a dark room and goes through the phases from full to new. I was jealous, but CVH said we were not getting one for the master bedroom. GC1 also received a fashion book; a couple of her creations are shown below.
