Archive
Archive for the ‘Year of the Poodle’ Category
Jerry and Seth in the Hong Kong Supermarket
Beware of Hairy Vegetables
We celebrated Chinese New Years with our friends at Joe Shanghai in Flushing, a few days late because of inconvenient snow storms. Part of the charm of having dinner with friends in Flushing is that we can always drop by the Hong Kong Supermarket and pick up a few bags of frozen dumplings, smoked tofu and gunpowder tea.
I like stock up on the kinds of vegetables my mother cooks.
Seth and Jerry always have a good time in the produce section. I make it a point to avoid cooking what they have been playing with.
Eat Stuff that Make You Feel Better
The vegetable that I am particularly wild about these days is daikon. I think it is related to a radish but I am not sure. I do know I can only eat it like I eat radishes – not too much of it and I prefer it with sliced red peppers in salads.
Eating daikon makes me feel great, in addition to the other healthy stuff I try to have each day. But something about it gives me an extra bounce.
And the Hong Kong Supermarket has all kinds of daikon.
Year of Not Looking Fat
This is my second new year’s resolution to not look fat. Seth and I are eating enormous amounts of salad, fresh vegetables, good things with an occasional lapse into Hershey kisses. Mostly dark leafy vegetables, all types, fruits, lots of them and less things that have been processed.
And daikon. Lots of it, just not the hairy kind.
Get more Wow!
If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:
Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good
Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit
Style Notes from me, your artspy
Hoong Yee
– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day
– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested
– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)
– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update
Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.
Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?
This originally appeared as a guest post on the World’s Strongest Librarian.
Hoong Wei and Hoong Yee, ages 3 & 4
Way back when I wandered through hallways of English, understanding only Chinese and hearing Yiddish on my babysitter’s radio, she was there with me making sense, actually fun and nonsense, with all of those words. My younger sister and I were two little button eyed girls growing up in Queens, New York, trying to figure out the world around us as Number One Daughter and Number Two Daughter. Hoong Yee and Hoong Wei. I actually thought those were names like Jane or Sally from my Fun with Dick and Jane reader.
“Just a little.”
“Yi dian dian.”
“A bissel.”
A little? Wait a minute, maybe we should ask for more! Who needs yi dian dian when there’s all those cookies? And wouldn’t it be great to get a Big Huge Bissel of Bosco Chocolate Milk? You ask, you’re bigger than me, Hoong Wei would say.
And then she would smile sweetly and wait for me to get the goods.
Soon, we were running around the schoolyard and backyards with all of the kids on our block armed with street game English yelling,
“Tag, you’re it!”
“Lai, lai lai!”
“Holt din zocken!”
Of course, by this time we knew a bissel of a lot of languages and created our own code only we understood. The other kids didn’t know who to tag, who to throw the ball to, or if one of us was going to steal a base. The older generation who used to speak in Chinese amongst themselves so that we wouldn’t understand what they were saying now scratched the backs of their necks wondering what the hell we were babbling about. Our Jewish bubbe babysitter Tante Lainie and her friends, Sylvia Immerkrank, remember her?, Betty and Rita peered curiously at us over their pince-nez perched on their noses as they played canasta. Catching a word here and there, a familiar sounding phrase, rhythm, and Bam! crazy sounding words tumbled out like pots falling from a window. Our secret language was the soundtrack of our childhood.
My sister and I thought in Cantonese and erupted in Yiddish. The world lay before us, a wonderland to figure out, to reinvent in our own words.
Years passed. We found ourselves living and studying piano in Salzburg, Austria, just the two of us clutching well worn manuscripts of Beethoven Sonaten, Brahms Klavierwerke and a Langenscheidt’s Deutsche Worterbuch. Now, if you think for a moment that we had any command of German, especially the Salzburg dialect of German that sounds like you just swallowed an alpine yodel, we did not. Once we were accepted into the Hochschule fur Musik und Darstellende Kunste Mozarteum, all of our classes and piano lessons were conducted in German. It was sink or schwimm.
“Oy vey ist mir! ”
“Ay yah!”
“Gott in himmel!”
Again, my sister and I recreated a farmisht, mixed up, cuisinart vocabulary for ourselves. This time with a gesund Guten Tag’s worth of Oesterreichische Deutsch thrown in with some indignant Cantonese idioms. Very useful when
“Hey, remember Mrs. Immerkrank who lived across the street from us? Can you believe her name means always sick? No wonder she was always kvetching about her arthritis.”
“Fabulous!”
“Fablehaft!”
Fei cheong fabelhaft!”
In the last years of her life, we spoke to each other in a different language. There was no need to find other words to say chemotherapy or clinical trials. We could not rewrite the reality of her cancer. Silences and unanswered questions became inevitable parts of the landscape of our shrinking world. In the secret language between sisters, there were no words for this time. No funny double entendres, no joyful jumbling of jargon.
I stood on the edge of her life, feeling helpless and for the first time, speechless.
As the cancer took more of her breath away, I did most of the talking when she could speak on the phone; she tired easily from long and painful coughing and I could not bear the thought of her fighting for each breath for every word she tried to say.
Her last call to me was brief and painful, she was gasping for air and could barely speak. I remember saying to her, “Rest. We can talk later.”
That was the last time I would hear her voice.
Almost a year has passed since she is gone. They say that when a language dies, people write poetry. What my sister and I had created for ourselves was more than a language. It was a universe of two, a work for two pianos, an endless duet.
I am standing on the stage by myself. Just me, Number One Daughter.
Our secret language of sisters, now a song without words.
Hoong Yee runs five miles a day on the beach and writes style notes about artful living at www.hoongyee.com.
Sky and Remy
Some of you may be the first child, like me, the one with the dents on your head. Or you may be the middle child, caught between everything. The third child is the clean up batter who has to knock in all of the players on base.
No pressure.
Welcome to the Year of the Poodle!
Sky is the wise third child of our family. I wonder if it is because he lost all of his front teeth running amok in a library at the age of three and found it easier to listen than to speak. He has an alter kop (Yiddish for wisdom) in a skinny thirteen year old body.
Here’s a recent conversation between Sky and his older brother Remy:
Sky: If I don’t fast for holidays like Yom Kippur will I turn into a Catholic?
Remy: God doesn’t do stuff like that. You are whatever you are unless you screw up or forget to go to your bar mitzvah. Don’t worry about it. You are what you’re supposed to be.
Sky: What are you?
Remy: Right now I’m kind of hungry but I guess you could say I’m a philosophy major. I wanted to sign up for a class on comparative religions, like Hinduism which looks pretty cool, but those lectures are way too early. Can’t do early morning classes.
Sky: I’m going to be taking care of you forever, aren’t I?
Get more Wow!
If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:
Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good
Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit
Style Notes from me, your artspy
Hoong Yee
– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day
– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested
– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)
– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update
Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.
Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?
Do you have trouble with languages?
Yes, it can be difficult in the beginning but so worth it. To share a joke, to listen to a song, to hear what your thoughts sound like in a different culture.
Sometimes all you need is someone to practice with. Like Mildred, my Jewish mother in law.
Sky: Did you know that albondigas means meatballs in Spanish?
Mildred: Bubbeleh, it is such a good thing you’re learning a foreign language in school! The world is such a complex place with all kinds of people. I feel the same way about cough syrup. You need to be medically diverse or you’ll end up choking to death.
But don’t you worry dear. You tell your nice teacher there’s always plenty of chicken soup in my kitchen. Oh, and could you ask her how to say leftovers in Spanish.
Get more Wow!
If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:
Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good
Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit
Style Notes from me, your artspy
Hoong Yee
– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day
– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested
– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)
– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update
Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.
Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?
photo by Thoth, God of Knowledge
You can’t be good in every room.
Isn’t that a great saying? I wish I could say that I made it up but I didn’t.
Where did I here it from?
Mae West? No. Madonna? No.
Mildred Phyllis Krakauer? Yes.
No one was better in the kitchen, thank you very much.
“And don’t forget about the room upstairs, darling.” Irvin would add with a wink.
“Irvin!” Mildred’s cheeks would go pink but her eyes would light up.
I am telling you this for a reason. Tomorrow I am going down to Washington, D.C. for a day of meetings and what I am most concerned about is what Seth and Sky are going to have for dinner. Concerned, but not worried. Why? Because I, too, thanks to my Jewish mother in law, am good in the kitchen.
How to Be Good in the Kitchen
In a word, marinades.
In Mildred’s kitchen, where there was a Ziploc bag, there was a marinade. One of the secrets of being good in the kitchen is always having the right ingredients around to marinate the cuts of meat you bring home. I have inherited Mildred’s kitchen and her must-have list of items which I keep in stock faithfully. And it is amazing how something as simple as a Mildred marinade can transform a steak dinner from why bother to wow!
For economy and taste, I prefer flank or hanger steak. When I first became Mrs. Krakauer, Mildred – THE Mrs. Krakauer – and I went to Curran’s on Beach 129th Street where she introduced me to the other man in her life, Bernie, the butcher.
“This is my daughter-in-law and she needs to know from steak. Give her a nice piece, enough for four. Nice and lean.” When I came back later to pick up the meat, he handed it to me wrapped neatly in butcher paper with cooking directions written on it.
“When you are ready to make a brisket, you come back to me the day after you cook it and I’ll slice it for you nice, Mrs. Krakauer.” Bernie boomed politely. The line of customers looked at me suspiciously. You’re no Mrs. Krakauer! You’re just trying to cut in the line.
By the time I got home, Mildred was crushing garlic. She never put away a cut of meat without marinating it. Like chicken soup and brisket, this marinade was a prized secret. I may never make chicken soup or brisket as wonderfully as she did, but I can follow the recipe for her marinade. Here it is:
Mildred’s Marinade
Smoosh 4 – 6 cloves of garlic with 4 sprigs of rosemary that you pick from Andrea’s garden, 1 heaping teaspoon of kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. Add 6 tablespoons olive oil, 1/4 cup red wine vinegar and 1 teaspoon brown sugar.
Pour into a large Ziploc bag and marinate steak in the refrigerator overnight.
To Cook
Preheat broiler or grill. Cook steak, turn over, until done. Total cooking time ranges from 6 – 12 minutes. Let the meat rest about 5 minutes before slicing. Cut across the grain into thin slices.
There is a Ziploc bag in the refrigerator with marinated steaks. Seth can grill and serve the steak with some salad greens and a fresh crusty baguette. Simply delicious!
It’s true you can’t be good in every room. But you can marinate your way into being marvelous in the kitchen.
Get more Wow!
If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:
Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good
Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit
Style Notes from me, your artspy
Hoong Yee
– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day
– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested
– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)
– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update
Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.
Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?
I write about the art of happiness with style notes for creative people who want to make life their everyday passion. What's yours? 
