Family Treasures

I recently had an altercation with a family member on Facebook whose comments underneath our pregnant daughter's post had rather insensitively negated pretty much everything she had been trying to say.  Needless to say I was a little surprised, my daughter has great respect for this woman and we all know she will one day inherent the mantle of matriarch within our family circle.  The tigress within me crouched low, took a glance at the bull elephant that is David who was already charging full pelt into the fray, then pounced with claws at the ready.

In the end, it became quite upsetting for all concerned but it actually got me to thinking about family and how sometimes you end up having the strangest people on your friends list, at your family gatherings and how you can end up tolerating them when normally you would not.  I'm not very good at doing that, of course, hence the recent altercation and the consequences that immediately followed (we ended up being deleted from her "friend" list).

Overall, I find the whole "I don't want to be your friend anymore" when you confront somebody's behaviour a little reminiscent of the school playground but I'm not really fond of the whole "tolerance" game - it seems to me like a lip-biting-not-truthfully-speaking kind of exercise.  I'd much rather be honest, as I equate honesty with love much more than I do "tolerance".  Christians "tolerate" sinners (although don't get them started about gay marriage because you'll find quite often that this is one step too far, which says way too much about their interpretations of Jesus' words). 

I find that quite often people seem to think that social media sites should be used for specific (read: 'vapid' and 'somewhat meaningless') communications.  When we used to drink, David and I would often find ourselves in bars pontificating about very important subjects that were clearly dear to us and that we were quite passionate about – people would always tells us that certain topics of conversation were verboten – namely politics and religion.

Perhaps this says more about alcohol's tendency to bring out the worst in people, because I am fairly certain that in the coffee shops in Amsterdam you would not find these kind of conversational restrictions enforced (but perhaps you might be accused of "bringing everybody down, man….!").  Needless to say, politics and religion were our favourite topics of conversation in bars and, provided you find intelligent people to converse with on such subjects, you will no doubt have an interesting debate running its course.

Similarly this attempt to downgrade social media into simply being a space where everyone must be positive all the time is just plain ridiculous and somewhat offensive to those of us who may actually care about the world and those of us who are not frightened to feel a whole range of emotions, and not just project the "happy face" to the world the whole time.I have been a Facebook user for quite some time now and apart from this blog, if you are not actually "my friend" on Facebook, you won't be seeing my daily posts on my wall.  These posts may end up being literally anything.  I may inform you of my feelings; I may tell you that I've run out of coffee; I may take a photo of my latest meal creation; I may rile against the Catholic Church or some other ridiculous fundamental (strong emphasis on the "mental" here and not the "fun") Christian sect for yet again indicating that I am somehow a worse threat to the planet than global warming purely because I want to marry my partner of over 16 years.  

It may offend you, sometimes I will have done this intentionally but most of the time it will be completely unintentional, and will probably say more about you than me if you actually do end up feeling offended.  What I do expect from you if you are offended is to explain to me the reasons why you are offended.  It seems somewhat ridiculous to me that people expect an apology from me whenever they scream they are "offended".  Seriously!  It just doesn't mean anything to me unless you can at least give me a reason why – and guess what? I may even after you have 'explained' not actually be able to comprehend your reasons – although this will most likely be due a certain stubbornness manifesting itself within either one or both of us.

If you cannot argue effectively, please do not try to engage me - I will not take your foolishness with good grace and spare your feelings if you do, although I will take your age into consideration (youth are always forgiven, not so much once you are an adult of at least thirty plus years), and the older you are, the wiser and more open minded I expect you to be.  You don't get special treatment for being "old" (and seriously, why should you?) - I find the whole "oh, he/she is old" (ergo they are "set" in their ways) as ridiculously patronising.  People don't "set" like a custard and form a hard skin on their surface without choosing to do so!

One of Google's Office interior - how cool???

Now I've been meaning to branch away from Facebook because I have found it incredibly insular (this is, as I have already written, my own fault – I am not a "public" persona on facebook for a reason, and that reason is, quite frankly, highly personal so don't expect me to be explaining that here).  However, I know that there are many folk out there who are very anti-Zuckerberg (and Microsoft, who up until recently I erroneously believed were the current owners of Zuckerbaby's creation) so I've been meaning to branch out into other social media sites.

I've always felt that MySpace was for kids or artists and so I've never even bothered to create an account.  I once toyed with a Goth site, but really, apart from a daily dose of black clothing (all black if I can possibly get away with it) and a tremendous amount of love for Hallowe'en, I really don't belong in this circle and feel I am little more than an imposter when I attend an Alice Cooper concert…..  Twitter is for twats, that truly is my motto (okay, maybe I'm just OLD and don't get it but  I just don't have time for that nonsense) but Google+, with it's forays into the worlds of open sourceyness (and it's very cool office spaces), is something that I have always wanted to involve myself in more – and I have always promised myself that if I really were to start posting and friending others on social media other than my first foray into this cyber space, then I would do so much more publicly (and perhaps a little more carefully) than before.

So how difficult was it to try and work out how Google+ actually works?  Just a little frustrating would be my answer and to be even more honest, quite a bit indeed.  I am not really sure why but when I tried to figure out the 'circles' part I ended being driven up the wall and swearing at my PC.  What was that +1 thang all about?  What does it actually do?  (I am now aware that this is just like a "like" on Facebook.) How could I be sure that I was not posting every conversation to the whole world and not just to my friends who I was attempting to have a private chat with?  Where are the actual helpful videos that will explain all of this to me (okay, funnily enough, they are in the exact space that they should be, not that I actually watched them…hey, I am a man first and foremost, I'm not going to be reading the instructions!) and how do I start a blog and decorate it's pages with a cool flame like appearance?

For anyone who has been with me from the very beginning – you'll note that I have come a long way since then (yup, that cool flame like background appeared after the 3^rd or 4^th entry).  I have even now managed to reconnect with some very old friends from my second 'official' high school (Luther College… I will so blog about YOU my little protestant private school with your very un-Christian like teachers, have no fear about that!).

One of these guys now lives in Iceland and is married to a volcanologist and I hope to catch up with him some time in the summer as he has formally introduced me to Þorrablót (fear not for those who do not know what this is about, I will most certainly be blogging about that within the near future, I can assure you).  What I have also discovered is that Google+ has much more interesting forums, which are better structured and actually notify you every time somebody posts something to them (yup Facebook, your notification system, or complete failure of it at times, just SUCKS SHEEPS BALLS!).

So over the last weekend, whilst a little lonely, I found +In The Kitchen and have already made some new acquaintances amongst the many folk who regularly post their recipes, foodie desires and culinary themed thoughts into this space.  Oh, and most of them are much better cooks than me!  However, I do intend to take on their daily challenges that they set and hopefully, before too long, my own postings will be matching their own, nay, surpassing these posts! [insert maniacal laughter here].

It was one such posting that got me musing (and salivating a little) about Dim Sims.  +Sister Laoban had posted a wonderful picture of some fried dumplings and I was immediately taken back to my teenage years in Oz, about the time I had just joined the cool crowd at my local high school and started to discover that going home directly after school was a most definite uncool thing to do when you had mates to hang out with for a couple of hours before dinner.  Being adolescents, we tended to get up to no good, but also due to our adolescence, we always ended up being hungry about 30 minutes after eating our last meal– so of course we became local connoisseurs of Australia's cheapest take-away stores, the local Fish 'n' Chipperies.

We would travel far and wide to purchase the best fried potatoes and then all sit around the paper wrapped delights in a back alley and devour them.  I learned to accept that vinegar was a necessary ingredient to drown your chips with (although to this day I am still somewhat miffed whenever a perfectly fried and crispy treat is made soggy with this substance).  On occasion, whenever somebody was minted (usually due to an older brother having gifted them with a substantial amount of cash) we would also order Dim Sims.  These pastry covered treats filled with cabbage and some form of minced meat came in two varieties – steamed or deep fried and regardless of how they were cooked, they were always consumed with a vast quantity of soy sauce.

My brother and I could eat mass quantities of them, and there was a time when my mother would buy them in frozen batches of about 50 or so.  She stopped, this, of course, when we started regularly snacking on them and losing interest in her own carefully thought out home cooked meals.   Now, having been inspired by the post on Google+ and reminded of my love for them, I was determined to create a gluten free variety.  I had no idea whether you could create a gluten free variety and, of course, what to use instead of the mince as a filling?  I had some turkey breasts in the freezer, but these would require defrosting and worse, mincing (I've decided that even though I can purchase ready ground free range turkey now from most supermarkets, I won't.

I mean – am I expected to believe that the folks who mince will actually clean their machines when they switch from pork to turkey?  Tesco's sacking of it's burger providers is a classic example of the supermarkets only taking action once they have been forced to do so – if they can get away with it, they most certainly will.)  First and foremost, however, I had to work out how to make the dumplings outer shell – and being a classic Chinese recipe of old, I turned to my one and only Cook Book one the subject, a battered and very old hardback from 1985 written by Deh-ta Hsiung.

 

I'm not certain where this one came from – I don't recall buying it, ever and it most likely came from our English Mom (as David and I call her now).  Now a dog walker and lover of dogs, she was a former cook and caterer.  I have a bunch of Jewish and Israeli cookbooks that I'm sort of saving for her nephews and nieces, should they ever develop a taste for cooking. 

Shelly herself has lost the need to ever look at a recipe again, and her salads (even though she makes quantities big enough for small armies) are just Divine.  Anyway, I kind of hoped that I wouldn't need to resort to an online recipe for the dumpling pastry itself because even when I located sister Laoban's blog full of recipes I was unable to actually find a recipe for this (plenty of recipes for fillings of course) and similarly, most modern cookbooks now just refer you to the freezer compartment, assuming you have bought this frozen in advance (and then defrosted it….).

Hsiung's cookbook gave me just what I needed.  It told me to sift 500g plain flour, add 4 teaspoons baking powder and then mix in 250 ml water (I of course used a gluten-free flour, and I'll happily plug Doves Farm mix, which is a blend of rice, potato, tapioca, maize and buckwheat - it says on the pack that you'll need to add more fluid when you follow a non-gluten free recipe, and sure enough I needed to add another 100 ml more water).  Hsiung told me knead the dough well, then cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise at room temperature for 2 hours.  I'm not sure how much rising would occur, I mean, this wasn't a yeasted dough or anything, but I did as I was told (although I did forget to put a small plate over the top of the bowl as suggested).  I then promptly forgot all about the dough until it was well late – and then I set about making a scrumptious midnight snack. 

I rolled out the dough into small ovals on a floured board.  These I filled with a mixture of cannelloni beans, some left-over béchamel that I found in the back of the fridge, small chunks of feta cheese and some chopped parsley.  Folding the ovals into semi-circular little parcels, I then crimped the edges with a small cake fork (these utensils are often used for many things but rarely for eating cake).  I fried my first batch, because I was somewhat peckish and impatient to devour something – but it was the ones I steamed that really brought back the dim-sim memories (it's something about the steamed dough mixed with soy sauce that really does it for me).

Oh, and the ones I had steamed and saved for the following day to fry up in some smoking hot oil were the most delicious of all.  I really ate very little else all weekend.