Father’s Day, a trial run in Flushing
On Father’s Day, cole and I went out to lunch in Flushing, Queens with my family. I don’t really get out to Flushing all that often, but every time I go there, I notice how it seems like an authentic Chinese city, even more so than Chinatown, which has become more of a tourist destination. The whole time I was thinking that this would be a perfect lead-up for the year in Shanghai. Basically in Flushing, it would be easy to live an entire life only speaking Chinese, and the non-Chinese faces are few and far between (don’t worry, cole represented). I had my parents with me, so they took care of all the speaking on this trip, but cole and I might head back to test ourselves out.
Before we went out, I met up with moms, pops, and bro at my parents’ new house in Douglaston. There, on my parents’ walkway, cole and I spotted this little slimy fellow, which we named slugger
I carried him out of the way with a leaf and placed him back in some dirt underneath the bushes (is that where slugs like to hang out?). Poor slugger will probably get eaten, but maybe that’s better than getting stepped on.
In the house, my mom showed me these gold coins she received for opening a new bank account.
They’re meant to commemorate the Beijing Olympics, but I couldn’t get over how the coin combined these cutesy silly figures on one side, and the Great Wall on the other. What was the message they were trying to get across? We’re cute, and we’re also willing to build a huge structure to keep Mongolians out?
Anyway, my dad settled on Vietnamese while driving over to Flushing, and I was pretty excited. For some reason or another, I just don’t get as much pho in as I would like. So I took this opportunity to go all out. I had a large bowl of noodles in beef broth, accompanied with sliced rib-eye, flank, tendon, and tripe (yum, intestine-y). Cole had a more basic noodle and rib-eye combo. (Ah, sorry, I forgot to bring the cam with me for pics, left it in the car). The noodles were great, but there was even more. For the table, we also ordered a braised pork-chop (tasty), summer rolls (containing shrimp and veggies, not as tasty), and fried egg rolls with lettuce wrap (amazing).
Although I was stuffed, I wanted to pick up a few bakery items. The five of us went over to the Tai Pan Bakery a few blocks away. It was crowded, and I didn’t have time to think, so I went with old standards: a pork bun, a pineapple bun, coconut bun, and two egg tarts.
As you can see, the two egg tarts are slightly different. One has a burnt sugar glaze, a creme brulee tart I suppose, and the other is a standard tart, neither lasted long since we ate them right when we got home.
Though we didn’t get to try everything, the Flushing outing was a nice reminder of things to come.
June 20, 2008 at 1:14 am
EGGTARTS.
WHEEEEEEE.
I like your tattoos.
July 23, 2008 at 8:26 pm
When we lived in Hawthorne, we had a slimmy little fellow who visited our sidewalk often. We named him Stanley. Unfortunately, he met his make one day with the help of the bottom of my foot, bare foot. ICKY!!!!!!!!!!!!