There's new stack of styrofoam take-out boxes in our fridge. My grandfather's 94th birthday isn't for another week, but he made this colossal exception because my family won't be around on August 23 -- this kind of puts me in an embarassing situation, so I tried to dress nicely to make up for it. (It's interesting that I didn't dress nicely because it was a $100-a-head dinner, as would be appropriate for almost any other kind of cuisine.)
We always end up dithering over why we attend these events in the car. Anyone who knows me understands the significance of the phrase "family dinner"; it's this unbreakable routine, where extended aunts, uncles, and cousins gather around a lazy susan in a Chinese banquet restaurant and try to talk about safe subjects (e.g. school and American politics). The food is usually ridiculously expensive, slow to appear, and shiny. My sister rejects the entire exercise as inferior to home cooking. I try to take the more moderate tack that these events cost a lot more as a symbol of (grand)parental affection, rather than because the food's good.
My brother just said he felt like a bomb, with which I replied I was sorely tempted to hit him three times to see if he'd blow up. He didn't get that at first.
The wastage tonight was disgusting, though. I've only ever read about meals that have roast pig, pigeon, shark's fin, abalone, lobster, crab, shrimp, and fish as main courses, and those appeared in medieval epics right after the chief/king/thane has committed some terribly impressive slaughter of his neighbours. And the 4-course dessert afterwards, even though half the dinner was already packed to go? Brilliant. That meal cost the equivalent of my first-year meal plan.
To take the moderate tack, though, imagine what a 21-year-old Shanghaiese boy with no education and likely few prospects was eating in 1931. Our collective cholesterol might be shooting through the roof, but I for one can't fault him.
Happy birthday, Grandpa.
We always end up dithering over why we attend these events in the car. Anyone who knows me understands the significance of the phrase "family dinner"; it's this unbreakable routine, where extended aunts, uncles, and cousins gather around a lazy susan in a Chinese banquet restaurant and try to talk about safe subjects (e.g. school and American politics). The food is usually ridiculously expensive, slow to appear, and shiny. My sister rejects the entire exercise as inferior to home cooking. I try to take the more moderate tack that these events cost a lot more as a symbol of (grand)parental affection, rather than because the food's good.
My brother just said he felt like a bomb, with which I replied I was sorely tempted to hit him three times to see if he'd blow up. He didn't get that at first.
The wastage tonight was disgusting, though. I've only ever read about meals that have roast pig, pigeon, shark's fin, abalone, lobster, crab, shrimp, and fish as main courses, and those appeared in medieval epics right after the chief/king/thane has committed some terribly impressive slaughter of his neighbours. And the 4-course dessert afterwards, even though half the dinner was already packed to go? Brilliant. That meal cost the equivalent of my first-year meal plan.
To take the moderate tack, though, imagine what a 21-year-old Shanghaiese boy with no education and likely few prospects was eating in 1931. Our collective cholesterol might be shooting through the roof, but I for one can't fault him.
Happy birthday, Grandpa.
