Tag Archives: family

Rice Noodle Soup for Mother’s Day

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Soup and sandwiches were on the menu for Mother’s Day brunch with my family yesterday, but the soup wasn’t your typical American Sunday fare. We opted to have the Rice Noodle Soup from Simply Yunnan to celebrate the day (see recipe below).

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Rice Noodle Soup

We met at my cousin Karen’s house and celebrated with my mom and my aunt — an admirable group of mothers who have made an impact on my life for years and continue to do so as I adjust to my new life as a (step)mom. Karen did a delicious job with the Rice Noodle Soup. For the greens she used rainbow chard from our latest vegetable co-op shipment, and I brought over some cooked chicken from my freezer to contribute as our meat option.

The soup is light yet flavorful, and rice noodles are a perfect wheat-free option for those on special diets. The recipe below is featured in my cookbook, Simply Yunnan: Simple Ingredients, Simple Technique, available on Amazon in paperback or Kindle version.

I love to make the soup after I’ve cooked a whole chicken in my crock pot and have let the bones simmer overnight for a hearty, healthful broth — one chicken provides several meals worth of cooked chicken and several cups worth of broth. For more information on how to cook a whole chicken and make bone broth, check out my friend Roxie’s recipe on her blog, Crunchy in the Panhandle (the West Virginia panhandle, not the Texas one). Side note that brings the crock pot chicken back to Yunnan — Roxie first showed me how to cook a chicken this way in her kitchen in Kunming. From Kunming to West Virginia to Texas, it’s my favorite way to get the most bang for my buck when cooking a whole chicken.

I hope you enjoy a bowl of Rice Noodle Soup soon!

Rice Noodle Soup

Serves 4

Prep time: 5 minutes

Cooking time: 35 minutes

12 oz. rice noodles (usually labelled as “rice stick” or “rice vermicelli”)

10 c. water

10 c. beef or chicken stock

1-inch piece of ginger, peeled and crushed with the flat side of a cleaver blade

3 whole star anise

2 whole cloves

salt to taste

1 to 1 1/2 c. cooked meat (beef or chicken, depending on which type of stock you use), thinly sliced

1 c. cabbage or spinach, cut in 2-inch pieces

2 spring onions, cut in 1-inch strips

chopped cilantro, red pepper flakes, soy sauce, vinegar for seasoning

 

In a large stock pot, bring the meat stock to a boil over medium-high heat, along with the ginger, star anise, and cloves. Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Remove the ginger, star anise, and cloves from the soup. Add the meat slices and simmer for 2 minutes. Add the cabbage or spinach and spring onions and simmer for 3 minutes.

During the final 10 minutes of cooking the soup, prepare the rice noodles. In a large pot, bring 10 c. water to a boil over medium-high heat. Add the rice noodles, reduce heat to medium, and boil the noodles for 4 to 5 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat and allow the noodles to continue soaking in the hot water for another 4 to 5 minutes. Alternatively, prepare the noodles according to the package’s instructions. Drain the water from the noodles.

Divide the noodles evenly into 4 large soup bowls. Ladle equal amounts of soup with meat, onions, and leafy vegetables over the noodles in each bowl. Allow each person to add cilantro, red pepper flakes, soy sauce, and vinegar according to his or her own taste.

Shopping note:

This noodle soup is best prepared using a type of thin, round rice noodle usually labeled in English as “rice stick” or “rice vermicelli” and found at Asian markets or on the Asian aisle at your grocery store.

Preparation note:

Plan to make this soup when you have leftover cooked meat that you can thinly slice; choose to make the soup with beef or chicken stock according to the type of meat you have leftover.

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Review of Recently Read Books, Part 1

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It’s been a while since I’ve posted a list of books that I’m reading, but there’s no time like now to change that.

I’m calling this post a review of “recently read” books because they aren’t recent books, just books that I’ve been reading recently. I’m afraid these days I’m behind the times when it comes to reading the newest and most popular titles, but I’d rather focus during this season of my life on the topics that are most practical and relevant to what I’m going through, with a few fiction and memoir titles sprinkled in for good measure. And so, here’s the break down of what’s been on my night stand the past few months:

Non-fiction

A lot of these titles would fall under the category “Marriage and Family” — not a category I’ve done much reading in in the past. I’m quickly finding there are good and helpful books to read in this genre, and there are…other books. I’m only writing here about the ones I recommend.

Boundaries by Henry Cloud and John Townsend — Friends and coworkers told me for years that I should read this one, and last summer I finally did. Now I realize just how influential the book is and why — it seems like every other title I’ve picked up recently quotes Boundaries or draws openly from its concepts. I highly recommend it for anyone who seeks to understand how better to relate to family members, coworkers, and friends in a way that protects your own mental and emotional health. I did quite a bit of highlighting in my Kindle copy to reread later, particularly in the section that discusses the boundary needs of children and parents during the stages of development.

ScreamFree Parenting by Hal Edward Runkel — My fiance, Stephen, recommended this one as the parenting book that has most influenced how he handles problem situations with his boys, so I eagerly read it to understand more about Stephen’s parenting style and found that Runkel quotes Boundaries and makes some similar points. Contrary to the title’s suggestion, the book isn’t just about not screaming at your kids. Every person has a different way of reacting in stressful situations, whether it is to scream, to shut down and become distant, to become sarcastic and insulting, or whatever. The premise of the book is that the parent should be the person in the house who sets the pace and maintains a sense of order, not reacting to children out of anxiety, fear, or a need to control. When we react to children’s misbehavior in negative ways, we teach children that they should behave so that we don’t scream at or ignore them — we’re manipulating them rather than teaching them and training them.

As soon as I read the book I started seeing multiple relationships in my life that have moments where I’m reacting and trying to control — screaming might not be my M.O., but still, I think there are ways I can apply the lessons of the book so that it’s not just about ScreamFree Parenting but ScreamFree Life.

The Smart Stepmom by Ron L. Deal and Laura Petherbridge — Yet another book that mentions Boundaries. I learned of this book through a podcast series by FamilyLife Today that Stephen and I listened to on our drive from Washington to Texas. I’m often hesitant to listen to “Christian” radio shows because I’ve found many of them to be “feel good,” lacking substance, or just downright annoying in their upbeatness. But the “Your Stepfamily: Standing Strong” series was refreshingly realistic, and Ron Deal and Laura Petherbridge’s book turned out to be equally grounded in reality but steeped in hope for the long term. Building a successful stepfamily takes years of work, and stepmothers often feel isolated, stigmatized, and unrecognized — but the fruit of the sacrifices made by stepmoms is more than worth it. As I prepare to become a stepmom to four boys (Oh my word. Four boys.), I enter into this family knowing that it will be far from easy, may often be heart-breaking, but if I live my days looking to God’s grace and praying to be a display of His presence to the boys, then I can be the stepmom I need to be.

Preparing for Marriage by John Piper — A thin e-book (can you call e-books thin?), the first chapter contains a long series of questions that Stephen and I worked through over several evenings — questions on everything from theology to household duties to expectations for the holidays. Highly recommended. Download it here.

Currently reading: Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas (the central question is a big one: what if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?); The Treasure Principle by Randy Alcorn; Pursuing Justice by Ken Wytsma.

Reading next: Anatomy of the Soul by Curt Thompson; Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child by John Gottman; The Explicit Gospel by Matt Chandler; Blame it on the Brain by Edward T. Welch.

This started out as one long blog post, but I decided to divide it into two. Look for the next post to cover fiction and memoirs.

What are you reading lately? Do you prefer fiction or non-fiction?

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Nacatamales on Christmas Eve

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My first Christmas in Washington, but not my first Christmas away from home. I’m somewhat used to being away from family at the holidays — although, do not hear me say that I don’t miss my family when I’m away at Christmas. I do. I just can’t always be there with them, and I’ve made my peace with that.

At Christmas meals on both sides of my family last year we had tamales, and I decided that I want that to be a holiday tradition. Apparently my family didn’t stick with it this year without me, but that’s ok, no worries, I can keep traditions by myself.

My friends Abner and Laura invited me to spend Christmas Eve with their families in Grandview, Washington, about 45 minutes from where I live in the Tri-Cities. Abner’s family is from Nicaragua, and they always make nacatamales for Christmas. Making the nacatamales takes most of the morning, and then they have to cook for a few hours, so there’s a lot of sitting around and talking and hanging out while you wait.

Like Mexican tamales, the key component of nacatamales is masa. But there are a lot more fresh ingredients that go into nacatamales than the Mexican tamales you may have eaten.

You don’t just make a couple of nacatamales at a time — you make a few dozen. So you have to have a big pot to cook the masa, along with onions and bacon grease and potato and garlic and a spice called achiote that the Solanos get on trips to Nicaragua.

Once the masa has thickened, the assembly line starts putting together the nacatamales. Unlike Mexican tamales wrapped in corn husks, nacatamales are wrapped in banana leaves and are a few times bigger. First, you spread a generous amount of masa on the center of the banana leaf. Then you add the rest of the goodies: pork rubbed in achiote, rice mixed with achiote, slices of potato, carrot, bell pepper, tomato, a few raisins, a green olive, and a sprig of mint.

At the end of the assembly line, you fold the banana leaf over the ingredients, and you wrap the entire thing in foil, making sure it’s sealed good enough to stay together when you boil it. In Nicaragua, where banana leaves are abundant, you wouldn’t need the foil. Banana leaves are pricey in Washington, though, so you have to make do with one layer of banana leaf and the outer foil layer.

Somehow I ended up at the end of the line and got to learn to fold the nacatamales — which was fun, but also a bit nerve-wracking because I worried that not sealing it properly would ruin the entire nacatamale. When I learned to make Chinese dumplings, I had the same concern about not sealing the dough and letting the contents escape during boiling. For dumplings, though, you’re only ruining one bite if it comes apart in the boiling water — a loosely sealed nacatamale could ruin a meal for one person. So much pressure!

We made over 40 nacatamales in all, and the Solanos will eat them for several days. The foil packets were boiled in a huge pot on a burner in the back yard.

Here’s a nacatamale on a banana leaf after they were cooked. So very yummy! Lots of fresh ingredients and good flavors all mixed together. And I love anything in a banana leaf — reminds me of Sipsongpanna.

So, my new Christmas tradition will continue next year with tamales once again, Mexican, Nicaraguan, or otherwise.

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Trip to Yunnan

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Fall of 2006, Yunnan, China. My niece in Connecticut was 18 months old, and I couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing her again until she was almost 3. I missed the rest of my family, too — I was feeling the strain of being away for so many months on end. Part of being a sojourner on this earth (going where God leads when He leads, because nowhere on this earth is my home so much as His kingdom is) means going long stretches separated from dear ones.

It was inconvenient timing for a trip to the U.S. — work was busy, it’s expensive to travel at the holidays, and I was tired just thinking of adding another trip to my work travel schedule. But I needed to see family, to spend time together reconnecting and being rejuvenated in the bonds of love.

Fall of 2011, Kennewick, Washington. I’ve been away from Yunnan for 18 months. I can’t bear the thought of it being two or three years since I’ve seen friends in Xishuangbanna, since I’ve walked with them on the Mountain, since I’ve sat and had a good laugh and a cry with Lydia. It’s an inconvenient time to go — work is busy, it’s expensive to travel to China, and I’m tired just thinking of adding another trip to my work travel schedule. But I need to see my Yunnan family, to spend time with them reconnecting and being rejuvenated in the bonds of love.

So I’m going to China for a two week visit. Internet monitoring and blocked websites in China being what they are, I won’t post here or on Facebook until I return the week before Christmas.

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Writing about Family

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Writing about family members is a terrifying venture.

I have spent the past 2 1/2 weeks asking my grandparents questions about their lives, recording their answers — while hovering near my grandmother as she sliced brisket to put in the freezer, while sitting on the ottoman at my grandfather’s feet as he flipped through photos on my iPad and recalled the locations and stories belonging to the images. I have attempted to piece together the equipment and techniques involved in land surveying as described by my father and grandfather, men who have known the ins and outs of the profession for decades, to the point that they no longer remember what is common knowledge to mankind and what is only known to surveyors. I don’t even know what it is I don’t know, and I have struggled at times to come up with interview questions. But now I’ve learned what a theodolite is, what a bearing is, how to turn an angle, how to identify a monument or find a corner, and next I will sort out the best way to describe it in the context of West Texas Interlude.

I have 15 hours of recordings from the first research trip and am daunted by the prospect of piecing together the information that belongs to each town, each photo. How will I decide which photos to include, which stories to write, which stories to summarize and which to elaborate upon? How will I organize it all? Which towns will I need to skim over and which ones will require intensive research? Should I focus more on the vacation spots featured in the photos, or on the little towns where the family may have lived for only a few weeks at a time?

But more daunting than any of that — the technical aspects and the artistic decisions — is the prospect of writing a story whose main characters are ones I sit down to Thanksgiving dinner with every year. Ones who held me as an infant. Ones whose opinion and good favor I value more than just about anyone in the world. They are trusting me with their stories, and I will strive to do my best to write them well. I long to approach the stories and the background research with an objective mind, but I cannot deny that my own memories and impressions, my own point of view as a Henderson, color the picture that I lay out on paper. And since I’ve said from the beginning that the book will be a collection of Bob and Ann’s photos and stories combined with my own experience visiting the places they lived, I think it’s OK to allow my impressions to color the process. Still, I tremble at the thought of trying to capture the character of my family on paper, fearful of what they will think of my words, of what I include and what I leave out.

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New Project and Social Media Fast

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Last November and December when I was in Texas before moving to Washington, I spent some time with my grandmother, learning to make the cream pies she’s been bringing to family events for as long as I can remember. Part of my goal for the time was to learn to make the pies — part of my goal was to hear her tell stories. Man, does she love to tell stories (you can read some of those stories in Passing Down Pie Heritage, a new article I recently had published at Texas Cooking).

I’ve heard quite a few stories from her over the years, some of them related to the time she and my grandfather spent in West Texas during their early years of marriage. I’ve also heard quite a bit about that time from my dad and my aunt, especially in preparation for my West Texas camping trip with friends last October. And especially since my aunt and her husband had been diligently scanning and labeling the 800+ family slides from the 1950s, many of them taken in West Texas.

West Texas and those slides have hovered in the background of my imagination for months. I’ve looked at the photos, mesmerized by the scenes they depict. Cowboys and wide open landscapes.

My dad and his siblings as shiny faced kids in 1950s clothes and hair styles.

My grandmother sitting on a swing in a park, the background opening wide behind her.

My grandfather working out in the oil field with his survey crew buddies. (The colors on this photo haven’t been altered — that’s what the slide looked like when they scanned it!)

Those slides are precious to me because they hold family — and they hold the land that made us who we are, the land that captivated me last October. The slides are also precious as a glimpse into that era and that place. West Texas in the 1950s is the same time and place that shaped George W. and Laura Bush, and I was also captivated by Laura Bush’s descriptions of it in her autobiography.

And so, I’ve felt the stirring to do more with the slides and with my family’s stories than let them sit and simmer under the surface of my imagination. My grandparents, well, they’re not young, and if I’m going to document their stories of that time period and put them together with the images they made, I believe the time is now. Funny how this idea took full shape once I moved across the country to the opposite border, but I also believe this scenario isn’t a mistake. It will take some careful planning, careful budgeting, and most likely an upcoming project fundraising campaign on Kickstarter, but I think it can all come together to do the research, organizing, and writing of my first nonfiction book here in the Tri-Cities area, with a few trips back to Texas.

Another thing I’m sure of as I type out this idea on this blog (making something public is so very scary!) is that I need to spend some focused time making sure I’m headed in the right direction with this project. First, I want to seek God deliberately on this issue — I’ve been doing that all along, but I want to step back and make absolutely sure. Also, I want to spend some deliberate creative time on the first stages of the project, including what the scope of it will be and what it will take to get the funding. I’m at the point of wrapping up my novel revisions and sending that book out in search of a publisher — now I’m figuring out how to move forward with the next project.

In order to do that, I feel like I need to take a social media break. A bit of a fast, if you will. I’m not throwing off social media for good, just for a while. I want to use the time that I normally spend each day (and it’s spread throughout the day, not just in one blob) to be quiet, to be creative, to pray, to make sure I’m hearing things correctly. I feel so inundated with information from the internet most days, and I contribute my own voice to share in that cacophony. I need to step away for a while and not post or read blogs, Facebook, or twitter. I don’t know how long I will do this, at least a week or two. And hopefully when I come back, I’ll have great news to share with you about the next big project and how you can be involved!

Until then, email me if you need me…

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