May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month and the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center has designed a fun social media challenge to put #APAEverywhere! You can complete the challenges on social media or on your #APAEverywhere account through May 31, 2015. To open your #APAEverywhere account, register...
After all the snow and freezing cold temps we’ve been having, I never thought I’d see the end of winter. But spring is finally here and the cherry blossoms blooming outside my window are proof of it! And that means it’s time for hanami. Hanami—or flower...
I heart noodles. Ramen. Chow mein. Pancit. And especially my mom’s mie goreng (Indonesian fried noodles). But today, I’d like to give a shout-out to a lesser known noodle dish—japchae. A classic Korean dish, you’ll find japchae on the menu at just about any Korean restaurant in the U.S. If you’re lucky...
When it comes to anecdotes about chocolates and life, the most famous quote of all has to be Forrest Gump’s: "Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." Recently, I discovered another quote in a book by...
On February 19, 2015, we will welcome the Year of the Sheep. And so begins another round of eating because a new year celebration isn't a celebration without lots of food! I’ve written many posts on Lunar New Year foods: from a Singapore favorite, raw fish...
Instead of celebrating Lunar New Year like the Chinese, Koreans and Vietnamese, the Japanese celebrate the Western New Year on January 1st. This wasn’t always the case. It was only in 1873, five years after the Meiji Restoration (the revolution that transferred power from the Tokugawa shogunate to...
As immigrants, our Thanksgiving tables are likely to be vastly different from the garden variety spread of roast turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. Two months ago, I was talking to people about their melting-pot Thanksgiving food traditions for an article that just came...
Before I moved to the U.S. as a college student some 20 years ago, my only knowledge of the ubiquitous fall fruit (or is it a vegetable?), the orange, ribbed pumpkin (cucurbita pepo), was from Disney’s “Cinderella.” Yes, as a little girl, I thought all pumpkins turned...
The annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival has kicked off and runs from June 25 to 29, July 2 to 6 on the National Mall in Washington D.C. The spotlight this year is on China (and Kenya). Every year, the festival’s highlights include food booths and cooking demos (at...
We all know about Lunar New Year, celebrated most notably by Chinese and Vietnamese in January or February every year. However, under-the-radar new year festivities take place at the start of spring. Lao New Year is celebrated as a three-day-long festival from April 13-15 (it can...
