A Nice Run-away Weekend with my friends in the Burr
Oak State Park
(The leftmost is me!)
Now a
little about myself (Nicholas Zhou).
I grew
up on a small farm in Hubei, China. I have two elder
sisters. My father is a teacher in a local middle
school. I remember that I seldom saw him in my
childhood since most of the time he stayed with his
students. My mother has been doing different things
in her life: opera actress, farmer, salesperson. She
quit singing opera when she married to my father and
began her life as a farmer. I never can
understand why she quit singing because I can still
see singing is her soul. That's why I will send her
some opera music CDs as New Year gift for all those
years.
My
mother started teaching us to cook as early as we
were 5 or 6. There was a reason for that. My father
would only be at home for 2 days a month at most. My
mother had to take care of everything: growing
crops, feeding livestock, cooking for us. When we
were 5 or 6 years old, we all started to help our
mother to do homework. My eldest sister Lora would
go to the farm and help my mother to reap crops,
while my second eldest sister Daisy would help do
laundry and I would cook for the whole family. When my
sisters finished their work, they would come to the
kitchen and help me out. I can still remember the
tears in my mother's eyes when she saw the first
dishes we cooked in our lives.
At first
- simple things like tomatoes, eggs, soy beans, and
noodles. Later things such as pork, chicken and
cakes. Anyway - she wanted us to learn to take care
of ourselves. So she taught us to cook, iron, sew,
do laundry, etc. at a very early age.
We were
helping neighborhood farmers with their tea and
paddy crops. We were also doing chores for relatives
at a very early age. My aunts and uncles had me
doing things like feeding their livestock after
school, unthawing their electric water pumps, and
doing yard work. This was good because this was how
we paid for our school clothes and supplies. We
bought the majority of our school supplies, and
sometimes our neighbors provided us with free school
meals.
At home
we had a large garden with tomatoes, potatoes,
cabbage, peanuts, soy beans, string beans, and whatever else we cared to plant.
We froze vegetables and preserved ham for winter although
collards and turnips would continue growing half-way
through the winter. Relatives (slightly better off)
also frequently gave us food they had canned or
frozen for the winter. The sweet potatoes my Uncle
Lee stored were probably my
favorite.
We also
had livestock. We raised pigs and chickens. The hogs I raised did
well and I periodically sold one at the local stock
yard for what was big money back then. I fed my hogs
commercial livestock feed when I could afford. In
the summer it was more often weeds I pulled from
nearby fields. In the fall I often gathered corn
left behind by the mechanical combine to feed my
pigs. This lasted into the winter at times. The
winters were fairly mild, my hogs did well and
provided food and a little money.
It was a
harsh life, yet a good one. We never really went to
bed hungry. We learned to be self-sufficient.
Cooking was something I really liked to do. Since we
did not have a telephone, television, or car for
much of my youth, cooking also gave me something to
do. I would also periodically go to my Aunt's house
and cook for her. She had a television, so I liked
visiting her. She frequently had me prepare Boiled
Dumplings when I went to visit. That's where my love
of dumplings first developed. I'd make, then boil
them. Next I would sit down with her and eat my
fill. What a treat! She seemed to like my cooking
and that stroked my confidence.
When I
was 7 I went to elementary school but I still came
home every day and cooked for our family. I liked to
bring the food I cooked and share with my
classmates. I also invited my friends to our farm
and played hide-and-seek game. The best place to
hide was in the mow. Every time my pals could never
find me and I had to shout out for them to find me.
When I
grew up I went back home less and less often. In
high school I would go home once every month. But I
could still ask my mother to sit down and cook a
great dinner for her. At that time my eldest sister
Lora had already been working in a hospital and
Daisy was in Jilin University. We were still
borrowing money from our relatives since going
school was very expensive at that time.
I went to Wuhan
University for my college. I chose Computer Science
as my major. I enjoyed the freedom in college but I
missed my hometown and my family a lot. My mother
would came to my place with her Lotus Root Soup with
Sparerib twice a month. My father would call and ask
everything about my study in college. Lora would
send me checks every month helping me pay my
expense. Daisy would write me letters and share with
me her experience in college. But I never got time
to cook for them any more!
Then I was even farther
from my hometown. I came to United States for my
graduate studies. At that time Daisy was already in
US. She was studying Chemistry and I still studied
Computer Science. My mother always complained why my
father should have sent us abroad. She said she
would like us to stay with her in our small hometown
for a whole life. Isn't that what we were dreamed of
and what we are still?
My sister and I often
look back upon our life in our childhood. We will
get together during weekends and cook some Chinese
food. Even we enjoy American food a lot, Chinese
food is still our favorite. We want to share with
you all our more than 20 years of experience of
cooking Chinese food. That's how my e-cookbook "Real and Healthy Chinese Food Recipes"
came out.
It's a gift for my parents, my sisters
Lora and Daisy, and Aunt Lee, Uncle Lee and all my
friends.
The
recipes I learned were not written down. So I am
writing to a large extent from memory although I
still prepare many of these dishes frequently. When
I learned to cook, it was just, put so much of this
and so much of that. I learned at an early age to
adjust my recipes to taste. I encourage you to feel
free to modify my recipes to your taste. If you like
something spicier, add more pepper for example.
Cooking is easy and natural.
If you have any questions
or comments about our product or web site, please feel
free to contact me. I will take great pleasure to share
with you my favorite Chinese recipes.
