Breaking out the comfort food

I've been doing a lot of eating recently. Not that I'm trying to get larger than I already am, but--food is love. Or at least comfort. And it's been a rocky week. Even when your kid is in their twenties, letting go is hard, and since--to put it mildly--I'm a little OCD, I'm having issues.

Growing up in Hawaii, all my comfort foods are South/Asian. My grandpa was from Louisiana, and everyone else was Island born and bred. Mochi, gau, pork adobo, fried okra and collards, chocolate chess pie and chicken long rice. Easy on the stomach and soothing like a good bowl of chicken and dumplings. I'm popping watercress boiled in chicken stock with ginger like it's candy. Today I made scallion cakes.

I used to make them out of this book called the Healthy Chinese Gourmet, and they were "meh", not really good, but not really bad. A couple years back my mom gave me a copy of Grace Young's book, the Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen. Love that thing. I've never made a bad recipe from it, and I rediscovered scallion cakes. Not the lo-fat variety in the Healthy Gourmet, but the full-fat, fried in grease dough rounds that look like a Navajo taco and taste like a wonton on steroids. Greasy, chewy, salty, green oniony. Nom nom nom nom. Totally delicious.

If my stress doesn't dial back soon, I'm going to break out the chow fun.