Potstickers

The fourth new recipe I’ve tried this month is finally something that’s not a sweet. It’s "Perfect Potstickers" from Alton Brown’s "Good Eats." I’ve made wonton before but never cooked it as a potsticker, always for soup. The filling ingredients were simple to assemble, I added a few extra things like garlic, sesame oil, broccoli slaw (since I had some) and Sriracha hot sauce. I cooked mine a little longer than the recipe calls for, just to make sure the meat was cooked through. The potstickers were good, next time I think I’ll add a little ginger and maybe water chestnuts. What I liked best about them is that the cook is in control of the ingredients. When you buy them at the store, who knows what’s in them. Plus you don't have any unwanted preservatives and MSG. The recipe made just over 30, I froze some for later. (I put them in single layers to freeze first before bagging them up.) That’s another good thing. One afternoon’s work will save time somewhere else down the road. I have about 20 wrappers left. I want to try the vegetarian steamed dumpling recipe from the same show, that has tofu in it.

I don’t know why, but I’ve been thinking about my parents lately. They both passed away in recent years. Today it was a teapot I brought out and the wontons that made me think of them. Whenever someone came to visit, they’d serve a pot of tea. And when we were kids, it was always a treat when they made fried wontons. Often we were part of the assembly line in putting them together. The memories seem like they’re getting more and more distant. It’s not that I’m forgetting things, rather that time has passed and things that had seemed recent are now farther in the past. It’s hard to describe in words, the "shift" that has taken place without my noticing it until now.

An acquaintance of mine lost her father last week. She’s back home with her sister, and they’re going through the belongings. That was a bittersweet time for me, when the last parent died, to be in their house. Everywhere I looked seemed to be a memory, often a happy one, yet at the same time I felt sad knowing that this was the last time I’d be there while things were as they had been left.