Shirley Does Nature

When we first began traveling together I was amazed to hear that Shirley had never seen Bryce or the Grand Canyon. Foolishly, I decided to remedy that. She didn’t object because the itinerary included a casino hotel. We flew into Vegas, drove to Mesquite, checked in and headed to Bryce.

Believe it or not, Shirley did not yet own a cell phone. So, as soon as we got to the National Park canyon rim she spent half an hour in a pay phone yelling at tour guides. When she hung up I asked, “Ready?”

“For what?”

“ To hike down to the canyon floor.”

“What for, I saw it from the phone booth. Can’t we just go back to the casino?”

On the way back I asked her why she let me drive her all the way to the park.

“You seemed so excited about taking me there. I didn't want to disappoint you.”

I never made the “nature thing” mistake again.

3000 Mile, 36 Hour Emergency Shopping

An Aloha shirt is a suit coat without inside pockets for people with nothing to hide. Wroburlto

When my daughter Tina announced that she was going to be married, my personal fantasy life faced a serious dilemma. Although she is my only human child, I had nourished two different visions for her wedding -- one in Hawaii and the other in coastal California. After doing the math, I realized I had only two options and that having more daughters wasn’t exactly timely.

For a bride and groom, love itself may be the ever-fixed mark of Shakespearean lore. But a Chinese mother-of-the bride focuses on wedding ceremonies. Fortunately, I knew that my wedding visions were not too different from Tina’s. Our lives have been written on coastlines as surely as my immigrant parents were drawn from the Canton mainland to the shores of the Philippines and then to the golden dream of California.

Tina’s first words were, “sui” which means water in Cantonese. I can still see her, in her car seat, waving and pointing gleefully at the ocean, mouthing out “sui, sui, Mommi, sui!” She and I have both lived in a coastal community since she was born and we have taken annual vacations together to ocean resorts, usually in Hawaii.

Part of this attraction is genetic, coming from our immigrant heritage. Growing up in Oakland, the coast was the Chinese equivalent of Gatsby’s green light, an ever-fixed symbol of success that was visible, but always distant. I remember when my father took a rare day off, he would put his five children in the car and we would drive to the boardwalk in Santa Cruz, chase the waves, pretend we were swimming, eat a picnic of hard boiled eggs, and drive back to Oakland. I grew up with a desire to return to the ocean and stay there, at least overnight for beginners.

Divine Music of Chance

Tina’s genetic roots evolved to bond in the loose sandy soils of the coast. So my dilemma was reduced by half, only one of my fantasy weddings would be rejected. The divine music of chance timing would intervene on the decision. Tina announced that she and Matt were marrying the same week that the Ritz Carlton began building its resort at Half Moon Bay. Once they saw that property, they were sold on having their wedding outdoors and oceanside at the Ritz Carlton.

However, I couldn’t let go of my Hawaiian wedding fantasy. Tina’s father Richard and I helped her plan a Hawaiian honeymoon and it seemed like such a wonderful idea that Wroburlto persuaded me to take it a little further. Our plan was to let Tina and Matt think that I was having a formal engagement party for them but to alert the guests that it was really a tacky Hawaiian party. Using frequent flyer miles, Wro and I impulsively hopped a flight to Honolulu in order to shop for appropriate party favors: tiki torches; grass skirts; ukuleles; and of course, some new Aloha shirts for Wro.

Our cover was nearly blown when Tina surprised us at the airport on our return. She asked how I accumulated six suitcases on a two day “business” trip. So when she began asking questions, I did what ever-fixed mothers-of-the-bride must do. I lied, for the sake of the party. “Press kits,” I said with a tone that mothers use to suggest children not pursue the line of questioning.

A few days later, Tina called to ask, ever so delicately, if I could possibly change the party “to casual from formal.” It was all I could do to focus and calmly reply, in my most matronly, traditional Chinese tone, “Tina, this is your wedding, you must learn to treat it very seriously.”

The party went over like tiny bubbles in the wine. Thanks to my brother Ben, who is known in serious karaoke circles as “The Chinese Elvis,” Tina and Matt, formally dressed, were greeted by an Uncle Don Ho impersonator, and 50 guests wearing Aloha shirts and shorts. I had some fresh leis flown in for the bride and groom, plus plastic ones for the rest of us, including Wro’s 165 non human siblings. We allowed Tina and Matt to change into Hawaiian attire and everyone had a pupu-popping good time. Wro sang “Sui Dreams of You” to Tina.

Thus, I compensated for one of my fantasies. The other one really was going to be formal. As you may have guessed, that is not my strong suit. Thank God, the Ritz Carlton is so good at it. The I Ching oracle for Unity is Pi, the meeting of water and earth. Chinese believe that water is good luck and the Ritz Carlton consulted with feng shui experts when they planned the Half Moon Bay property. Seated on a melon shaped bluff over rugged rock coast, the Shingle Style lodge uses redwood trellises and cedar roofing from its coastal environment. Ocean boulder fireplaces and hard wood floors maintain a historic feel, while ceramics are mostly Portuguese, a nice personal touch for the wedding, as Matt’s father’s family emigrated from the Azores. The Portuguese motif continues in the main restaurant, Navio, where the details mimic the boats of Half Moon Bay’s original Portuguese settlers.

Tina and Matt met with the hotel’s chefs to incorporate subtle touches from their cultural backgrounds, shiitake mushrooms in the salad for her, and Mediterranean fava beans with the sea bass for Matt, into the wedding menu. Since a stressed out mother-of-the-bride doesn’t need to worry about young people driving on coastal highways, the hotel was God sent. With two golf courses and a full spa, the Ritz Carlton has enough to hold the friends of young people. Matt played golf with some of his friends while Tina and her bridesmaids took Swedish massages in the spa and had hair and makeup done at the beauty salon. Tina was amazed how they helped create an individual look for each of the bridesmaids.

Because the ceremony itself was a dream, it is best remembered like music, in fleeting, intimate details. A champagne colored Mercedes Benz transported the mothers, bridesmaids, Richard and Tina to the ceremony site over the ocean. Golf carts returned the guests from the ceremony to the reception in the ballroom.

As Bach played, the joy of my desiring stopped on her way down the proverbial aisle and whispered in my ear. For a short while after that, I lost track of my ever-fixed mark, but I regained my composure for the reception.

Wro and his brother Happi joined this party, dressed in their new Hawaiian tuxedos of course. It was my daughter’s wedding, but it was a my dual fantasy, my American dream, my family’s ever-fixed light that we had actually reached out and touched.

Baseball & Other Obsessions

The Wok Wiz on Baseball

My friends think Anne Rice had me in mind when she coined the phrase “Accidental Traveler.” Whether I’m heading across the Bay, across the country or across the dreaded ocean, my trips seem to detour off the high road of original intentions. Sharply focused people find this annoying, but I’m far more comfortable with chaos than with things like global positioning software (GPS) - or whatever they call that annoying little voice in rental cars that keeps saying “Error. At your earliest convenience, turn around.” If I wanted to be reminded every time I made a mistake, I’d travel with my mother. My friends also say that I’m the reason for Chinese driver jokes, but that’s another story.

Today, I want to tell you how a trip to a baseball game can easily morph, with the help of butterflies and a few good chefs, into life-changing revelations. I first visited San Antonio to find a man, but not the way you probably think. You see, when I’m not conducting culinary tours or teaching Chinese cooking, I often hang out at the baseball park in San Francisco. In fact, I bought a condo near Willie Mays Plaza because it came with a great parking place. But, I’m getting sidetracked. See how easily that happens?

Back in 1999, the first Chinese baseball prospect in America was playing for the San Antonio Missions in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ farm system. Chin-Feng Chen had a swing as sweet as Barry Bonds’ and he seemed likely to break the hearts of my San Francisco Giants for years to come. As a proud Chinese fan, I wanted to see him when I could still appreciate him, before he made it to the majors and started wearing the colors of the enemy from LA. So I flew to Texas.

In between games, I drove around the hill country looking for butterflies - which I found, no thanks at all to the voice in the GPS. Wildseed Farms, between San Antonio and Fredericksburg, is the largest wild flower farm in the USA, so it attracts a splendid migration of butterflies and hummingbirds. Overcoming a life long paranoia, I let butterflies cover my arms and face with the unbearable lightness of familiarity. I’m not exactly a nature girl, but I asked owner John Thomas to show me which seeds to plant to attract butterflies to my yard so that my grand daughters might delight in them too.

Now, as fate would have it, Chin-Feng never made it to the major leagues for long enough to drink a pot of first-picked Formosan tea. After years in the minors, he returned to the Chinese League in 2005. So, I never got to brag that I saw him back when he was just an unknown minor leaguer. But I’ve been back to San Antonio five times now, to indulge in more serious pursuits.

Once I just drove around for a week eating smokehouse barbecue in hard-to-pronounce Texas hill country towns like Llano, Lockhart and Luling, the only places I’ve ever found that make beef brisket better than we Chinese do. On another trip I ate nothing but Mexican cuisine in San Antonio cafés like Blanca Aldaco’s and the Barrios-Trevino family’s Los Barrios. San Antonio has the best Hispanic culinary scene I‘ve found. Admittedly whenever I went looking for the best Mexican restaurants in Los Angeles, I only found how easy it is to get lost in LA. I blame the Dodgers.

My point - I bet you thought I lost it - is that baseball is a delicious, complex American tradition that deserves far better culinary accompaniments than hot dogs and nachos with industrially simulated cheese. Maybe not in Los Angeles, but certainly in San Francisco. Unlike LA, our ballpark is within easy walking distance to some wonderful dining. I wouldn’t have bought a condo to be near hot dog stands. And there’s no time better to enjoy these places than the off-season, when you don’t have to compete with 40,000 fans for a good table.

Bad Sentence All Stars

Last week's contest was a walkover, with number six destroying the competition.



6.) "I love walking and think I can experience it even more if I go by foot." (Yogi could not have said it better.)



This week, we've been asked to hold an all star contest from the days before we began posting the bad sentence contests. Here are the winners of the first several trials and errors with language.



1.) "Motherhood doesn't always make the headlines as a sexy subject - unless the story is about Salma Hayek breast feeding a stranger's baby, but in a metro like Des Moines , where roughly 30,000 women aged 25-34 are mothers, it seems like all types of moms - natural living moms, hip mamas (like Steve Bosman, 26, pictured here with her son Hayden, 6), stay-at-home moms, working moms, progressive and tradtitional moms - are talking about what it takes to raise children.



2.) "This is the place to sneak an ice cold beer over the lunch hour and indulge in ridiculously comfortable food, the kind of stuff that - if you grew up in a household where a brick of Velveeta could always be found in the fridge - will take you back to a time when calories weren't counted."



3) "I'm not normally a regular at places, so it felt kind of awkward to see someone who was being kind of obnoxious 24 hours before in a slightly more sober state a few stools away."



4.) “Intensive care wasn't the first intense time the couple faced together.”



5.) "The dining room spans several rooms."



6.) “It was July of 2003 and six months into the relationship when Susanna Funk, now 29, underwent brain surgery for a blockage discovered while participating in a study at the University of Iowa, where she was a nursing student.”



7.) "The concept swings more hits than strikes."



8.) “Situated on a corner in the hilly and historic Sherman Hill Neighborhood, Café di Scala is located on the main floor of beautiful Victorian home, making it one of the classiest restaurants in town.”



9.) "Volunteering on the board of a local nonprofit is a great extracurricular to accompany your career."



10.) “I'm going to admit that at the first bite, the metaphor that came to mind was that it tasted like I imagine having sex as a man feels.”

(editor's note: When this review was republished in a second DM Register publication a few weeks later, this sentence had been edited to - "the lamb exploded in my mouth." )

Bad Sentence Ballots

Last week's contest was the closest ever with “But the person I feel most sorry for in this situation are her kids." edging out “The rest of the acts involved a heavy dose of masturbation and poop jokes, which aren’t quite my style, but getting on stage at all is so extremely difficult, it’s not right to hate.”

This week looks equally daunting:

1.) "The new lunch and dinner menu is an ambitious mix of dishes that were popular at Sage, Meek's popular, but now closed Windsor Heights restaurant." (Popular at the popular, but closed, place?)

2.) "Flatbreads topped with beyond-the-usual ingredients (I enjoyed a vegetable falafel) offered a chance to enjoy the ultra-fresh breads that inspired the restaurant's name - proof refers to a bread-baking step." (A step that is absent from flatbreads though, making this an example of the a writer trying to show how smart she is but instead revealing something else about her smarts.)

3.) "Short explanations help explain some of the more exotic-sounding (EvilJungle Prince, Chicken laab), but you'll also find pad Thai, pho noodlesoup, and your basic Chinese takeout dishes, too." (This beats out the “beefy tasting beef” because explanations explain why, it's not right to hate.)

4.) "Like many Asian places, Fawn's offers a veritable Eastern Pangaea of cuisine, from Chinese to Laotian, Thai and Vietnamese dishes." (So, the food is prehistoric? Does the writer know what Pangaea means? )

5.) "Never one to let adulthood come between himself and a big red rubber ball, Fej Williams, now 29, started Warriors on the Square, the adult four square league that reclaims the parking lot at Hubbell Elementary School for cherry bombs." (Exploding cherry bombs cause writers to lose their sense of phrasing?)

6.) "I love walking and think I can experience it even more if I go by foot." (Yogi could not have said it better.)

7.) "My order had a lot of thin onion discs, sort of like potato chips, but way more oniony." (oniony onions, wow, one works for these adjectives)

8.) “With bold leather booths, hushed lighting and white tablecloths and candles, this is definitely a high-class dinner spot.” (Hush the lighting, embolden the leather, this is a high class spot.)

9.) "The Scion xD has an inexpensive price tag with plenty of features."
(Oh, yeah? Does the sticker have a socket where I can plug in my iPod? Hell,I don't care how much the price tag costs; how much is the car?)

Bad Sentence Ballots

Last week's winner was : "Some take a while, even with three people, but there's also a lot of ice."

This week's entries:

1.) “Tables, seemingly acres apart, and especially well-designed acoustics make every table feel private.” ("Tables, needing other tables, are the luckiest tables in the world.")

2.) “According to a couple dudes I know who I felt comfortable asking these questions to, one said if you lose weight your penis gets bigger.”

3.) “The interior is tasteful, cozy and clean, with small clusters of minimal artwork on the red walls, a golden Asian gate and cushioned retro chairs.” (Is it possible that the adjectives have something to do with that which they describe?)

4.) “But the person I feel most sorry for in this situation are her kids.

5.) “Nearly every table and booth was already full at 6 p.m. on the Thursday I visited, and getting more crowded as the night went on.” (Wait, was nearly every table and booth getting more crowded, like clowns in a phonebooth or volkswagon, or did he mean the place was getting more crowded?)

6.) “The rest of the acts involved a heavy dose of masturbation and poop jokes, which aren’t quite my style, but getting on stage at all is so extremely difficult, it’s not right to hate.” (This leaves us with poor powers to add or detract.)

7.) “We started out with the Mosquito Bites appetizer, which is basically a fancied crab Rangoon with lobster, served with sweet chili sauce that merited multiple double dippings." (Fancied crab Rangoon with lobster, and sweet chili sauce meritingmultiple double dips. First of all, is a multiple double dip differentfrom a lesser multiple of triple dips. Is this the commutative property?)

Bad Sentence Ballot

Last week's winner -“Jason Kemper - who still hasn’t had fast food since the beginning of the challenge, and says he’s been alternating between alcohol and water when he goes out) was the the only guy in the room -- As Shakira blasted from the speakers, his hips didn’t lie with the rest of them.

This week's entries: 1.) “The most eye-catching aspect of the place is the giant black chalkboard that lines almost an entire wall.”

2.) “The staff has written quotes, creative sayings, and funny stories to keep diners entertained while waiting for your pizza.” (Why are those diners waiting for my pizza? Don’t tease me and leave me curious.)

3.) "Some take a while, even with three people, but there's also a lot of ice." (I went to the bathroom, blue is nice, what kind of pizza is your car?)

4.) “The bar area has a nice padded green armrest and knee area, making it comfortable enough to stick around all night.” (This is the same writer who while eating lamb “thinks” of “metaphors” “like what having sex as a man must be like.” So, I guess maybe she doesn’t need to explain comfy padded knee areas, but I still don’t have a clue.)

5.) “The only thing that left me non-plussed was a braised pork dish." (the hyphen really confuses me. Pork can leave one nonplussed, but non-plussed? I realize it‘s trendy to use lots of commas, but there are consequences.) )

6.) “The no-fuss breakfast and lunch spot makes for a popular quick bite for surrounding businesses, serving up homemade soups and an array of delicious sandwiches and sides.”