Is it possible to be an “authenticity nazi” in the States and survive? How does one not die of hunger while avoiding Crab Rangoons, California Rolls, and syrupy-sweet Tom Yum Goong? The Japanese Agriculture Ministry has plans to crack down on “fake” Japanese restaurants worldwide. Will having sushi police mean better food?

First published:

The Torch
Thursday, November 16, 2006 –Volume 53 Issue 11
Arts & Entertainment Page 12

“Someone once asked me if my gnocchi was ‘authentic’. I told them it had real potatoes in it.” – Anonymous

There was a time when seeing Crab Rangoon on a Chinese restaurant’s menu made me all huffy-puffy indignant. “Oh, of course it’s here, because cream cheese is such a staple ingredient in Chinese kitchens!” (Mutter, mutter, growl.)

And if I couldn’t convince my dining companions to heave themselves out of the restaurant’s greasy warmth to venture into the winter chill, in search of a more “serviceable” eatery, I would proceed to paw my way bad-temperedly through the rest of the menu – serves me right for wanting to eat Asian in a white man’s land anyway, humph – and eventually settle on rice and a leafy vegetable stir-fry (because even a block of wood could not mess that up…WRONG).

Photograph from rtplunch on Flickr

In the mossy verdance of youth, and with the spurious arrogance of the world-weary traveler, I had anointed myself as one “in the know” of “authentic” cuisine. I would thumb my nose at all laughably poor imitations of ethnic fare, and force everyone in earshot to endure my lectures on why and how it’s WRONG WRONG WRONG.

God, was I annoying.

This lack of “authenticity” was easy enough to overlook when the restaurant had hieroglyphic scribblings on wall menus and a special insert for their “own people” – a menu a world apart from the chink-chonk Chinaman-chopsuey-chowmein nonsense they routinely gave “others.” If they’re only fleecing “others” of their money by dishing up what they want (read: bastardized, Americanized, barely edible, gloopy corn starch brown sauce on everything), then it’s ok.

What’s not ok is if they lump me with them and try to pass off a Sriracha “hot cock sauce” slurry as Szechuan spiciness.

I would routinely bitchwhinemoan about how it’s the Chinese that are always “selling out” – that we’re so willing to throw away our culture for cash. Until I realized that it’s no longer just Chinese food that we’re bartering any more.

The next time you dine at the neighborhood sushi joint or Korean BBQ place, go peek in the kitchen. Odds are you’ll find the cook’s line overwhelmingly dominated by – you guessed it – Chinese. You know why? Because to the “uneducated” palate, Japanese and Korean food utilize pretty much the same ingredients that Chinese food does, only you can sell it for more.

That’s right, folks. The Chinese entrepreneur has it all figured out: teriyaki grilled salmon atop a bowl of short-grain rice is not easily distinguishable from soy sauce, sugar, and rice wine-marinated salmon atop long-grain rice. Sure, I would know. Hiroko Shimbo would know. But would you know?

Cue the sushi police. The Japanese Agriculture Ministry recently announced plans to crack down on Japanese restaurants overseas that proclaim themselves “authentic” but fail to measure up. Apparently, a certification system is in the works, and represents the international arm of a nationwide “food education” movement, or “Shokuiku.”

How they would enforce something like this is beyond me, not to mention my sneaking suspicion that it’s yet another government-sponsored plan to give Japanese-made (and Shokuiku-approved) shoyu, nori, etc. a leg up over the (cheaper) competition.

Anyway, back to my pet peeve. I like to think I’ve seen the error of my ways and outgrown my hoity-toity preoccupation with “authenticity.” Because, seriously, food – just like language and a culture’s values – is in constant evolution. And the same native dish is interpreted differently by every family, in every city, in every region of a country.

Still, I could not help but wince when my order of Pad Thai arrived on a recent excursion to Newport. Did it not fall into my neatly-packaged notion of what Thai food ought to be? Or did the chef’s version at this chi-chi new restaurant just not taste like the ones I’m used to?

Nope and nope. It was worse. Seated right on the water, with the salt in the air and on my lips, the prawns in my dish were perfectly large, perfectly peeled, and perfectly stale. There was no sweetness, only a faint crunch and a limp falling away. The overcooked-to-sogginess egg noodles only served to catalyze my epiphany: all those years of huffing and puffing about “authenticity”? I was mistaken. It wasn’t a lack of “authenticity” that galled, but a lack of QUALITY.

These days, I look for one thing and one thing only: is my tummy happy? And if not, I focus on the one other thing that can save the day: are my dining companions delectable? More often than not, they are swoon-worthy.

Photograph from santheo on Flickr

Photograph from Jason Michael on Flickr

How was I to resist the nude, baby-soft cheeks of a voluptuous Alphonso mango, fleshy and ripe with honeyed nectar? Or the briny lips of an oyster’s folds, freshly shucked and sweetly yielding? Gentle reader, I could not help myself.

First published:

The Torch
Thursday, February 1, 2007 – Volume 53 Issue 15
Arts & Entertainment Page 7

“Like partially-smoked meat, still moist on the inside, only ranker.”

“No, no. It’s not that at all. It’s something else… fermented tofu? Or really stinky cheese, but sweet.”

“Vanilla custard with pong.”

“You know, the real thing is so pungent, Thai Airways makes passengers put them in special metal boxes…”

“And they’re banned on public transportation and air-conditioned places in Asia. They have to be shelled and shrink-wrapped in Styrofoam boxes before you can take them anywhere.”

“Oh, and the locals say if you down it with beer, the chemical reaction will cause your bowels to explode.”

It’s a strange, united nations of a group that’s gathered around the kitchen table on a snowy Ithacan afternoon. Romania, Siberia, India, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore are represented, and our thoughts turn to the all-American boy currently killing aliens in the study.

“John, you have to try this!”

We carefully slice off a tiny nub from the sticky, brown sausage, peel off the plastic, and spear it on a fork (presentation counts). Gleefully running to the study, we brandish the aromatic offering at a very suspicious “pizza, teddy bear grahams, California roll, and OJ-only” Floridian.

“It’s good, we promise!”

“It’s really not that bad… just don’t smell it first!”

He takes the fork, “And you won’t stop bugging me till I’ve tried it, will you?”

“Nope.”

“Come on, John… be a man, do the right thing!”

John eyeballs the nub. He puts it to his nose, and his eyes bulge in alarm. “You guys are insane… this is foul!” Still, he nibbles on a tiny edge… and promptly spits it out on his girlfriend’s prized Bonsai.

“Oh come on, it’s not that bad!”

John rudely dismisses us with retching noises and frantic gulps of soda. We scoot back to the kitchen to riffle through the rest of the loot Malaysian boy has brought back. There are cloyingly sweet chicken-malt biscuits, prawn floss rolls, moreish, thumb-size crabs you pop whole into your mouth (shell and all), crispy, crunchy, sesame-studded anchovies, sandy green pea cookies, and “oriental bubblegum” – chewy strips of dried cuttlefish guaranteed to give you fish breath for a day.

It’s a ritual we enact after each visit home – wherever home may be. Every one of us lugs a suitcase of weird and wonderful edibles back to the US, for eager taste-testers to conference over. Inevitably, we find unlikely similarities in the diverse cuisines, which spark a host of fierce, sometimes violent debates.

The curdled cubes of pig’s blood the Chinese eat reminds someone of the blood sausage his Italian Nonna makes. A Russian recipe for apple pie is strikingly French clafoutis-like. Prejudices emerge and unlikely allegiances are wrought. Someone dismisses a lovingly smuggled in cheese as “tasting of sheep’s udders” and nearly sets off a brawl.

It’s intriguing how strongly we feel about the foods we eat. The tastes we acquire, the flavors, textures and smells we accept unthinkingly (and by the same token, reject), and the trendy new items which work their way into our diets (72% single-origin dark chocolate made by cloistered nuns who have taken a 20-year vow of silence, for instance, or Taiwanese bubble tea) come loaded with cultural, socio-economic, geographical and historical nuances. The foods we grow up eating, the foods we turn to when we’re sad or happy, and the foods we spurn – all tell a story.

And the world is listening. The internet is awash with gastro-porn – luscious, mouthwatering, skin shots of food provocatively posed, with purple prose to match. Food bloggers, or floggers, write about their gastro-crusades, titillating voyeurs with a naughty flash of pheasant leg here, a drawn-out torment of cantaloupe cleavage there.

The world is besotted with what their neighbors on the other side of the world are eating – what they’re putting into their mouths when “sssshhhhh!” there’s no one looking, what they’re sneaking into the house at 3 am, what they’re hiding behind the carton of wholesome 1% milk, and even what they’re proudly bringing home to introduce to beaming moms and dads.

So mesmerized was I by the swashbuckling adventure and rampant, smoldering good looks online, that I made flogs the topic of my honors thesis (and piled on the pounds, lickety-split). How was I to resist the nude, baby-soft cheeks of a voluptuous Alphonso mango, fleshy and ripe with honeyed nectar? Or the briny lips of an oyster’s folds, freshly shucked and sweetly yielding? Gentle reader, I could not help myself.

And so it was, night after night of lascivious pleasure…my eyes greedily devouring the naked flesh, the erotic prose, my head spinning with questions that demanded satisfaction, my heart clamoring for more, more, more.

And yet, gutter ravings aside, it is with these scattered pixels that floggers have achieved what years of peacekeeping missions, diplomatic envoys, and high-level negotiations have not. They have managed to impart – through the food they put on their table, and the stories they share of their families, lives, work, dreams, and fears – a more intimate understanding of the Other.

A recognition that the woman who veils her face and prays to a different God, who speaks a different tongue and may hold a different point of view… she breaks bread at the table too. She livens up her salads with familiar herbs plucked from her window sill garden, sends her children off to school with – not PB & J sandwiches – but sesame paste and honey drizzled flatbreads and hearty, bean-filled soups on cold days. Celebrations call for racks of lamb, redolent with spices, vine-ripened tomatoes tossed in verdant olive oil, and platters of sticky, date-filled, thousand-layered pastries… while sick days call for the universal chicken soup.

She is not that different. They are not that different.

Hungry for more? Check out: Global Voices Online

Photograph from Ferran on Flickr

Anywhere people congregate en masse for sustenance is the heart and soul of a place, and when it involves food, it’s the “stomach” too. At 7 am, the frenetic energy of an Asian wet market can leave you bewitched, breathless, and bewildered…

It’s 7 am. Over and around and on top and right at you, people are yelling in dialect. You’re gingerly placing right foot, left foot, right foot, left holy cow! on slimy, grotty mosaic, slipping and sliding in flip-flops and hoping what you just trod on wasn’t really what you just trod on. There’s a stand-off between a hawker and an irate (soon-to-be ex) customer… had he swopped the unblemished papayas she had scrupulously selected for punier specimens? A moment’s indecision and someone has made off with the last of the kampung-fresh duck eggs – the rich, golden yolks of which you badly wanted for your leche flan – will quail eggs do? The tempeh that’s given to you in a banana leaf scroll is warm and alive and you almost drop it in surprise… alive! So much more threatening than the nubbly, vacuum-packed slab you get at the supermarket.

Yet where you are, this seething mass of bodies in the still-chill morning air, is so much more than a supermarket. The stalls domino one after another, and everyone seems to know where they’re going, what they’re doing – so there must be a logic to it. Never mind that the fresh noodle stall is next to the Indian drygoods stall is fraternizing with the egg stall is not talking to the Halal butcher stall. After all, it’s Singapore – where there is not so much organized religion as there are organized plots of land.

Yet it almost seems the urban planners were off having kopi and kaya toast when the blueprint for this came up. Sure, the Housing Development Board (HDB) did the ground work… in every one of the housing estates systematically plotted on the tiny island-state is a wet market and adjourning hawker centre. With over 90% of the population living in government housing, the state was able to say: No ethnic ghettoes please. We want everyone to hold hands, sing the national anthem, and love one another.

So we put one Indian family with two Malay families amidst 12 Chinese families and there – walk around a typical neighborhood, and you should spot depictions of Vishnu nestled up against crosses, crescents, and yellow talismans at sentinel duty over doors.

It also means the heart and soul (anywhere people congregate en masse for sustenance is the heart and soul, and in this case, the stomach) of a HDB estate is bursting at the seams with the varied culinary cultures, traditions, reminiscences, and the resultant bastard offspring that the pioneering immigrants brought with them.

Nowhere else – not in the extravagant Japanese depachika in the CBD, the megalomaniac French hypermarkets, the expat-serving Cold Storage or even the ubiquitous, union-led Fairprice supermarkets will you find the sheer, beautiful farrago of a wet market.

Not to nudge and prod and poke and haggle. Not to casually reach for a glistening, ruby-red litchi for one glorious taste. Not to seek out the arrogant hawker who point-blank refused to sell you the last frothing crab, and to evil-eye the hawker who did.

Trays and trays of tofu quiver in light bulb glow; plastic-bagged hands plunge into tubs of pickled whatsits; frogs croak their frog songs (swan songs?) dismally in wire cages, eyeing the skeins of gleaming flesh impaled upon ceiling hooks across the aisle. Every so often, live fish spurt across the paths of nonplussed shoppers in a bid for freedom. Only the young ones, with hands tightly gripped in their Ah Ma’s fingers, squeal.

Every Singaporean child grew up amongst this. Sometimes with mom, sometimes with Ah Ma, their job was to remember all the stalls that the womenfolk of the family would patronize—so that on the occasions when it would be daddy’s or Ah Gong’s turn to make the expedition, they would be able to point out: that’s the stall Ah Ma buys the vegetables from; that one sells the freshest fish; that hawker sold mummy fermented beancurd; that’s where we sit down to have teh tarik and min jiang kuih for brekkie after…Fifteen years down the road, when you’ve long since doffed your school uniform and no longer need Ah Ma’s steady grasp to keep you scooting off to mischief, the hawkers remember you. You’re so tall now; I know you’re after the sweet water chestnuts, your daddy loves them; you don’t want those for soup… use the fresh lotus roots instead; I hear your sister topped her class; how is your Ah Ma?

Sloppy housewives in flowing housedresses jostle next to Liz Claireborne-clad Tai tais (with Filipino maid in tow) for the best pickings.

“I wouldn’t have that if you paid me to take it off your hands!”

“That looks like it’s been lying around all week! I’ve eaten more salt than you have rice, boy! Do you take me for a fool?”

“I want the ones at the back, not those ratty ones in front!”

“I’ve been buying from you for the past 10 years and you sell your best fish to someone else?”

Ahead, you catch the unmistakable whiff of fresh ground coffee, but are distracted by the sight of a sow’s dour, decapitated mein, suspended above neatly quadruped sets of pigs’ trotters. It used to be everything would be put out on display, with mammoth blocks of ice keeping meats cool. Markets would come alive at 4 am, winding down at noon when the tropical heat began to take its toll. But sanitation concerns have led the government to impose stricter hygiene measures – several years ago, butchers were ordered to install glass-fronted chillers for meat storage. This meant no more poking and pinching by expert fingers, no more curious peering at pig innards by inquisitive little eyes.

Thank goodness then, for the piles of baby shark that still lie in the open on ice chips, the clickety clackety coconut milk-extracting machines, the hawkers who wink and press candied melon strips into sticky hands when mummy isn’t looking.

A hawker raises a call, and you have five seconds to step out of the way before the passage ahead is soused with yet more brackish water, entrails and other squishy things spilling into the surrounding drains.

It’s 8am. Maybe it’s time to go look for some of that coffee

You don’t expect little old ladies to have their hands all over the fruit display in supermarkets. But there they are, squeezing the stone fruit so vigorously, you know the pretty purple plums are going to bruise. So why doesn’t the store manager say something? What’s going on in the power dynamics over there? Get the scoop!

First published:

The Torch
Thursday, November 2, 2006 – Volume 53 Issue 9
Arts & Entertainment Page 11

So. Interesting products, fair variety, loads of alien hieroglyphics, occasionally alarming English translations, friendly and smiling proprietor-couple. I’m not going to tell you too much because that will make you all curious, and then you’ll want to visit, which might be problematic. Especially if your mom has a habit of doling out “I told you so”s.

Stereotypical Behavior (Number One on a List where Nobody’s Counting):

If you’ve ever observed an Asian Obasan (term of respect for a middle-aged woman or “Aunty,” not necessarily denoting familiar relation) riffling through fresh produce in a grocery store, you might have noticed her giving the specimen in hand a surreptitious squeeze. Squeezing the plum, pepper, whatever, supplements the original visual appraisal: it lets her know if it’s firm and, therefore, fresh.

Photograph from Sveeta on Flickr

Obviously, doing so gives the proprietor of the store lots of grief. Because squeezing = bruising = more unsold produce = lesser profits. Catching you in the act on a bad day (or if they’re simply snarky that way) may prompt a vicious tongue-lashing or a “nose held high” proclamation that your business is unwelcome.

It is a silly, silly, proprietor though, who would give the Obasan such ungenerous treatment. And that is because of what I call the Aunty-Aunty Network: a powerful, word of mouth, information relay system among the drivers of the free world’s market economy.

These mighty holders of the purse strings are the go-to people for “the goods.” Need a caterer? They have contacts for the Barefoot Contessa’s mentor at 50 percent off mate’s rates. Looking for a parking lot in the city on a Friday night when the Red Sox are playing? They know the secret squirrel underground and can get you in, gratis. Powerful, powerful people.

Anyway. Unlike the indelicate behavior of these Asian Obasans, it seems their Western counterparts engage in no such faux pas. The Western Obasan is content to place the first watermelon she lays hands on into her cart, and will not proceed to thump each and every orb in the heap, listening for the reverberated guarantee of sweetness.

The bastard child of multiple cultures (me) therefore exerts her first act of rebellious independence by refusing to grope produce in supermarket aisles. She will not poke, she will not prod, she will not do anything to incur the wrath of said proprietor… she will triumphantly place virginal produce in her cart.

Which will lead to her being duped by the friendly and smiling proprietor-couple, who cheerfully assure her that the cut-throat priced sweet Korean rice cakes (dduk, similar to Japanese mochi) she had been craving were delivered on that very day. Which will make her resist the evolutionary instinct to grope for freshness. Which will culminate in her spitting stale, sesame paste-centered, rubber tires on the asphalt, give her pause about its biodegradability (unlikely), and prompt her to write a rambling piece about why you should always molest your fruit.

Photograph from Mrs. Maze on Flickr

Now, I am not saying you should not give them and their rubber tire factory a visit (did I mention they also stock dried deer antlers?). I’m just saying Asiana on 92 Warren Avenue in East Providence has beautifully soft mochi that’s absolutely delish, and you won’t even have to give up your first-born.

What do international students do at Thanksgiving? We call home to ask mom how to cook turkey and pumpkin pie, which leads to particularly unique renditions of these Thanksgiving stalwarts…

Continue reading >>

Photograph from rose_khansg on Flickr

How to keep warm when Jack Frost hates you.

 

 

First published:

The Torch
Thursday, December 14, 2006 – Volume 53 Issue 14
Arts & Entertainment Page 8

A long time ago, when I lived on a tropical isle and everyday was a t-shirt, shorts, and flip flop day, I thought snow was pretty.I envisioned rosy-cheeked kids in scarfs and mittens and bobble hats gamboling about… little puppies wagging their tails behind them. I sighed over crackling log fires, hot mulled cider, the resiny spice of fairy-lit Christmas trees. I pictured melting moments fresh from the oven, catching snowflakes on tongues, little boys tee hee-ing as they competed at chiseling snow moats with hot pee.The fantasy, of course, was before I decided to roast my own chestnuts, and had to spend the rest of the day cleaning chestnut insides off half the free world. (The chestnuts. They explode. You have to slit them first.)

Totally not my fault, because on that tropical isle…? They use these funky rotating drums filled with coal chips to roast them. No slitting, no kabooming, and you have the bonus of looking like a sexy, rugged, coal-miner when you’re done. (Sensitive new age men shell chestnuts for their dates. Real men extract them whole.)That was also before I had to wake up a full hour earlier to scrape snow off my car and slide around on roads, or when I had to battle the wind, straining to put one foot before the other, so cold that my words would come out half-formed and wonky. Gah, gah, gah, gah!

Suffice it to say, I am no fan of the cold. Each year, it’s me against Jack Frost. Each year, I battle a relentless, cruel, elemental warfare.

But I’m getting smarter. Not necessarily winning, but no longer whimpering home tucked-tail either. Whereas before, I dismissed the girls who prance around in their cute little boots and mini skirts, using the Chinese dialect phrase “ai sui mai mia” (to value beauty over life); this winter, I stopped to ask them what the deal was.

Their answer? Adorable, Hello Kitty-emblazoned belly-warmers or haramaki.

It’s a Japanese thing, this haramaki. If you’re familiar with “hara-kiri” – honor suicides carried out by the Japanese warrior class where disgraced samurai plunge their katana (swords) into their bellies – and with “maki” – sushi rolls wrapped in roasted seaweed – then you would be able to put two and two together. Haramaki means “belly wrapper.” Essentially a piece of stretchy, tube-like fabric that goes on snugly over your belly, it draws on the Traditional Chinese Medicine concept of your body’s chi or energy.

Contrary to what Western science says – that you lose most of your body’s heat via your head – if you visit the Land of the Rising Sun, you’ll see boisterous toddlers running around bare-headed. Every single one of them, though, will have their bellies warmly swathed.

The idea is that your body prioritizes keeping your vital organs warm. So if your belly isn’t warm and toasty, then your body starts channeling heat from the extremities (fingers, toes) inwards. So, keep the belly balmy and the extremities stay warm – or stand a better chance of not freezing off, anyway.

And since we’re talking about keeping warm from the inside (while masquerading as a food column), may I introduce you to the humble ginger root? A FIERY RESTORATIVE (I read this description on some hippy barefoot doctor manual a long time ago, and since then, I’ve made it a point of booming it out every time… go on, say it with me!), ginger contributes a distinct scent and a pleasant warmth wherever it shows up. It’s like the cute guy (or girl) who smells amazing, loves to cuddle, and boasts a rapier sharp wit to boot.

Pregnant women and the motion sickness-plagued nibble on candied morsels of ginger to stave off nausea – much better than the chemicals your pharmacist will try to push on you (and take it from someone who never had to fight anybody for the window seat, it works). And on a cold, dreary, rainy-snowy day, nothing beats sweet, gingery, yam “soup.”

It’s not a soup, really… more like dessert. The Chinese believe all food is therapeutic and, therefore, even desserts are good for you… but that is material for another column.

Here’s what you do: Grab a knob of ginger about half the size of your fist, scrape off it’s skin with a spoon, slice it poker chip thin, then dump it into, say, five quarts of water with a generous handful of dried dates and a couple of skinned, chunked yams.

Quantities aren’t exact here. Want it spicier? Throw in more ginger. Sweeter? More dates or some dark brown sugar (I like the molasses flavor). Love yams? The more the merrier. Bring everything to a boil and keep it on a slow simmer for at least 45 minutes. By then, your kitchen will smell, well, gingery, datey and yammy… way better than hot chocolate.

Photograph from Uplifting Arts on Flickr

We’ve all done it. Laughed hysterically at half-baked English translations on menus, street signs, packaging, and the like. The seafood special of “fried rice with crap” doesn’t sound terribly appetizing, and you and your buds can’t wait to patronize the Gentlemen’s Club that boasts “special cocktail for ladies with nuts.” Yet, would you rather there be no translation?

First published in:

The Torch
Thursday, May 10, 2007 – Volume 53 Issue 28
Arts & Entertainment Page 9

Photograph from Moyogo on Flickr

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t amused… maybe even slightly mortified. But I’ve also encountered more than my fair share of otherwise perfectly reasonable and intelligent people who readily go beyond good natured ribbing into dancing around, sniggering “Nyah, nyah, nyah… your English sucks!” territory.

And while I agree that the “seafood special” of “fried rice with crap” doesn’t sound terribly appetizing, I can’t help but ask: Would you rather there be no translation?

After all, if you could read the menu/road sign/etc. in the original Japanese/ Spanish/ Tagalog/ Indonesian, the descriptions, I’m sure, are likely to be eloquent enough. So what these people have done, pretty much, is attempt to make your experience in their restaurant/city/place of interest more accessible.

And you sneer at them.

What’s that? What’s that you say? They’re mangling English, YOUR language? And you “can’t stand it”? You should hear yourself butcher your “Just Enough French” phrasebook. And thank the market vendor for keeping a straight face when you asked for “un gros carottes.”

Oh yes, I’m perfectly aware it’s not one-way. That market vendor probably tells everyone how the bold American chick unabashedly asked for “un gros carottes” – in broad daylight, no less!

Just keep in mind that basketballer Marcus Camby has the Chinese character for “ghost” tattooed on his neck. Not a prank, merely the unfortunate fact that “I’ve got soul” lost its original nuances and gained new ones in the translation process.

You know the drill. Languages are so complex that flawless translations are almost impossible. Which is why tonight, I’ll be tossing back “wine that leaves you nothing to hope for” with the beau, while we puzzle out the wisdom on a fortune cookie slip I got recently: “Confucius says, love in triangles not in squares”.

Smiling, not sniggering.

Photograph from tankgrrl on Flickr

Photograph from SiFu Renka on Flickr