Bringing Mom Home

Mother's Day (and similarly, Father's Day)are always difficult holidays for me. Honestly, any event involving honoring or displaying "thankfulness" are hard for me. What exactly do you give someone to really show them that you love and appreciate them? Can any thing actually do that?

parents are particularly hard. they are the people you owe the most to and who do the most for you. i don't care what you say, it's true. yes, sometimes (or often times)they annoy you, frustrate you, and irritate you, but, it's always out of love. and while you may forget that sometimes, their birthday and nationally recognized holidays are the few days that you absolutely can't forget. in fact, you're forced to recognize it.

i pondered real hard for what to get my mother this Mothers' Day. she's had a pretty rough 2010-2011 having dealt with her illness and treatment, recent diagnosis of diabetes, a tax return crisis involving Prudential, and taking care of all the kids (my cousins + my overly rebellious sister + even me, sometimes). somehow, jsut giving her stuff didn't seem appropriate, particularly since Mom never really needs anything (except for perhaps a live-in maid or weekly maid service-ooo, perhaps birthday present?). after much thought, i decided to make my mom breakfast/brunch.

i'm not talking about your run-of-the-mill omelettes and toast here. my mom's from Taipei and most of her family still lives there, including her sister, brother, and her parents. her dislike of flying (the 15-17 hour flight time doesn't help) and her work, has made it so that she rarely goes back to visit her family or the Taipei she grew up in. since i can't exactly bring my maternal family over from Taipei for the weekend (perhaps one day, when i'm a Rockefeller), i decided to make her a Taiwanese breakfast complete with traditional Taiwanese foods.

a lot of Taiwanese breakfast foods center around flour and dough. i have no idea why. it's completely delicious, but pretty time-consuming, particularly when working with yeast. and to make Hakka-style Bacon requires pretty much a whole day of marinating before you cook it. it pretty hard to do all that in secret in order to properly surprise Mom so, aside from the marinating, i had to do most of it the  morning of. while waking up on a weekend morning at 7 a.m. is never easy, Mom's satisfaction and stamp of approval on all the foods (which i prepared from scratch) made it all worth it.




Hakka-Style Bacon aka





Shen Jian Bao; although the dough was a little thick, this was well-received, particularly by my carnivorous cousin WongWong.

Breakfast Rice Rolls aka ; these are supposed to be made prettier, but whatevs, they still tasted the way they were supposed to. every Taiwanese child has received these at some point when going on a school field trip.



i also made a Pan-Fried Oyster Omelette aka  but it came out the complete anti-thesis of how it should look. luckily, the taste was passable, but i refused to photograph it based on principle. you can see it, the Sesame Chicken Soup, and Fried Cruellers in the picture below.