Grandma's Dumplings

I was thinking about my grandma (Mom's Mom) today. She died nearly a year ago (and her birthday was two weeks ago), and I have many fond food memories associated with her. I bought a big coffee table type cookbook today called The Food of China, and something in there reminded me of her teaching me how to roll little round dumplings at her old house in East Van when I was a little girl. We sat together in her kitchen, dusted with flour, rolling a table-full of the little white balls with our hands. There's probably an equivalent food activity like that in every culture where little ones can sit down and learn and help in the kitchen. It's a very sweet memory. I also remember folding wun tun with my Mom and Dad all through my childhood and teen years. I remember going to my Grandma's house (which was just across the alley from the house I grew up in), which smelled distinctively of kitchen grease on those special occassion days when the whole extended family gathered there and she cooked for us all. Later in her life, we always gathered at her favourite Chinese restaurant (the upstairs No.1 Seafood Restaurant at 1st Avenue and Renfrew), where the staff all knew her and flirted and joked with her constantly. But when I was really little, I remember all the relatives from my Mom's side gathering at the old house with the worn, dark green carpet. Without my bounty of store-bought toys with me, I would play "restaurant" with what I could find, serving anyone who would humour me, plates of old string spaghetti, and using the broken black rotary phone to make all those important restauranteur phone calls I needed to make. The kitchen of my chef-owned restaurant was behind the beat-up recliner in the living room. Grandma would be in the real kitchen, making things like mountains of deep fried dumplings. She made round, dark brown ones decorated with a few sesame seeds, filled with sweet black paste, and chewy, flat white semi-circle ones with crimped edges, filled with bits of dried shrimp, meat, and vegetables. I have only eaten the ones made by my grandma, and in fact, have never seen them anywhere else. I think I would appreciate those white ones even more now, since I've finally aquired a taste for those dried shrimp, but I always liked the dumplings anyway, and always associated them with Grandma. I always think of her smiling and laughing too, both then and now. I miss her, and am thankful for my warm and distinct memories of her.

Incidentally, I found a great line in that cookbook I bought. For the dish, "Ants Climbing Trees" - a spicy Sichuan dish of bean thread noodles and ground pork - the authors caution "Make sure you separate all the ground meat as it cooks, or it will form large lumps and not resemble ants at all." Because, of course, everyone wants their food to resemble bugs whenever possible! Well, at least I do!