Welcome to the first of a tiny series of memories. I started Sherry's Palette long ago originally as a dumping ground for any and all types of creative work and more so, a space to write down little memories, often food-based, of my upbringing. While I've steered away trying to sell greeting cards and all, I'm excited to return to this precious corner here. I'm trying to approach it from the mindset of not overthinking both the words or artwork - also a space for me to not be bound by any specific kind of aesthetic. Enjoy.
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This is a flour and sugar story, but probably not what you think… I’m not making cookies!
My grandma has been long gone now, but she was a very sweet part of my life and the true matriarch of our extended family who always brought everyone together. I was lucky to have been raised by her until I was a freshman in high school, when she passed. My grandma raised six kids and several grandchildren, including me. She had a loud, commanding voice, but a sweet, caring soul. She lived through the wars - she and I shared a bedroom for most of our years together, and I remember her waking up from bad dreams saying she needed to hide from soldiers. She had little education and lived mostly a very poor life until my parents brought them over to America, first living in Sonoma before moving to San Francisco. I think especially of her and my grandpa (who I knew even less) and my parents and their resilience in their moves through the chaotic times they faced.
My grandma cooked many humble dishes, which I would like to share more of as I dig through my own memories. I’d say some of them were not exactly nutritious and many borne out of poverty, so we have literally flour and sugar.
We called it 煎粉 ("zeen fun"), which literally translates to fried flour. It’s really just flour mixed with water, which was then pan-fried on the stovetop. You can think of it as a green scallion pancake, but less fancy - sometimes they did have scallions in them, but often they were plain. She’d set it on a plate on our table lined with Chinese newspapers, with a jar of sugar. We poured as much sugar as wanted on them, wrapped them up and delighted in the crunch of that granulated sugar in that pillowy dough.
It's a tiny snippet of my food memories that I rarely shared since I mean, who’s proud of eating flour and sugar in that way? Especially not as a grown up dietitian, but these days, I think it’s actually not quite so different from just regular pancakes and maple syrup. :)