Won't you take me to Chinatown?

Dear City Gay:

My sincerest apologies to you and our (4) readers. I have seriously fallen off the blog wagon. In fact, I think I have seriously fallen off the cooking wagon in the last month. I did bake cookies a couple of weeks ago, but that was just the recipe from the back of the Nestle chocolate chips package. I hope that as the holiday baking season approaches, I will be able to get some things on the blog.

For your entertainment, though, I present an embarrassing picture of me trying to eat a pork soup dumpling at Joe's Shanghai while I was in New York City last week.


Joe's Shanghai, located in Chinatown, is famous for steamed dumplings that have soup in them. The question, of course, is how does one get soup in the dumpling? I found out the soup is frozen then put ina dumpling to be steamed. The real challenge comes in eating the dumpling. A diner puts soy sauce in a soup spoon, gently places the dumpling on the spoon, tears or bites a hole into the dumpling, gets some soy sauce into the dumpling, and then tries to eat the dumpling without burning the mouth or making a complete mess. I was successful in eating the dumpling without burning myself, but I made a terrible mess.

The dumplings were a great appetizer from a menu that has 149 choices. The main part of the meal included beef with broccoli, sesame chicken, shrimp pan fried noodles, and eggplant with garlic (with pork). (There were five of us eating, so I didn't snarf all of this by myself.)

There were other amazing restaurants during the trip, but Joe's Shanghai (and the journey through Chinatown) was certainly one of the best.

Happy belated Thanksgiving.

Love always,
Country Gay