November 17, 2010

• Potsticker Diplomacy.

   

  I love potstickers.  Potstickers, man doo, gyoza…those culinary gifts of crispy carbs that give way to little sinful bursts of meat and veggies…are the perfect blend of taste and texture.  It’s not just the flavor that makes them special.  One of my fondest memories of childhood is sitting around the table wrapping hundreds of potstickers with my sisters while my dad would pretend he was some famous chef and cook them in a way—homogenously crisped on the bottom, tender on the top—that to this day I am still unable to replicate.

   

  I love potstickers so much that if I had only one day left to live, my last three meals would be:

   

  1)     McDonald’s sampler platter

  2)     Ribeye with truffle/mushroom risotto

  3)     Potstickers dipped in green label Kikkoman soy sauce (although if the world was ending, I might as well use the pro-hypertension red label)

   

  I love them so much that during my one hundred hour work weeks during residency and fellowship—yes, I was old school, unlike the wussy schedules residents have now!—I would sacrifice a few hours of sleep once in a while to stay up and make three hundred or so potstickers from scratch with Conan O’Brien and bad movies on the SciFi Channel keeping me company.

   

  When my then girlfriend, now wife would come over and visit, the first thing I would always do was ask if she was hungry (it’s a Taiwanese thing) and then offer to cook her some of my homemade potstickers.  Years later, during one of our “who loves the other person more” arguments, I brought up the fact that I would always offer her some of my ever-dwindling supply of precious potstickers, to which she replied, “oooohhh, I’ve always wondered why you used to offer me cheap potstickers to eat whenever I would come over!”

   

  What?!

   

  All those years we both failed to grasp the meaning those potstickers held for each another.  For myself, it was more than just offering my favorite food, but also a sacrifice of time and an extension of a family tradition.  For her, they were just cheap things you would buy in the frozen section at the Asian grocery store that wouldn’t be your first choice to impress a future spouse (luckily I had more than potstickers to offer).  As a result, early in our dating period she wondered if I was a cheapskate and I thought she was being unappreciative. 

   

  I thought of this the other day when we were at a karaoke bar and she was trying to explain to the worker how there was a mistake and we should be refunded the money for three songs.  I corrected her in front of the guy, saying that it was actually only two songs, not three, which promptly led to an icy stare…from my wife!  In return I got upset because I felt she was injecting unnecessary drama into a logical situation.  You see, for myself, the potsticker meant getting the number of songs correct.  For her, the potsticker meant getting the unequivocal support of her husband.  Neither of us were wrong, but neither of us were correct either, because we both failed to grasp the meaning the other held about the potsticker.

   

  How often in our lives do we find ourselves in purposeless arguments, drawing proverbial lines in the sand because we fail to grasp what the potsticker means to the person across the aisle from us?

   

  The ground zero mosque, illegal immigration and health care reform were all issues that millions of people across America argued about this past year, yet instead of trying to see what the potsticker meant to the other person, both sides dug trenches and used their potsticker as a shield.  Political discourse in this country would have been a lot gentler had both sides engaged in some potsticker diplomacy.

   

  On a personal level, whether it be time, money, sex, in-laws, which school to send our children to, or something as mundane as picking pizza or sushi for dinner one could reckon that the majority of the ill effects of our disagreements with loved ones, if not the disagreements themselves, are rooted in the fact that we fail to grasp the meaning the potsticker has for the other person.  All of which is silly when to do so all you have to do is simply ask the other person.

   

  My wife is going on a trip this week and since I haven’t really cooked a meal since we got married, I’m going to have to go back to my bachelor days of pizza and potstickers.  I won’t be wrapping potstickers from scratch, since that is now a married couple tradition, so I’ll just have to rely on the Asian market to feed me while she’s gone but don’t worry; I’ll save some potstickers for her when she gets home.

  • 3:17 am
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