Worst Quality Crab

This episode is from the live event we did back in May as part of KALW's celebration of AAPI Heritage Month with all around brilliant delightful human Bonnie Tsui, author of American Chinatown, On Muscle, and Why We Swim. 

Bonnie shares her experiences growing up in Long Island, what it was like having an endless supply of imperfect fortune cookies (and their schoolyard trading value!) and her continued trek back to family in Queens. 

She shares about her natural (or nurtured?) affinity for Chinatowns, how it led her to write her book, and Freesia and Sam share their own (sometimes overlapping) experiences with two of the Chinatowns in Bonnie’s book.

We also talk about Bonnie’s semi-successful experience making fortune cookies at home, about what the best type of fortune cookie is, and some audience members share their fortunes! We hope they came true! 

Special thanks to:

Charles Lighthouse for hosting and recording

Michelle Liu for taking photos

Sara Corbett for additional assistance

We’re back with some Singaporean bangers courtesy of actor, director, and producer Yvonne Chapman of Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Air Bender and Hulu’s The Season. She shares her mom’s lahksa and curry chicken with us and gives us a glimpse into the Calgary Asian experience (spoiler: kids are still kids and will/won’t try things!)

We talk with her about growing up with Singaporean and Hong Kong influences, adding on more classes as a way to deal with the stress of classes, and her path from pre-med to finance to acting!

Of course we talk about Avatar and The Season, the badass Avatar Kyoshi, and the Venn Diagram of viewers who might be watching both at the same time (Freesia!!). Plus a shared childhood seaweed moment and shout out to the OG of reusable containers, Country Crock.

We took a little break but we came back with not one but two fantastic guests: friends and fellow artists, Christy Chan and Cathy Lu, who coincidentally picked the very same dish, tomato egg, despite having grown up a thousand miles apart. But maybe that just speaks to how much of a classic this dish is (and I guess the point of this show!)

We talk about Cathy’s life growing up in vibrant, diverse Miami, and the contrast of Christy’s childhood in rural Virginia where her family owned the one Chinese restaurant–and tikki themed at that! Of course we talk about how they each came to be artists, and why their AAPI identity is a part of their art practice. Plus, fashionable pregnancies and the freedom that can come from being just a touch feral!

Ahead of Mother’s Day we’re talking to Cassandra Lam of Mama Lam’s about her own mama’s Malaysian curry chicken that she ate almost weekly growing up.

Her mom missed Malaysian flavors so much that she perfected her curry paste, plus a few others, and Mama Lam’s was born. We talk with Cassandra about growing up with a Malaysian mom, Cantonese dad, and as a New Yorker, making the leap from marketing to a small food business, and her OG food pop-ups. And of course, we spend time talking about Mama Lam herself. She’s not a regular Tiger Mom, she’s a chill Tiger Mom.

Plus Cassandra talks us through the other Mama Lam’s products and gives us great tips on what to make with them. Not even sponsored at all. We just love this curry paste and can attest to how good this curry chicken is!!

We’re back with more beef stew and we couldn’t be more delighted to have guest Ingrid Hu Dahl share her very special Taiwanese American recipe with us. 

Author of Sun Shining On Morning Sun, Ingrid tells us about her mom’s recipe, the ways in which this classic beef noodle soup became a beef stew, and what it was like growing up the hapa child of a Taiwanese immigrant mom and Scandinavian American dad in 1980s central New Jersey. 

Plus, what it was like growing up with a mom who was at the forefront of AI (yay? eek?), summers in Taiwan, becoming courageously bold and boldly courageous, and the magical mysteries beheld behind kitchen doors.