Friday Night Jiaozi!

The one word that I remembered in Chinese prior to my return to China was jiaozi, or dumplings. From Day One, it has been our quest to find more and more jiaozi. We have found it in restaurants, frozen at the supermarket, and on the street. You can have it filled with the traditional pork and cabbage, pork and lotus root, egg and tomato (or the “breakfast jiaozi” as wee like to call it), spinach, onion, shrimp, chicken, beef. These little pockets can be filled with just about everything. We have had them steamed, pan fried and even deep-fried. Last Friday, we even had some homemade.

One of Laura’s students is from Wuhan, so she said that her mother would come over to Laura’s apartment and make her some jiaozi. Laura (knowing that we would all be INSANELY jealous) asked if all 7 of us could partake in the delicious. She was more than happy to feed all of us. Not only did Natasha, her friend Cecilia, and her mother (whom we all affectionately refer to as Mama Jiaozi) bring dumplings, they also brought all of the dishes we would need and moon cakes for dessert. Mama Jiaozi made all of the dumplings at home, so I couldn’t peer over her shoulder taking copious notes on how she made them, but they did boil them fresh at Laura’s place. Mama Jiaozi holed herself up in the tiny little kitchen cooking away. At one point, both Natasha and Cecilia were both in there with her and we were trying to figure out whose class Cecilia was in. You have to understand that we each have around 150 students. I am bad with names and some of them are so painfully shy that they barely look up enough to get a look at their face. That being said, I knew that she wasn’t one of mine (I knew that I did not have a Cecilia) and Laura was giving Nick a lot of crap because he couldn’t remember if she was his or not. It turns out that she was also one of Laura’s students, a fact that she will not live down any time soon.

I can’t believe how much I ate! The jiaozi just kept coming and we just kept eating. Katie was trying to be polite and keep eating (far past the point of being stuffed), but I had to call it quits. Then we had some pineapple moon cakes, which are my favorite flavor that I have tried thus far.

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