Chinese Food With Raisins

Welcome to this installment of Friday's Fun Family Facts.

Disclaimer: My mother is a fabulous cook. Even when she makes foods, such as the ones I'm about to describe, they are still made very well. The only way you will truly understand this blog is to read it through the eyes of a 7 year old boy that would rather be eating ice cream and cookies...

My mom was notorious for making outlandish meals for dinner. I can remember nights where I would innocently come to the table to partake of the days nourishment only to find that we were having rabbit. Now, I know there is nothing wrong with rabbit. Many people eat rabbit and love it, but I, being a boy of active imagination, could not help feeling like I wanted to run and check on Floppy in the next room. You see, we had rabbits for pets -- I just couldn't stomach the thought...

Anyway, this blog is about the food so let me get back to it. One thing that my mom was very good at making, but that I was very bad at eating was an assortment of stir-fried dishes. Looking back I see that these dishes came from a variety of different ethnicity's ranging from your classic American/Asian stir-fry to an authentic Thai, but to my uncultured 7 year old brain it was all Chinese food.

On this particular night we were having "Chinese food". Accept this night, for reasons that are so far removed from my ability to comprehend them that they seemed to be the musings of a crazy person, Mom decided to put raisins in it. So the concoction consisted of tofu, bean sprouts, water chestnuts and raisins (or something like that...).

Now, I ask you, what was I supposed to do with that? Obviously, I wasn't going to eat it. There was no chance that I would be able to pawn it off on one of my siblings. And, if my memory serves me right, my dog opted to stay in the living room during dinner that night.

You can look down on me if you want, but desperate times call for desperate measures and I saw no safe exits so here's how my plan unfolded: I ate the tofu! Since tofu is absolutely tasteless, or rather, since it, like a dish-sponge, absorbs the taste of whatever it touches, I soaked it in soy sauce and threw it back. The water chestnuts made it to the toilet in a napkin that was sacrifice for the good of the cause. The bean sprouts and raisins, in a move of sheer panic found there way to my sock. After dinner, when the crowd had dispersed, I went outside and did what any normal person would have done; I emptied my sock behind the propane tank.

Tune in next week for something that matters!