10 • June 2014 • UPBEAT TIMES.com Living to Eat


Sonoma County, CA. ~ “Does he eat to live or live to eat,” I quipped. I felt quite clever—a thirteen year old daughter siz- ing up her dad and his values. Food was my father’s raison d’etre. His entry into the house brought a stream of Hono- lulu delicacies— bags of pig’s feet, malasadas, lomi lomi salmon, ti leaves with duck eggs covered in sticky rice. The abundance suited his temperament. Corny jokes, hearty voice, expansive, big. Not obese, but full enough so that mom called him Fatso, Fat Daddy-O, Fat Fat. The names bounced off him and some of them landed on me—not very funny—because when you add Nya to my name, you are adding the word ‘pig’, and the family started calling me Jean Nya or Fat Jean. These names, along with cartons of ice cream, packs of candy bars, and nightly feasts, doomed me to a lifetime of food issues. My brother boycotted our res-


taurant gatherings rather than undergo the embarrassment of witnessing dad shovel food into a mouth kept open while he talked. I hated working the cash reg- is -


Summer Guide By Jean Wong • http://lijeanwong.blogspot.com


cosmopolitan, he experiment- ed with Samoan, Korean, and Vietnamese cuisines.


After I moved to California, I’d return home to visit and noticed his hair turn- ing grey; he slept more, the skin on his sleek, oily


face looked paler. He still ate with gusto, but maybe not quite so much.


One day Mom called. Dad ter i n the family gro-


cery store with its uniform canned goods, trays of animal flesh, a cash register jangling against a bland décor. As my parents got older, mom tried to cut back when she heard talk about cholesterol. She steamed and broiled in- stead of frying. She scolded and fretted, “Stop buying all that junk. I’m sick of all this fat!” But dad was incorrigible, and as Hawaii became more


was in the hospital. I flew back home. The doctor said he was fine. He’d collapsed earlier, but no problem, two more days and he’d be out. We surrounded his bed. My brother looked older and tired. Was there grey in his hair, too? He was married now and his wife and four children made the room look small. My mom sat quiet, scared. Her eyes pinned dad down, willing him to be well. Dad pointed to a newspaper ad about DK Seafood Res- taurant. “Look,” he said, “A special! A whole lobster, ten


dollars apiece. Only thing,” he added wistfully, “no take out.” We relaxed, how bad could it be? Good ole dad, still thinking of food.


That night we all drove down


to DK’s. We gorged on lobster, told the manager about our sick dad, how he was pining for a lobster. He ended up giving us two. We picked up some rolls, cold slaw, french fries, and drove back to the hospital. We burst into his room with our bags of food and saw dad look up, surprise on his face.


“Hey Fat Daddy-O, look what we brought—eat, eat!”


About Jean: Jean Wong is an award winning author writing fiction, memoir, poetry, and plays. Her work has been produced at Sixth Street Playhouse,


Petaluma Reader’s Theater and Off The Page. Her book, Sleeping with the Gods,” has recently been released.


Weird Facts & Fun Trivia - 4


Canada’s Ottawa Citizen newspaper recently printed a recipe for Chanterelle Lemon Pasta in its food section, calling for one cup of Chanterelle mushrooms. They even provided a help- ful photograph so amateur mushroom hounds could find their own growing in the wild. Unfortunately, the photograph instead showed Destroying Angels, which are deadly when eaten.


A January 1994 Reuters News Service story on Manuel Oliveira’s ice cream shop in Merida, Venezuela, reported on his 567 flavors, including onion, chili, beer, eggplant, smoked trout, spaghetti parmesan, chick- en with rice, and spinach. He said some flavors fail; he once abandoned avocado ice cream, and tossed out 99 pounds of it, because it wasn’t smooth enough.


The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.


James Oppenheim Who do you know who…


• Needs to refi nance but has poor credit or diffi cult-to-prove income? • Wants a fi xer property? • Wants to buy and has a good down payment but recently had a bankruptcy, foreclosure and/or short sale?


We can help with Hard Money loans! Call Th e Guy in the White Hat 707/523-2099 • www.sunpacmortgage.com


“Hard Money Lender Serving Sonoma County Since 1988” DRE License #01464899; NMLS License #360993


10 • June 2014 • UPBEAT TIMES Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious. ~Peter Ustinov


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24