I didn't grow up eating chinese food and I always used to envy those people I saw having chinese take-out from those awesome boxes with chopsticks. There were chinese restaurants around our town but it just wasn't a food that my parents grew up eating so it was never an option when deciding what to have for dinner each night. We had PF Changs once but my mom wasn't too impressed and I was such a picky eater when I was young that I refused to try anything on the menu besides the great wall of chocolate. Fast forward to high school when the chinese buffet came into my life. I will still pretty safe when it came to eating foods at the buffet (translation: pretty much any food I ate at the buffet could be found at most restaurants and wasn't specific to a chinese buffet). But the idea of Chinese food was suddenly on the radar and we went for the Chinese buffet every now and then. However, when I went to college the idea of Chinese food never entered my mind except for the one time someone asked me to go to Panda Express which had just opened not too far from campus and I said no.
Now let's move on to today well just a few weeks ago. I was at my brother's house looking for leftovers to eat for dinner and he took out the coveted chinese take out box I had always envied. Curious I asked what it was and he said General Tso's chicken, and of course I not knowing anything about chinese food proceeded to say "is that a restaurant?" He laughed and made fun of me a little (he can never pass up an opportunity to tease me) but then told me it was actually a chicken dish you can get at a lot of chinese restaurants. I'm more adventurous when it comes to eating and trying new foods now so I decided to try a piece of General Tso's even though my brother said it was spicy, when I popped that piece of chicken in my mouth it felt like a little piece of heaven. Just the right amount of spicy, a little sweet, and a little sour. There wasn't much left so I didn't really get another piece but my mouth and brain filed General Tso's chicken into an acceptable dish to eat.
Today I had a craving for Chinese for the first time and decided to go order Chinese take out at a restaurant in Hillsborough called China Fuji. I'm glad I knew what I wanted at least for my main dish because the menu was overwhelming, and since I had the choice of a side (egg roll, wonton soup, egg drop soup) I chose Wonton soup hoping it would be another slice of heaven in my mouth. I got home, and opened the paper sack that my food was contained in and was disappointed that I didn't get the Chinese take-out box but quickly put the thought aside and opened up General Tso's chicken and put it in my mouth and it was still as good as I remembered.The wonton soup was not such a hit, I wasn't a fan of the dumplings but I can try egg drop soup next time.
So that's my Chinese food story, I'm quite excited if you can't already tell that I can finally say that I like Chinese and if someone asks me to go out for Chinese I can say yes and really mean it. I'm sure most of you who had Chinese growing up think this really weird but hey it was enough to brighten my otherwise monotonous week.
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