dumplings

My head has been filled with dumplings lately. Not only is my new work-in-progress novel tentatively titled "Dumpling Days," one of the stories in my upcoming early reader Ling & Ting prominently features dumpling making: With so many dumplings in my head, I decided there was no time like the present to accomplish #4 of my new year's resolutions: make my own dumplings!

My goal this year is to try a few different dumpling recipes and figure out which one I like best. When I recently read on Jama Rattigan's blog that her book "Dumpling Soup" was having it's 15 year anniversary (wow!), I knew her recipe was the one I wanted to try first.
"Dumpling Soup" was one of the few multicultural picturebooks around when I began my journey as an author/illustrator, it was one of the books that inspired me to write about my own cultural heritage. So, why not start my dumpling making experience with a book that started my book-making experience? Seemed fitting to me!

So, following the Yang family recipe, I murdered a cabbage. It was gruesome, I chopped it into many pieces. I didn't know I could be so cruel:


Then I mixed meat:

and folded the dumplings:

Don't they look good? They are not as nice as my mom's, but I was proud.

Then I cooked them

and ate them! YUM!
These dumplings are going to be hard to beat, but I plan on making the Lin family recipe next...