Recipe Box

I just finished a column about my recipe box and how all those handwritten recipes have a personal history that recipes pulled off the Internet just don't.  It was fun to go through my old recipes and remember me and my big hair in the kitchen when my kids were little.

I didn't put this one in my column because I figured it might buy me some trouble--trouble not worth causing--but I loved TRQ's recipe for "Vegetable Chow Ding."  I can imagine her discovering this one in the seventies when dang!  They started selling exotic stuff like canned "water chestnuts" (whole or sliced) and "bamboo shoots" in the grocery store where ordinary Americans could buy them.

Think of the possibilities!  Create a recipe.  Slap a made-up Chinese name on it.  And boom.  You're ready to go.