I Gotta Good Jook to Tell

My weak attempt at a little Chinese humor. Jook is actually rice porridge, maybe you remember what Oliver Twist asked for more of ? Unfortunately because of that memory association - it was a great movie musical though - rice porridge has a terrible reputation.

Anyway, the reason I bring jook up is because at our Fairfield Inn & Suites last Sunday we had a group of 23 “mainland” Chinese stay. Wow, we thought, here’s a great possibility of a group tour lead. As it turned out as we dug deeper as to who and why these people came to Sebastopol of all places to visit, a business in town actually has something manufactured in China where these people work. And the American business owner decided to bring his Chinese employees over to the US for short tour of the Bay Area and his headquarters in Sebastopol. What a great boss - all expenses paid for 23 employees.

So, because our family is Chinese and we have traveled extensively to Mainland China, Hong Kong etc - we know about missing recognizable food from home. So we made a large soup pot of jook and brought it to them to have for breakfast the next morning. Jook is very versatile because it can be eaten for breakfast, lunch, dinner, when you’re sick, late night snack - anytime really. Well, they loved loved loved it and ate every bit.

Lastly, we added something extra to our jook that a Chinese person will appreciate, preserved scallops - phew, very stinky, fishy smell - but yummy in the jook.  Which brings me back to Oliver Twist, that fishy smell will uphold the negative memories of rice porridge as much as the association with it being the gruel that Oliver ate in the orphanage.

Oh and finally, sometimes a hotel will go the extra mile to put a smile on a wary traveler’s face especially if they’ve travelled over 13 hours to get to us.