Lunchbox Moments

26/09/2021

MASSIVE THANK YOU for all of your support. We have donated over $6,000 to and digital sales are continuing on our website through October.

11/08/2021

Believe it or not, this past weekend was the first time our three co-curators saw each other in person since the start of the pandemic!
Stop 1 was dim sum at

07/08/2021

Thank you for listing in your weekend roundup!

05/08/2021

Our designers and illustrated food items to match those referenced in some of our stories.

Each item can be found in the table of contents and in its corresponding piece in the exact same placement on the page. This choice emphasizes the paper cutout motif by making each drawing appear as if it was carved out of the page itself.

Which food items can you recognize?

art

03/08/2021

Digital PDF version now available!

Thanks to all of your wonderful support, we have sold out our entire print run and have now raised over $6,000 for !

We still want to share our stories, so a PDF version is now available at a suggested contribution of $15, but with the option to name your own price. Link in bio.

01/08/2021

*Shipping Update* All orders will ship this week!

If you already received a shipping notification, your copy is with the USPS even if the tracking number doesn’t show the package as scanned.

21/07/2021

We are now shipping! And excited to announce that the print run has sold out.

Digital PDF versions will soon be available on our shop with a suggested contribution of $15.

06/07/2021

This isn’t our zine, this is the wonderful work of and their collection of work on Chinatowns.

We can’t wait to read it.

30/06/2021

The physical proof is here!
We’re getting ready to print, and it’s incredible to hold Lunchbox Moments in our hands.

It’s your last chance to purchase a physical copy (link in bio) so don’t miss out.

21/06/2021

AAPI cookbooks we love by Diann: Andrea Nguyen's Vietnamese Food Any Day. What I love about this cookbook is how she provides culturally appropriate substitutions to famed Vietnamese flavors and foodways. It's not just replace _ with _ because you can, but out of the necessity of creating similar flavor profiles with more accessible ingredients. Ever since I purchased this cookbook from , I've found myself "accidentally" having the right ingredients to make one of her recipes - a testament to the mileage of possibilities with her recipes. Notably, while doing a dumpling demo for my pro culinary program , Andrea was the first person I encountered who validated that it's *not uncommon* to use a tortilla press to make dumpling wrappers (as my grandma always did) - that such a practice was again a reflection of diasporic necessity.

18/06/2021

Shirley's comfort food this week: I've been missing that particular crunch meets savory sauciness that HK-style crispy noodles brings. I decided to make some with what I had in the pantry - spaghetti, shiitake mushrooms, bean sprouts, baby bok choy, green onions, garlic, and fish-flavored tofu. Years ago, while married to a vegetarian, I started adapting recipes into vegetarian versions. I believe I adapted Eileen Yin-Fei Lo's recipe years ago, and now I just make this out of habit. (If using regular tofu, I would have marinated it.) Here, I used some of the mushroom soaking water for the sauce, thickened with cornstarch, and seasoned with shaohsing wine, vegetarian oyster sauce, soy, sesame oil, and white pepper. This hit the spot!

16/06/2021

Part of the inspiration for our zine was born out of the desire to showcase narratives above and beyond the disgusting immigrant food trope, much like this piece.

https://www.eater.com/22239499/lunchbox-moment-pop-culture-tropes

Posted • For I wrote about the seemingly ubiquitous “lunchbox moment,” and what happens when a story that is very real for a lot of immigrants/children of immigrants is flattened into a trope. Link in bio!

14/06/2021

AAPI cookbooks we love by Shirley: If you know me, you know that I adore cookbooks. I can spend hours lost in the pages of cookbooks. The selection in this pic is from my Chinese cookbooks, which I have been accumulating for 20 some years now. It gives me great joy to read about new techniques (new to me, that is), diasporic influences on different versions of dishes, as well as absorbing the stories surrounding the recipes. I am particularly in love with vintage cookbooks, which reflect a particular time and place and access to particular ingredients.

11/06/2021

AAPI businesses we love by Diann: Smile Market I and II. Never be phased by a suburban Asian market in a strip mall. The original Smile is the standby for the Korean population here - even though there's the comparative megastore KP Market two exits away. Just when you think you have seen everything in this market, another aisle wends into another and pretty soon you find yourself lost in the seaweed and anchovies. Notably, there's a front case with an assortment of readymade banchan, and a hot case of croquettes behind the cashier that will undoubtedly tempt me with a crispy impulse buy. A second market opened up the street at the beginning of the shelter, and now offers Mandarin-Korean food. Quite possibly some of the best and meatiest jajangmyun I've had, and enough for leftovers for days.

09/06/2021

AAPI restaurants that we love : There used to be a restaurant in Chinatown, right before the Broadway Tunnel, called Hing Lung. I knew it for Cantonese favorites like the stewed beef brisket with rice noodle rolls (as pictured here) and cozy bowls of congee accompanied by freshly fried footlong Chinese donuts. In other words, comforting carbs. After returning from my travels to China in 2018, I heard from the restaurant rumor mill that Hing Lung had reincarnated in the guise of a ramen restaurant close to Tanforan in San Bruno. Visiting the one time I did, I felt more than satisfied that this long-loved restaurant had found a new home, tucked away in strip mall on the Peninsula. In researching the restaurant's current status, I found more surprises: that maybe that restaurant in San Bruno is or isn't related to the original, and the original has re-opened in South San Francisco on Grand Ave. I no longer live close enough to visit right away, but I can't be the only one to wonder: how far would you go for comfort and carbs?

07/06/2021

Purchase your copy today!

You can now pre-order Lunchbox Moments Zine. Limited print copies are available.

shop.lunchboxmoments.com

Cover illustration by Haylie Chan and Jeffrey Liu

05/06/2021

Thank you to the City of Palo Alto - Public Agency for hosting our reading event.

Check out a recording below featuring our contributors and the powerful emotion behind their stories.

Do you remember being made fun of for cultural foods you brought to school? Or did you never have a lunchbox moment?Benefiting San Francisco Chinatown, Lunch...

04/06/2021

AAPI restaurants we love : As wrote about in a late 2019 article in the , the possibilities of toppings, noodles, and serving styles that hu tieu offers is dizzyingly delicious and a reflection of its Chinese/Cambodian/Vietnamese foodways. When I first visited Bamboo Noodle House a week before the shelter-in-place last year, I chose the hu tieu Nam Vang dai Kho. If I could attach a texture to the rare few weeks of mild spring weather in Sacramento (where you begin to feel a sweat coming on in March), it would be embodied in the the tender chewiness of the translucent noodles, bathed in between sips of the clear, refreshing soup and nibbles of the meaty bits.

03/06/2021

Thank you KQED and Luke Tsai for sharing the word about our zine.

*Orders to go live on Monday, June 7th at the link in the comments*

https://www.kqed.org/arts/13898185/lunchbox-moments-zine-anti-asian-racism-aapi-sf-chinatown

The charity zine riffs on the “stinky lunchbox” trope to raise money for SF Chinatown restaurants.

02/06/2021

The "lunchbox moment" of our name - a seemingly harmless microaggression twisted into "casual racism" - often seeds itself in popular television shows.

https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/gilmore-girls-asian-american-problem

Posted • “‘Gilmore Girls’ is a contradiction in and of itself: It’s a show that wants to love its Asian American cast while reveling in tasteless anti-Asian humor, a show that tried to represent Asians well but never quite gave the task its proper due.” Read “The Joy—and Pain—of Being an Asian American ‘Gilmore Girls’ Fan” at the link in our bio! (Photo credit: Netflix)

31/05/2021

Lunchbox Moments contributors will be joining forces with and on June 9, 2021 at 7pm PDT for a virtual storytelling event.

We’ll be serving up food stories to highlight and support our beloved neighborhood, San Francisco Chinatown.

Visit tinyurl.com/rrpforgingourfutures for more info and tickets.

Live captioning and ASL interpretation will be available.​ Tickets are $0-20 sliding scale. All proceeds will be donated to our community partners - (us!) The first 25 people who purchase tickets at the $20 level will be sent a special event gift that will include items from Chinatown businesses and partner organizations.

28/05/2021

AAPI restaurants we love by Shirley: I love the housemade wheat gluten puffs combo at Lucky Creation. Chewy, toothsome puffs come in several savory flavors: sweet and sour, a soy braise, Chinese bbq, and a yellow curry. The beancurd rolls, vegetables in a crispy taro nest, and pan fried noodles are also good bets at this all-vegetarian hole in the wall on Washington.

27/05/2021

Don't forget to register for our reading this coming Sunday @ 11 AM PST.

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0of-GopjguGtVFjPu0H2fmjK52esxMIntV

Posted • May is Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage (AAPI) Month and we are celebrating with a series of events hosted by the Library, Community Services Department, and many community partners! These groups have come together to deliver a series of events for our entire community to recognize and celebrate the culture and contributions of our AAPI community. Happy AAPI Month! Learn more and find events at cityofpaloalto.org/AAPIHeritageMonth or use the link in our bio!

26/05/2021

Here's a shoutout to the online magazine The Universal Asian and the work they do to provide a safe space for and the complexities of the diaspora. Be sure to give them a follow to be up to the minute on their latest articles and events.

24/05/2021

Featuring the previous work of zine contributor Nancy Hom Arts. Nancy has been an artist, writer, and curator in San Francisco for over 45 years. Through her posters, poetry, installations, and curatorial work, she has used the arts to affirm the histories, struggles, and contributions of communities of color. Her mandala projects range from personal reflections to community-engaged storytelling.

To see what Nancy designed for our zine, sign up for our mailing list:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd-yL-c8JcUmvq0X-Pndi2g7ni5nvfOXH6FnFP-YIbjCzv1Vg/viewform

Image credit: Nancy Hom (2020), Opal's Mandala, 4-ft diameter. Mixed media. http://nancyhomarts.com/