07 May 2009

All The Chinese I Need

I enjoy many variations of Asian cuisine, including my hometown's single Cantonese & Dim Sum restaurant, and my favorites from the many Thai restaurants, sushi joints, Japanese Teriyaki houses, and even the occasional MSG purveyor.

Invariably, the climax of many of these meals is heralded by the presence of a fortune cookie. These days, the fortune cookie is the ONE food item I will no longer put in my mouth. It irks me that after all the tasty Asian food I've eaten, they hand me a funky cookie that sticks to every exposed tooth surface.

Did the Broccoli Beef stick to my teeth?
No.
The Pad Prik?
No.
The green curry?
No.
The sukiyaki (w/ raw egg, of course)?
No.
Not even the damn sushi STICKY rice sticks to my teeth.

But I eat one tiny fortune cookie and I spend the next half hour using six toothpicks to knock that bastard loose.

So about four years ago I just quit eating them. However, due to my love of reading things and smashing things, coupled with my desire to know what my fortune is, I now just use my fist like a hammer to shatter them to bits (or use more delicate methods when decorum requires) and pluck the fortune from the wreckage.

I sometime find the fortunes themselves to be amusing, and the "...in bed"-suffix game is always fun. Yet I've never been too taken with the 'Learn Chinese' side of the paper. That is until I cracked open two last week (we had an excess due to a catering mistake) and beheld all the Chinese I would ever need to know.
Shanghai here I come.

What's your favorite fortune cookie fortune story?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

kreg - Ive never even seen a fortune cookie never mind having ate one :( but if i do, i will be sure to bring some toothpicks.

Something Happened Somewhere Turning said...

I think they make them with wet cardboard. ummh...cardboard.
I once had a cookie that showed you how to say thank you. I would say it all the time and then I finally had to stop when I realized the waiters and waitresses were speaking back to me and I had no idea what they were saying.

Bj in Dallas said...

mine said "you will travel to exotic faraway places' and the next day I had to go to Waco....

kind of pissed me off.