Celebrating the Year of the Rabbit with homemade dumplings!

by June
What is the potential of some flour and a little water? This time of year, in our home, those humble ingredients are mixed together to become part of a tradition that stretches all the way to China—and back in time thousands of years.

When we first brought our babies home, we despaired of being able to give them a connection to Chinese culture in any deeply meaningful way. Living in Maine, how could we  begin to understand the complexity of one of the world's oldest and richest cultures? I remember thinking, How can we do it without a Chinese grandmother to cook and tell stories and impart wisdom handed down by generations?


We were fortunate to find other families with ties to China. With them, we celebrate each new year with dancing and singing and dumpling-making. Other families share their grandmothers and those grandmothers share their wisdom—whether it be the finer points of mah jongg or the secrets of making dumpling wrappers.


This Chinese New Year's eve, we were snowed in. But we had flour and water and the sweet promise of a day coming soon when the music would soar and the children would dance and the dragon would wind through the swirling crowd.


As families around the world did that night, we made dumplings according to the wisdom passed down to us by loving grandmothers.


We took about two cups of flour and mixed it with about a half-cup of water that is just off the boil. We stirred it with wok-size chopsticks counter-clockwise, and then when we could gather it into a ragged ball, we began to knead it with our hands. When it was soft as an earlobe (that tip could only come from a grandmother, no?), we wrapped it in plastic wrap and let it rest for a few minutes.


Then we rolled it into a snake and pinched off pieces about as big as a man's thumb. (One of our favorite cooks does it by scissoring the base of her thumb against the base of her first digit.)


Next we wielded our dumpling rollers. (One of our dearest grandmothers still uses a rung off a chair that she found decades ago, but Birch made the girls each a rolling pin from a wooden dowel. Blossom named hers Half Apple and Fern calls hers Bamboo. They use them for cookie dough at Christmas and pie crust any old time and dumplings at Chinese New Year. Even though the rollers are only about five years old now, they are already silky from rolling between the pads of little hands and dough.)

The trick to dumpling wrappers is to flatten the dough lump in one direction then another, then turn the dough and take a swipe here and a swipe there, then turn it again. With practice, a circle emerges.

On New Years' Eve, we rolled and rolled.

Then, onto the full-moon dumpling wrapper went a little filling.

A finger dipped in water traced the outer edge, and then one side got folded up until the rims touched.

Pleating is an art. We are still learning that art and will never be as fast as the grandmothers who are patient in showing us; their fingers fly. We feel clumsy in comparison. But, the eating is so good that we are willing to forgive ourselves some lumpy dumplings. So we cradled the filled dumpling and pinched and pleated from one end to the next.

Our filling was simple. We've done all kinds of elaborate fillings through the years and eaten some wondrous fillings created by our friends. But on a snowy night at home, it's always possible to have some kind of dumplings.

Simple and Fast Dumpling Filling


1/2 pound ground meat (we used turkey)
1/2 cup chopped scallion greens (we didn't have Chinese chives)
a pinch of salt
1 and 1/2 teaspoons of rice wine
a grind of pepper
1/2 teaspoon (or more, to taste) of sesame oil


Mix all the ingredients together.


Place the dumplings in a bamboo steamer and steam over high heat for about 14 minutes. Test whether the dumplings are done by cutting one open.


Our dipping sauce recipe is here.

We ate ours as we are eating all meals these cold nights...crouched around the coffee table by the fire. Even though we were one little family tucked away in one little home, we were part of a grand tradition that encircled the globe that night.

Happy Year of the Rabbit!

Living from scratch, inspired by Aunt Ella's noodles

by June

Lately, I've been very aware of the work that goes into living the way we do. Mind you, we are not up in the hills or at the end of a long road. We are not off the grid or off the clock. We can walk to the library or drive to the market in a few minutes. We have almost daily obligations to the greater world that require us to check the time, plug ourselves into meetings, grind against deadlines. And, yet, we choose to live on our little patch of land in ways that my great-grandparents would have recognized: We grow much of what we eat. We preserve what we can. We hang clothes to dry on the line and feed the sourdough starter daily. We chase the chickens out of the spring sprouts and gather eggs. We create a meal around a head of cabbage or a batch of homemade noodles. As much as we can, we live from scratch.

But why? My great-grandmother would have loved our electric dryer. The computers, the iPhones, the cameras, these would have boggled her mind. The way we live seems plain wrong-headed on days when we go-go-go then come home ravenous to a kitchen where supper begins with peeling or chopping and ends, if we're lucky, an hour later with a sink full of pots and pans and dishes.

I think the credit (surely not blame) belongs to my dear Aunt Ella. She was my grandmother's sister, and I was born on her 71st birthday. I baked her a birthday cake every year (early on using my E-Z-Bake oven), and she made me popcorn with sugar, gave me her wedding quilt when I graduated from college, and taught me to adore cooking her way.

Aunt Ella's portrait on top of our piano

When I was a child, a certain tone of awe accompanied the words "from scratch." This was at a time when many of the mothers I knew (and mothers, not fathers, were the ones doing all the cooking then) were exchanging recipes that included the word "easy." The easy part involved opening a can or a bottle of catsup. But even as convenience became the chief kitchen virtue, Aunt Ella would make a Sunday dinner of chicken and noodles whenever our Kansas family was coming. My daddy was known to grumble about little bones slipping into the meal, but as young as I was, I knew this was special food. It was made with love and anticipation of a good time: Her sister was coming! Aunt Ella served the chicken and noodles on her good china, and we drank our iced tea and milk from little pink glasses left over from the Depression.

What I learned at my Aunt Ella's Sunday table, I have carried into my everyday life. And somehow it lends every day a little air of celebration: We are together around our table, eating food made with love. Sometimes we even pour our milk from a little pink pitcher left over from the Depression. For me, Aunt Ella's homemade noodles still epitomize the best in life: our own eggs, our hands rolling out the dough, our pleasure in the meal. She gave me her quilt and her locket and a bracelet; and she gave me a way of life.

It's a way of life that families are choosing more often because we must consider sustainability. But what if we embrace this way not because of our fears and guilt but more because it slows us down and reacquaints us with the simple joys of sustaining ourselves: the aroma of soup simmering on the stove all day, the time to think as we pin laundry on the line, the anticipation of warm bread as it is rises and bakes? What if we choose it because deep satisfaction comes from making our own way in the world? For a short span of decades in the whole sweep of history, we humans have dismissed our traditional ways in favor of throw-away convenience. My lifetime has seen the worst of it, I hope, but I feel blessed to have been influenced by someone born in 1893 and blessed also to be able to pass her knowledge on to my children, who were born in 1999. Fern and Blossom can make Great-aunt Ella's noodles from scratch. They are never going to forget that. And they are sure to pass it on.

But living from scratch is work. My father grumbles that there is no can opener in our house, by which he means no electric can opener. It's not that we don't open cans, we do. We just aren't willing to give a can opener space on the counter where we need to knead bread and roll out Aunt Ella's noodles. We just work a little harder at opening a can if we have to open a can.

We work a little harder in general. And it can get tedious. Sometimes I wish Aunt Ella were here to make supper for us, but since she's not, the four of us pitch in together. We pull the meal together, each one doing a little bit: washing the greens or dicing the onion, boiling the water. We talk about our day. We roll out dough and dance to Otis Redding and laugh at ourselves dancing to Otis Redding. Then we eat well and drop into our beds satisfied (and hopefully we've remembered to get the next day's bread rising).

I watch how our daughters embrace this life. They have never known another. Even on the coldest days, they suit up (coat, snow pants, boot, other boot, hat, scarf, glove, other glove) and head out to care for the chickens. I tell them how proud I am. I say that not every ten-year-old would shoulder the responsibility when the wind is blowing two-below. Fern looks up and says, "But then they'd have dead chickens."

So out they go into the bright cold of the new year. I watch them track back and forth carrying water. They examine frost-nipped chicken combs. They find the eggs. From the kitchen window, as I wash dishes, I watch my daughters turn toward the warm house at last. They trudge toward the door through the drifts of snow. Suddenly Fern pirouettes in her boots. Behind her, Blossom twirls too. Then they trudge on.

Somehow those little twirls signify everything. We are doing the work of our lives here, and it is cold and hard sometimes, but there are moments when we forget we are working, when suddenly we are dancing.

Aunt Ella's Hand-rolled Noodles

one egg per person

2/3 cup flour per egg

1/2 teaspoon salt per egg

Sprinkle the salt into the flour. Make a bowl of flour on the counter. Beat the eggs together then tip them into the center of the "bowl." Swirl a fork through the flour and into the egg, back into the flour, back into the egg. Do this until a soft dough forms. Start rolling it out on floured surface. Use more flour if it is too sticky, but try not to let the dough get heavy. You want it to be soft yet elastic. Roll it out until it's a thickness that appeals to you, really thin or really thick.

Either flour the rectangle of dough and roll it up, jelly-roll style, then slice. Or run a crimped cutter along it (or a pasta bike if you have it) until you have long strips. We let them rest on the counter until we scoop them into a pot of boiling water (or boiling broth). Time in the pot will depend on thickness. Taste frequently to determine how you like it best (but do leave some for those who everyone who helped make the noodles).

They are good with chicken from a pot. Or they are good with melted butter and a good zesting of pepper and salt. They are best served with good memories.

'Tis the season for snowy-day noodle-making

by June

We're home most days (at least half the day). But snow days are still snow days, which is to say special. They are not to be squandered but savored.

Today was our first big snowstorm of the season. It snowed and snowed and snowed. It was the perfect kind of day for two things...playing outside and playing with noodle dough.

When the hens are being generous -- and hallelujah, the Littles are now laying -- we like to stock up on fresh noodles.

We use a cup of flour for every two eggs. The traditional way to mix the dough is by making a "bowl" of the flour and breaking the egg into the center and then drawing in flour with a fork until the dough has the perfect doughiness. (In our kitchen, we judge doughy perfection by whether it's as pinchable as one of the girl's cheeks.) Often, though, we toss both ingredients into the food processor and make a series of batches.

Then it's just a little kneading...

A little "chunking" down to size...

A little rolling through the machine...

A little cutting into noodles (after letting the sheets become dry to the touch but still pliable)...

We dry them on the same racks we use to dry our mittens and scarves after a good day on the snowshoes. On a day like today, all the racks get to work.

Now we have noodles to add to soup or to toss with sauce for a quick dinner in the midst of all the work that's going on here for our homemade Christmas. Sometimes the noodles even become one of the homemade gifts: Dried into little nests, we tuck the noodles into a basket with a jar of sauce (Italian tomato or Chinese Tangy Orchid), clementines, and some cookies. It's a quick meal for friends as busy merrymaking as we are.

What do you love to do on a snow day?