The Fortune Cookie Chronicles


  • #26 on the New York Times Best Seller List
    and featured on The Colbert Report, Martha Stewart, TED.com, CNN, The Today Show, Good Morning America, Charlie Rose Tomorrow, Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, and NPR stations coast to coast. Also selected for Borders Original Voices and Book Sense. Follow me on Twitter! Fan me on Facebook.

  • Archive for November, 2008

    Happy Thanksgiving! General Tso’s Turkey.

    Thursday, November 27th, 2008

    Here is a receipe for General Tso’s Turkey. Better than deep-frying it.

    A nominee for the 2008 Borders Original Voices Award…

    Monday, November 24th, 2008

    This was unexpected: ANN ARBOR, Mich., Nov 24, 2008 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ — Borders today announced the nominees for the 2008 Original Voices Awards. Now in its 13th year, the Original Voices Awards recognize fresh, compelling and ambitious works from the new and emerging talents of 2008 in fiction, non-fiction, young adult/independent reader and children’s […]

    Baby meets Mexican Fortune Cookies, Dichos!

    Monday, November 24th, 2008

    My college roommate, Amy, was served the Mexican fortune cookies called dichos, that I’ve written about before. She lives in Phoenix and was served them in Bisbee, just 5 miles from where they are made. Yes, it seems that Bisbee is in the middle of nowhere. And their supercute son, Alex, loved them too. Or […]

    We’re the Answer to this Week’s Sunday Magazine Puzzle

    Sunday, November 23rd, 2008

    So this week, I’m part of the solution to the Sunday Magazine puzzle (not the crossword, but the second one). It’s called an acrostic (otherwise known as an anacrostic) by famed puzzlers Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon. Which is very flattering. As it explains. It’s some related somewhat to crossword puzzles, except it uses an […]

    Philly Cheesesteak Roll! Like An Eggroll on the Outside…

    Thursday, November 20th, 2008

    So I decided, when I was in Philadelphia, to stop for my favorite Philly-Chinese snack — the Philadelphia Cheesesteak Roll, which basically looks like an egg roll on the outside….I headed to the Evergreen Chinese Restaurant (4726 Spruce St, Philadelphia), where you can see on their Menupages entry it is listed for $1.25 (quite a […]

    Comparing Non-Profits to Chinese Restaurants

    Thursday, November 20th, 2008

    My friend Alex Tsai sent me this post on the scaling of non-profit giving from the Acumen Fund blog: “We need to talk about how we get foundations to stop giving inefficiently,” said Aaron, who likened the multitude of nonprofits with similar missions to the hundreds of Chinese restaurants across New York City. “All the […]

    Conversation with the Security Guard Downstairs

    Monday, November 17th, 2008

    I asked my sister, Frances, to bring lunch to me at work in exchange for giving her a Nokia phone for her trip to Buenos Aires. Me: Can you let her up? Guard: No, I can’t. Me: (Thinking he’s kidding, because they do this before). Ha ha. Guard: She’s delivering food, right? Me: Um. She’s […]

    Onepot on Nov. 24 with Scott Emerick in Seattle

    Sunday, November 16th, 2008

    I forgot if I mentioned already (my head is confused with all the bronchiospasms). I also am doing a dinner next Monday in Seattle, November 24 with Onepot and Scott Emerick of Cremant. As Mike Hebberoy writes: the last time we had jennifer (and her nytimes best selling book) at dinner I turned away over […]

    A Review Haiku by Emily Reads

    Sunday, November 16th, 2008

    I found this haiku  reviewing The Fortune Cookie Chronicles Lee uncovers the sweet and sour history of General Tso

    A Fortune Cookie Chronicles-Inspired Halloween Costume: Takeout Box

    Thursday, November 13th, 2008

    Jed Lam send me this photo of his Halloween costume, which was inspired by The Fortune Cookie Chronicles. Originally he wanted to go as a fortune cookie but that proved too difficult to make. But he happened to have a takeout box in the fridge. And using that as a model, he just cut up […]

    General Tso Kitty is Bringing Out His Inner Chicken

    Monday, November 10th, 2008

    (Originally uploaded by ferrisnox) I’m surprised how many cats there are out there named General Tso (including my friend’s mentioned previously).  I still think the one up there, from Flickr, is the most amusing in that it shows a cat trying to don his inner chicken identity.

    Fortune Cookie Chronicle Takeout Boxes

    Monday, November 10th, 2008

    These were created and executed as the JCC of Greater Washington as part of my talk. I think they were absolutely adorable and I took one as a souvenir.

    I am meeting another Jennifer Lee!

    Sunday, November 9th, 2008

    I am in Washington DC meeting another Jennifer Lee, Jennifer S. Lee. She is a medical doctor at The George Washington University Department of Emergency Medicine. The funny thing is, she says she will often get message from people who see an article I wrote and e-mail her “Oh I saw the piece you did […]

    I’m not really speaking in Kyrgyzstan

    Thursday, November 6th, 2008

    View Larger Map I just discovered that due to a missing negative sign in my lat long coordinates, I had one of my appearances mapped to Kyrgyzstan instead of New York City. It was 40.792239, 74.003563 vs. Park Avenue. Which means the New York City is roughly equidistant from Greenwich as Kara Kuldza (the nearest […]

    Denver AIWF Talk on Jan 25, 2009 @ 5 p.m.

    Thursday, November 6th, 2008

    Just get it onto my calendar. Lots of Denver. AIWF talk on Sunday Jan. 25, 2009. The Empress Seafood Restaurant on Alameda in Denver.

    Soft Tacos — the Chinese Kind

    Monday, November 3rd, 2008

    I was amused to see these steamed Chinese buns marketed as “soft tacos” in the Hong Kong supermarket in Flushing, New York City. This reminds me of the Taiwanese grandmother who saw tortillas in the supermarket and decided to turn them into scallion pancakes. Or when they look at zongzi (粽子), the bamboo leaf-wrapped sticky […]

    University of Indiana Talk on April 2 at 7 p.m.

    Monday, November 3rd, 2008

    It seems like I will be speaking at the University of Indiana at Bloomington at 7 p.m. on April 2 in the School of Journalism auditorium as part of Asian American Heritage Month.