spicebox travels

About spicebox travels

Aside from durian and bitter melon, Linda Shiue hasn't met a fruit or vegetable she doesn't like. Her openness to new flavors has led others to challenge her with armadillo and bunny ears, and once, to lie about her ethnicity in an attempt to access the secret menu at a local Cambodian restaurant. After she took her first French cooking class at age 7, it took almost forty more years before she finally went to culinary school at San Francisco Cooking School. In between, she studied anthropology and medicine at Brown University, with fieldwork in rural Sichuan, China and in uber-urban Singapore, continued her medical training at the University of California, San Francisco, and learned about plant-based nutrition at Cornell University. She has been known to play spin-the-globe to choose travel destinations. An enthusiastic eater, she inspires strangers to copy her order and restaurant chefs to send her a little something special. Linda is a practicing physician in San Francisco, where she also founded a popular vegetable-forward teaching kitchen to inspire people to cook for health. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @spiceboxtravels, on Facebook and YouTube at The Doctors Spicebox and on her blog, SpiceboxTravels.com.

When you look at a full moon, what does it evoke for you? It makes me think of love and mooncakes.

Today marks the time of year when millions of Chinese families around the world celebrate the Mid-Autumn or Moon Festival. Family and friends gather to eat mooncakes, dense fruit and nut filled pastries, under the light of the full moon. Pomelos, the Asian citrus resembling a moon-sized grapefruit, are also traditionally enjoyed during this festival. As with harvest festivals in other cultures, this was traditionally a time for farmers to celebrate the end of the summer harvest season.

In San Francisco, one of my favorite Taiwanese-American bakeries, Sheng Kee, makes modern interpretations of mooncakes that I enjoy even more than the classic versions. Tonight, we’re planning to have a few traditional flavors– red date and red bean, as well as some newer flavors– pineapple, green tea, and, in a nod to tradition, pomelo.

When I left for college and was homesick, I sent my mother a card with a classical Chinese poem which describes how no matter how far two people are separated by distance, they can take comfort in knowing that they gaze at the same moon.

I remembered that poem today, and thought also of “The Moon Represents My Heart,” a famous song by Teresa Teng, a legendary Taiwanese pop star in the 1970s.