Ahso .... Vely Tastee .. |o)

I was a late comer when it came to "Chinese" food. To this day, I remain a picky eater. Chinese always has tons of veggies, which I am not a big fan, or has odd sounding if not odd tasting sauces that the stuff is cooked in. I remember the first night that I was taken to Chinatown in D.C. and ordered my first dish, Orange chicken. I wasn't too sure it sounded great or not, but in my condition at the time, I would have eaten just about anything. It ended up being great, and I stuck to ordering that as my staple for a long time, even though Chinese food was never at the top of my list of foods to eat. Then one night, my oldest friend, Alan Kanyan, and I went to Ying Chang's (sp?) in Fairfax for dinner. I knew it was there, as it's only about a mile and change from Mom's house, but due to my avoidance of Chinese, I never went. Well, that's when I found out about General Tso's chicken and hot/sour soup.


I couldn't have found a food that screamed Aaron more than this. Basically it's fried chicken nuggets cooked in a hot and sweet sauce, with dried hot peppers. It's spicy, sweet, and served with white rice. That place became a regular of Alan and mine, especially when they started their lunch buffet. I just love the crabmeat rangoons, General's chicken, the hot/sour soup and other fare offered on the buffet. When we moved up here to Pennsylvania, one of the things we tried to find was "our" chinese food greasy spoon. We tried all over Pottstown, but the General's chicken up here is way different than what I got used to at home. It's more of a sweet and sour sauce, with a ton of carrots, onions, broccoli and other filler to hide the fact that there isn't much chicken in the dish. Rachel is okay with the food, as sweet and sour chicken is pretty much the same no matter where you order from. So, now I've found that sesame chicken at our new greasy spoon chinese joint is closer to what I'm used to. It's not as spicy as I like, but at least it isn't eight bucks worth of broccoli and ninety-five cents of chicken.


Whenever we go back to visit the family in Virginia, we always try to squeeze in a trip to Ying Chang's for lunch with Mom, Nancy, or whomever wants to go with. On our last trip, Allison saw that I was using chop-sticks (very gay, I know) to eat my food, and wanted her own set to try. I attempted to give her the kid friendly version, where the back end is molded together, but she wanted the ones that are just like Daddy's. Well, here's the result:











She had a ball eating the yellow noodles, and actually ate something besides the mini desserts they have. The one bad thing was that the little (Avenue Q reference coming) cawrring me olee enter, offensive to me Lady wasn't there for Mom to talk to about the water, her kids, or general merriments. Oh, well, such is life, the food was just what I wanted and I was able to enjoy not only the Tso's chicken, but they also had sesame chicken as well.