Val

As far as quarantine hobbies go, I think Val wins for picking up a new skill and actually seeing it through. Before I flew back to my firepit, I spent a long evening lounging around hers in her homemade wooden adirondack chairs, chatting about all the home projects her family had completed over the summer. Val identifies as Chinese American. I think I met her in our high school hallways after one of our mutual friends told me about the new girl from California. Did we instantly click as friends? I'm not really sure, but I do know she is now a fixture in my message-almost-everday-in-the-form-of-memes habit.

So Val's dumpling began entirely based around honeydew melon bars (which by the way, I never knew the brand name of, and it sounds like skin cancer). I wanted to resist a dessert dumpling, but I was also so hung up on honeydew. Imagine... a refreshing appetizer dumpling - creamy ricotta, salty prosciutto, juicy honeydew, with a burst of sweet and tangy yogurt sauce, all wrapped up in a paper thin chewy glass wrapper.

Well, that all didn't go quite as planned. To begin, the honeydew I selected was flavorless. No exaggerations here. It was like eating mealy water. It was beyond rescue. But I tried anyways. I ended up pureeing a batch and cooking it down with agave and Yakult to make the sauce, which turned out okay. That all was not enough to make up for the failure of wrapper choice. These are made entirely of potato starch to get that clear translucent peak at the filling, which unintentionally looked like an Italian flag, after steaming. And here is where I knew maybe it would not serve well ...and yet I powered through anyways. Steaming hot honeydew/prosciutto/ricotta appetizer did not seem appealing, and cold, clunky, tough potato starch wrapper did not seem pleasant, so I crossed my fingers and hoped lukewarm dumplings would suffice.

I have to admit, this has so far been the only dumpling I did not want to finish eating. The subtle ricotta only amplified the flavorless honeydew and after a round of steaming, the prosciutto no longer springy and melty, the wrapper was just not thin enough and gathered into a too-thick mass where I pinched it closed.

Things I'd do differently: almost everything. Maybe I'd go for a mochi honeydew ice cream-esque thing instead. Maybe I'd use the same concept but a different wrapper. Definitely I'd spend more time selecting a honeydew in the middle of winter.

Val's complete list:

green melon bars

panda crackers

lychee jellies

yogurt drink

white rabbit candy

dried shredded squid

chinese crackers

ritz cracker sticks with the cheese dip

mac and cheese from "this restaurant in NJ"

really simple kinda crappy spaghetti and italian wedding soup from the restaurant in the skating rink she used to practice at

almond cookies