If you ever ate dinner at a Chinese restaurant with my family, the one dish you will always find at the dinner table is walnut shrimp. It is a classic dish served during special occasions including birthdays, holidays, and weddings. Walnut shrimp is my dad’s favorite dish so we can always count on him ordering the dish. Whenever my family went to a Chinese restaurant to celebrate a special occasion, each member of our family gets to pick a dish for dinner.

When I lived in Chicago, I would frequent the restaurants in Chinatown at least once every other week. Chi Café was one of the restaurants I ordered from fairly often (other than Joy Yee’s). Whenever I made the trip to Chi Café, I always ordered beef chow fun and hand shredded chicken. Beef chow fun is one of my favorite Chinese noodle dishes. It may be my second favorite dish just after Yang Chow fried rice. Other than those two dishes, hand shredded chicken (手撕雞) is a third dish I often order to round out my meal. Hand shredded chicken isn’t the prettiest dish, but it is very good.

Thanksgiving is coming up in less than a month. I’ve already started brainstorming side dishes to make for Thanksgiving. One of the vegetables I am hoping to incorporate into Thanksgiving this year is Brussels sprouts. Earlier this week, I was at an education conference and had some Brussels sprouts for lunch. I don’t typically cook Brussels sprouts and did not eat much of it growing up. When I was at the grocery store shopping for groceries this week, I saw some Brussels sprouts on sale and decided to pick up a package to cook for dinner.

A staple dish found on the dinner tables of many Chinese families is 番茄炒蛋, which is roughly translated to tomato stir-fried eggs. It is one of those comfort food dishes you could prepare and cook for dinner in under fifteen minutes. Although my parents didn’t make this dish often, it is one of the dishes I truly appreciate when they do make it.