My family enjoyed eating noodles. Every two weeks or so, after a lunch with chicken soup, my grandparents normally boil a large pot of chicken soup noodles. Then our whole family gathers around the table and enjoys the meal. The hot noodles are especially pleasing on a cold winter night after returning home from school. All my family members are willing to add sauces, such as Lao Gan Ma spicy chili sauce, to the noodles for seasoning, and such tastes have already lasted for a decade. I still remember that my grandmother made me a plate of fried rice noodles for my last dinner before I came back to Atlanta this January, and I have not tasted my grandmother’s noodles since then. I have to stay here to take the fall classes because I am afraid I will not be able to return if I go home. When I cancelled my flight back home, I felt that part of my soul was torn, and that my heart was also bleeding.

To be honest, my grandmother never boiled noodles with tomatoes and eggs, nor have I eaten any in restaurants. However, I cannot find suitable ingredients and kitchenware for chicken soup, and fried tomatoes with eggs is also one of the most representative and common dishes in Chinese cuisines. Hence, I decided to make tomato and egg stirred noodles, which brought me back to the alley where my home is located.
As I mentioned above, both the noodles and the fried tomato and egg are ordinary dishes to be served at the dining-table. However, in the southern parts of China, especially the Yangtze-River Delta region, soup-based noodles are preferred over dry noodles. For most of the restaurants that I have been to, the noodles are served with meat, fish, or shrimp, except for the renowned Yang Chun Mian, which came with seasoned soy soup alone. I do not have any experience boiling soup, nor have I boiled noodles at home, so I decided to experiment with stirred noodles, or “拌面”in Chinese.

I don’t think there is a legendary story or a tradition related to tomato and egg stirred noodles, but the noodle itself is highly correlated with joy, for example, the happiness of childhood, the happiness of family gatherings, etc. Just as the cartoon we saw in the class reminded us, the San Xian noodle is not only a dish, tt also carries all the precious memories: the days with grandmother, a crush on a girl, the smile on the owner’s face, and many stories that are never told to others. I am a person who always suffers from nostalgic thoughts, and I fear I may lose my true identity in the torrent of the epoch. However, a simple bowl of noodles alone is enough to awaken my originality.

It took me roughly 30 minutes to cook this single dish, but for my grandparents, however, it takes over an hour every day to cook. I miss their meals very much, but when thinking about all the precious moments from the past, I have to ask myself: they have done so much for me, so when shall I cook for them?