Fortune

I love Chinese takeout. We don't have it very often, but the other night, due to an extreme lack of grocery in the Langenberg fridge, we called Red Hot and ordered up chicken with hot pepper sauce & peanuts, beef with broccoli, and fried pork dumplings. Red Hot rocks. The delivery arrived so quickly that I suspect they prepared it on the way over. The hot pepper chicken was deliciously spicy, and the broccoli was crispy, and overall, yum. Red Hot also sends along an orange to cut up for dessert, which is always a happy surprise to me when I unpack the goods.

My two favourite things about Chinese takeout, though, are the little boxes, and Fortune Cookies.

In Canada, Chinese takeout doesn't come in little boxes. It usually comes in those aluminum pie-plate-like containers with cardboard lids. And, you know, those containers do a perfectly fine job of holding a serving of chow mein or General Tso's Chicken. But the little boxes are just so cool, and seeing Jerry & George eating Chinese takeout out of them always caused me much envy. Not long after I moved to California, MFD (also Canadian) visited one weekend and we ate Chinese takeout out of the little boxes and were so totally excited about it that we actually took pictures. (Those little boxes are also perfect vessels for Christmas cookie distribution. For a couple of years I bought them from The Container Store at 69¢ a pop. Last year I realized that it would probably be much more cost-effective to purchase white ones from a Chinese restaurant, and sure enough, most are willing to part with them for 25¢ each - woo! More money for sprinkles!)

So, yeah, love the little boxes.

The other thing I love is the Fortune Cookie. I like the shape of Fortune Cookies. I like the taste of them (Red Hot's are chocolate-flavoured and yummy). And, I love the fortune. Fortunes are so fun. Yeah, adding "in bed" at the end is funny (and if you've never seen the movie Guinevere, it's worth watching just for the Fortune Cookie "in bed" line - hilare). I vaguely remember a superstition about eating the whole cookie before reading the fortune, but I don't know where that's from. I've heard that keeping a fortune in one's wallet is really common. I have two in mine right now. One I keep because it is totally hilarious: "Avoid compulsively making things worse." Good advice, eh? The other I have because it's totally true: "You are the master of every situation." Ha. And I'm going to keep the one I got the other night, because it makes me happy: "There will be someone sharing your warmth."