Big news:  I’m broke.  I mean, what’s new?  Except this time I really am.  This time I made the egregious error of spending all my savings on a ticket to St. Croix at the end of May.  Which will be great, for sure.  And I’m trying to look at this whole not-being-able-to-buy-groceries for a month thing as a pre-bikini diet.  And the ensuing frugality as a training of sorts for when I do decide to save money for some grander purpose.  And as a force-fed way to find cheap eats, right?  I’m trying to be very blessing-in-disguise about the low funds (and the two painful weeks until my next paycheck), but I’m finding it just a smidge difficult – at least until I remember Chinatown buns.

I’m not really sure what Chinatown buns are actually called, mostly because the sign on the outside of my favorite bun establishment is in – duh – Chinese, and I don’t really have a working knowledge of the language.  (In fact, looking at my picture now, I’m not even sure if that is Chinese – is that Chinese?)  I do, however, recognize the amicability of buying a bun for eighty to ninety cents (cents!) and strolling through the crowded streets being offered handbags of various ancestry and wondering just how the frogs in that bucket are used.

Buns come either steamed or baked and in a variety of flavors from savory to sweet.  Although usually a savory person, my one encounter with a savory Chinatown bun left me feeling a little … mmmm … interesting.  But the sweet buns are delicious.  I love red bean and sesame and coconut and the not bun-shaped but totally delicious egg custard tart.  They come wrapped in a little wax-paper packet and are then handed to you in a brown paper bag, just right for carrying around town.

I have to credit a friend from work for introducing me to Chinatown buns.  She’d been raving about them for a while, and finally, one day after work, she took me and another friend of ours to the little bun place on the corner and also to the pancake man, whose small, steel cart is every now and then right up the street, and who turns out these adorable miniature pancakes which fit in the palm of your hand.  We ate our goodies in the park, shivering in the winter wind, gossiping, and snacking on the sweet, doughy loaves.  And that was the beginning of this risqué (my hips, my thighs…) romp.

So, I may not have any money, but I do have Chinatown buns.  And besides being cheap, they’re also comforting, somehow reminiscent of childhood, even though coconut-stuffed dough was never a part of my pre-adolescent lore.  Maybe it’s holding that packet in your hands, having the freedom to walk around and look at the overwhelming colors and sounds of Chinatown, like a giant State Fair.  Where I come from it was Apple Fritters at the Apple Festival or pastry on Founder’s Day or kebabs at the Amani Festival, so I guess that’s how it’s like childhood, for me.  But these are just buns in Chinatown, and the great part is, there’s no festival involved, just the daily celebration of being alive and present and sentient and full.