Dumpling Quotes

“Finally, we would have been offered either a spring takiawase, meaning "foods boiled or stewed together," or a wanmori (the apex of a tea kaiseki meal) featuring seasonal ingredients, such as a cherry blossom-pink dumpling of shrimp and egg white served in a dashi base accented with udo, a plant with a white stalk and leaves that tastes like asparagus and celery, and a sprig of fresh sansho, the aromatic young leaves from the same plant that bears the seedpods the Japanese grind into the tongue-numbing spice always served with fatty eel.”
― Victoria Abbott Riccardi, Untangling My Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto

“I peered at the bowl, which was piled high with shrimp and vegetables, little cubes of what looked like meat or fish. The broth was a beautiful golden color, with little circles of orange oil floating on the surface, near the edge of the bowl. My heart rate slowed, oblivion averted. "More chances at wishes. But also, this looks damn good."
I realized I was still holding the spoon with the dumpling, the steam not wafting out like a volcano anymore. So I closed my eyes and readied myself for another bite.
This time the heat took a step back and allowed everything else to come forward. The savory richness of pork, a bite of ginger and scallions, the broth. Oh, man, the broth. I hadn't ever tasted anything quite like this before. I chewed the dumpling, which was starchy but also managed to melt away, letting its texture dominate. For a moment, I wanted to reach for something beyond the flavor, but failed. Would I recognize the taste of magic, if magic even had a taste? Then I let the flavor itself take over.”
― Adi Alsaid, Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food & Love

“And you'd be left there like a fucking dumpling. You'd be standing there. A fucking dumpling man I'm telling ye.”
― James Kelman

“Like everything else we'd eaten tonight, it took the ordinary to an extraordinary place- I tasted a thousand fluttering roses and a rain of sugar and the soft, spongy texture of the dumpling itself.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“Dumpling rolls over in my arms so that I can scratch his oddly broad chest. He is, to say the least, one of the strangest dogs anyone has ever seen. Which of course, is absolutely why I adopted him. I don't really know for sure what his lineage is, but he has the coloring and legs of a Jack Russell, the head of a Chihuahua, with the broad chest and sloping back of a bulldog, wide pug-ly eyes that bug out and are a little watery, and happen to mostly look in opposite directions. His ears, one which sticks up and one which flops down, are definitely fruit bat-ish. And when he gets riled by something, he gets a two-inch-wide Mohawk down his whole back, which sticks straight up, definitively warthog. He's a total ladies man, a relentless flirt, and the teensiest bit needy in the affection department, as are many rescue dogs. But of course, he is so irresistibly lovable her never has a problem finding the attention he desires.”
― Stacey Ballis, Off the Menu

“Dumpling is the kind of dog that makes people on the street do double- and triple-takes and ask in astonished voices, "What kind of dog IS that?!" His head is way too small for his thick, solid body, and his legs are too spindly. His eyes point away from each other like a chameleon. One side of his mouth curls up a little, half-Elvis, half palsy-victim, and his tongue has a tendency to stick out just a smidgen on that side. He was found as a puppy running down the median of a local highway, and I adopted him from PAWS five years ago, after he had been there for nearly a year. He is, without a doubt, the best thing that ever happened to me.
My girlfriend Bennie says it looks like he was assembled by a disgruntled committee. Barry calls him a random collection of dog bits. My mom, in a classic ESL moment, asked upon meeting him, "He has the Jack Daniels in him, leetle bit, no?' I was going to correct her and say Jack Russell, but when you look at him, he does look a little bit like he has the Jack Daniels in him. My oldest nephew, Alex, who watches too much Family Guy and idolizes Stewie, took one look, and then turned to me in all seriousness and said in that weird almost-British accent, "Aunt Alana, precisely what brand of dog is that?" I replied, equally seriously, that he was a purebred Westphalian Stoat Hound. When the kid learns how to Google, I'm going to lose major cool aunt points.
Dumpling tilts his head back and licks the underside of my chin, wallowing in love.
"Dog, you are going to be the death of me. You have got to let me sleep sometime."
These words are barely out of my mouth, when he leaps up and starts barking, in a powerful growly baritone that belies his small stature.”
― Stacey Ballis, Off the Menu

“RJ is standing there, and in his arms is a wriggling French bulldog puppy of the most inexplicable color, almost pale honeyed yellow tinged with a sort of peachy pink.
"Oh my goodness! Who are you?"
RJ hands me the pup, who immediately starts licking all over my face and biting my ponytail. Dumpling tries to stand on his one leg to see what is going on, and falls over at my feet. RJ scoops him up and puts him face-to-face with the puppy.
"Dumpling, there is someone we want you to meet. We thought you might want a little sister."
Dumpling looks at the puppy, who leans forward and licks his face. Dumpling licks back. The puppy sniffs his ear and then with one move, snatches the eye patch right off his head and starts to chew it. Dumpling looks at me with his one good eye, head cocked as if to say, "We're going to have our hands full with this one," and then turns and licks RJ under his chin.
"I can't believe you did this! You are so sneaky."
"Well, we did talk about wanting to do it, and a guy at work breeds them for showing, but this one is off the allowable color charts."
"She does have a certain, um... Well, she's kind of, um..."
"Pink? Yeah. Some weird anomaly, and apparently, not good for the show circuit."
"But good for us."
"That's what I thought."
"What should we call her?"
RJ smiles. "I was thinking Pamplemousse."
"Of course. What else could she be?”
― Stacey Ballis, Off the Menu