"Monday we're going you-know-where!"

Chef Rhoda must have grandchildren. She used her excited grandma voice to remind us about our field trip on Monday. I drove through Chinatown yesterday on my way across town, and I'm glad we're going to have an escorted tour. I want the inside scoop. Today, Chef showed us the three items we may want to buy from the herbalist: a balm for burns, some pills that help ward off the cold and flu, and a powder to use on cuts. She keeps a supply of all of them in her cabinet in our kitchen.

Today, we cooked food from Myanmar (Burma) and the Philippines. Both Derrick and Jim have parents born in the Philippines, so all morning long, they were being asked about the authenticity of the dishes we were producing. Derrick made the chicken adobo but it's not the way his mom makes it: he asked her about the potatoes in our recipe, and she said they only do that when lots of people are coming to dinner, and you need to stretch it. Today's version also had a bit of coconut milk added at the end, which is optional, according to Chef. It was just enough to tone down the vinegar, not enough to add a strong coconut flavor.Neither Jim nor Derrick are used to the lumpia with open ends, but the homemade ones I've had look just like the ones we made today. Chef said it's so you can drizzle the sauce inside.Chef admitted that Crab Rangoon is not a Burmese dish, even though it's named after the country's capital, but an invention of Trader Vic's. "But everyone really likes them!" she said. "Make a lot."Our lecture was more politically tinged than usual. Chef talked about Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese activist who's been kept under house arrest for most of the last 18 years by the military junta, the ludicrously named "State Peace and Development Council." "It's a beautiful country," Chef said, "but it's right not to travel there." Most of my classmates were unfamiliar with this woman, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991; her ongoing struggle to bring democracy to Burma is "on the back burner," Chef said, while the international community focuses its attentions on the Middle East. Her life is an inspiration and helps me put my "troubles" back in perspective.

"But there is one thing and that is we must always have hope. There is a difference between having hope and dreaming. It is not wrong to have hope but you have to work towards achieving that hope. Just sitting down and dreaming will not do. Have one vision and struggle to achieve it."