SeeCalifornia.com

I went online last week to buy a box of Minute Rice after seeing mine, which I kept sealed with tape in the garage, invaded with little black bugs. I shopped online at my usual haunts and to my surprise, rice was sold out. As this coronavirus situation developed I discovered what was going on–people were in panic mode buying rice, toilet paper, butt wipes and hand sanitizers. At my local grocery store I saw how massive the hoarding was. Shelf after shelf was cleaned bare!

What are people supposed to do when the stores sell out? Who has rice? Aha…thank gosh for Chinese restaurants.

I was well overdue for eating Chinese and reconnecting with the neighborhood favorite. The first time around our family selected 4 sweet spareribs and an order of rice to take home. That was pretty tasty. Several days passed and were were once again craving Chinese. This time we decided to go big, getting 8 spareribs, a container of rice, Curry Chicken, and a large container of noodle soup.

At home we had the TV on as background noise while chomping on our feast. The news was all about the origins and name of this new virus that had turned the world upside down. It supposedly came from China–Wuhan to be exact.

While news media were bickering over the name of it and asking if the Chinese were to blame for not disclosing its emergence sooner, we could only thank our lucky stars. “Chinese” saved our bacon with heart-warming, comfort meals to get us through these stressful times of food shortages and long grocery lines in Southern California.

Xiè xie (thank you) Sinh Vinh and the chefs at Gong’s Chinese Food in Huntington Beach!