Fortune Cookies

I love fortune cookies! I love the texture and the taste...and of course, I LOVE seeing the message inside!

Jason and I have a thing about fortune cookies.... On our last Chinese Food takeout meal, we got these fortunes:

*Avoid unchallenging occupations- they will waste your great talents.

*Use your abilities at this time to stay focused on your goal. You will succeed.

*Now is the time to try something new.

Those are pretty good fortunes! Don't you think?

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Well, we like to step it up a notch and add the phrase "in bed" to the end of our fortunes! Suddenly, those fortunes bring on a whole new meaning!

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I looked up the history of the fortune cookie. Did you know that they originated in the good 'ol USA? YEP!!! Here are a few different stories of the first person to invent them.

1. A Chinese immigrant, David Jung, living in Los Angeles and founder of the Hong Kong Noodle Company invented the fortune cookie in 1918.
The story goes that David Jung was concerned with all the poor he saw in the streets near his shop. So he created a cookie to pass out to them for free. Each cookie contained an inspirational verse written by the local Presbyterian minister.

2. A Japanese immigrant named Makoto Hagiwara invented the fortune cookie in San Francisco in 1914. He was the designer of the famous Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.
Makoto was fired by an anti-Japanese mayor of the time and suffered much hardship until a later mayor reinstated him. Being thankful to those who had stood by him during this time he created a cookie that contained a "thank-you" note. These became very popular and so began serving them regularly. And then in 1915 they were displayed at World Fair, in San Fransico

3. Way back in 13th and 14th Centuries, China was occupied by the Mongols. Chu Yuan Chang, a patriotic revolutionary of the time made plans for an uprising against the Mongols. In order to instruct all the Chinese of the date of the uprising, messages were hidden in 'Moon Cakes'. Moon Cakes contained a 'yolk' of Lotus Paste which the Mongols did not appreciate so this yolk was replaced with rice paper messages. The uprising was successful and the Ming Dynasty was born.
Thus a tradition of giving cakes with messages was born and a Moon Festival regularly celebrated.
It is thought that this legend is what inspired the Chinese 49'ers who worked on the construction of the great American Railways through the Sierra Nevada to California. At Moon Festival time they did not have any moon cakes but only biscuits. So out of necessity they improvised and the Fortune Cookie was born.

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Fun trivia:

The fortune cookie was not introduced to the Chinese until the 1990's and were amusingly advertised as "Genuine American Fortune Cookies".

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I got my information from http://www.chinese-fortune-cookie.com/fortune-cookie-history.html

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And today's songs are...

cause I can't do a post without a song to go with it....

Superstition by Stevie Wonder

and Genie in a Bottle by Christina Aguilera. (I know this one's a stretch, but I like it AND it's more along the theme of "in bed".

Until next time

Brandi

(if I was really cool, I'd have a fancy-shmancy signature, but I can't figure it out. HTML codes and such only go as far as copy and past for me)