We did it! 🥳 👏 We are so excited about the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and we hope that you have all been able to celebrate and breathe a bit of a sigh of relief. On January 20, 2021, Kamala Harris will be the first AAPI and black woman to hold the office of Vice President.
In addition, we want to congratulate all the AAPI candidates that won election or reelection this year. Kai Kahele of Hawaii and Marilyn Strickland of Washington will join the House of Representatives as new Democratic AAPI Members of Congress. Congressman Andy Kim of New Jersey also comfortably won re-election, increasing his margins after a tight election race in 2018. A total of 153 AAPI candidates were successful at the state and local levels. You can find a list of who won on the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies website.
Our efforts to get out the vote aren’t quite done yet. We are busy working to make sure we find all those Georgia voters living overseas. There will be a special run-off election on January 5, 2021 for the two Senate seats in Georgia, which will determine who holds the majority in the Senate. Help us reach Georgia voters living abroad by spreading the word. They can go to www.votefromabroad.org/georgia today to get more information on how to make sure they receive their ballots for this run-off election.
As we near Thanksgiving, we hope that everyone will take some time to relax and to recognize what we can be thankful for this year. On behalf of the Steering Committee, we want to thank you all for joining our caucus this year. We are looking forward to organizing more events soon. If you’re interested in volunteering, please get in touch and sign up: https://www.democratsabroad.org/aapi_volunteer
With gratitude,
Cory J. Lemke and Emily LinesÂ
Recipes from Home - Calling all foodies!
To highlight and share our culinary heritages, we are calling for recipes - and food stories - from our members and friends to be featured in our monthly newsletter and the Democrats Abroad AAPI caucus webpage.
Whether it’s your mother’s traditional jiaozi recipe or the Mac n' Cheese you cooked with friends in college, food connects us with our cultures and with each other.
So go look at those internet recipes that you always use, or hit up your family for the measurements of ingredients. Share your stories and recipes with us using this form, and we’ll publish them. Let’s share - and eat!
Anya's Mom's Dumpling Recipe
Growing up, we made dumplings often enough that it became a semi-regular thing in my household. Sometimes, my mother would invite her few Chinese friends over and we’d spend an hour or two making dumplings, then eating until our stomachs hurt. Their children, my sister, and I pressed the edges of the wrappers together carefully, using a fork sometimes to create the ridges. My mother and her friends, chatting absently, were ten times faster than the rest of us. My aunt, who I see once every few years when we take the trip to my mother’s hometown, uses one hand to fold dumplings, a skill I have yet to acquire or understand.
I’m better now than I was when I first started out, even to the point that I can teach my German friends how to plop the right amount of dumpling filling into the wrapper, open on your palm, and carefully tuck the sides in. It’s become a tradition for my group of friends here for Lunar New Year; my girlfriend has even mastered the perfect fold. I use my mother’s recipe, which she typed up and sent to me in an email a year after I moved out and requested while feeling homesick. It’s one of the most concrete, tangible things from Chinese culture I can share.
Check out the recipe for dumpling wrappers here and stay tuned to learn how to make the filling!
Â