The year was 1992. The setting was a 30's built one bedroom home in Minikahda Vista, the kind where the basement is 1/2 furnace.... Four twenty somethings were searching for something to do. We were all recent college graduates and realizing that making money in a full time job was somehow more expensive than going to school. Who knew? So the same old story of dinner out and going to a movie seemed somehow a lot less attractive.
Cathy shared with the group the Friday night pastime growing up in her house, making jiaozi. We all loved ordering potstickers at our favorite Chinese restaurant, The Great Wall, but hated paying the steep price for this labor intensive appetizer. Little did we know the importance of this hair brained idea....Finding the ingredients was easy enough at the local grocery store, but finding the right utensils was a different story. Four Corona's (the new hot beer from Mexico) later and the problem was solved - we each had our own rolling pin for getting the dough pressed just right. The three newbies and one pro made an awesome batch of traditional pot stickers. Although if memory serves me right a number of them did lose their filling in the boiling pot.... The recipe was recorded on green sheets of paper found in the junk drawer.
Two of those twenty somethings were married and kept the recipe to share with friends and make with their kids. A chance meeting at a twenty five year high school reunion brought this story out once again. It turned out that Cathy turned this pastime into a successful business, Gather Gourmet. My family now eats their favorite food a lot more often....
Robert Buss
Part time investment professional - full time Gather Gourmet historian.
