Ah, okay. Is it an American Chinese thing, do you think?

Probably.

In a few cities here, Indian Chinese food has been getting popular. It's restaurants that serve what's served as Chinese food at Chinese restaurants in India. Which is totally not what's actually eaten in China, but also totally not what's served at the typical American Chinese restaurant, either. It's pretty cool. (I've found one restaurant, in an Indian neighborhood in NJ, that sells vegetarian Indian Chinese food. Tried it once. Ended up with an eggroll wrapper wrapped around some sort of Indian-spiced vegetables. Interesting.)

Wikipedia says not: Buddha's delight, often transliterated as Luóhàn zhāi, lo han jai, or lo hon jai, is a vegetarian dish well known in Chinese cuisine.

They also agree that it seems to be just about anything and everything:

The dish consists of various vegetables and other vegetarian ingredients (as well as sometimes also seafoods and eggs), which are cooked in soy sauce-based liquid with other seasonings until tender. The specific ingredients used vary greatly both inside and outside Asia.

It sounds very nice! I think that the 'Chinese Food' that we get in the UK (whilst very yummy) isn't neccesarily all that authentic to China.

Interesting stuff. It's the right time of year to try it out anyway:

It is traditionally served in Chinese households on the first day of the Chinese New Year, stemming from the old Buddhist practice that one should maintain a vegetarian diet in the first five days of the new year, as a form of self-purification. Some of the rarer ingredients, such as fat choy and arrowhead, are generally only eaten at this time of year.

[link]

Yeah. I remember once in college, we were ordering in Chinese food, and one of the people in our group was first-generation American, both parents from China, and apparently had very rarely eaten at typical American Chinese restaurants. We had to describe all the dishes to her, because she had no idea what anything was from the names.

Is dim sum actual Chinese, or an American invention? Now that I'm thinking about Chinese food, I want dim sum. And I don't think there's a vegetarian dim sum place in DC.

Oh golly, I almost passed out. Why did I choose tonight todo sheets & towels????!!!!???

This morning while removing sheets from bed I couldn't help but notice the "pillow top" of the mattress liner was just all sorts of shreded. How? Not a clue, as the sheets are not. So I decide to go to Target and buy a new one before hitting the laundromat. While standing there trying to figure out which one I want (and not really knowing, I'm not schooled in these things) I get a call from work asking needless technical questions. It was then I realized I hadn't eaten in 10 hours, and could not funtionally answer said questions. Ugh McD's for diiner. Now I am at the laundromat alone save one lady ENDLESSLY talking loud on her cell. Why can't my sheets wash themselves?!?!? /whine

Why can't my sheets wash themselves?!?!?

If ever I were to invent sheets that wash themselves, I would have them do so without warning at 3 am.

So as to give you a washing too?

You know, o_a, you do have friends with a washer/dryer...