Things I miss about Springfield (Chinese Food Edition)

When we lived in Springfield, MO I developed a love/hate relationship with Chinese food. It seems to continue to this day, but when I think about Chinese food, I think of Springfield. Here's why I think of Springfield (and some of my frustrations with cooking it):

• It was impossible to be in Springfield and not be near a Chinese restaurant, but unfortunately I couldn't eat most of it because of my carrot allergy.
  
• I've yet to learn the Chinese word for carrot, so communication about my allergy usually ends up with me getting extra carrots instead of none.
  
• We moved to Illinois and while there are Asian restaurants, the fact that you might actually have to drive a couple of miles to get to one seems unacceptable now.
  
• The restaurants here don't serve chicken nuggets in gravy ("cashew chicken") or chicken nuggets drenched in high fructose corn syrup (sweet and sour chicken) and then have a drive-thru dedicated to each dish. While I never ate at this particular establishment (which incidentally also sold buffalo wings), I miss seeing it.
  
• Chinese take out is extremely fast, but making it at home is very labor intensive and not so fast.
• I've yet to find rice directions that are accurate. Long cooking rice never takes an hour and quick cooking rice never cooks in five minutes. This results in either watery or scorched rice 90+% of the time.