China: the food

While I'm on a food theme, I'll share some of the myriad food photos I took in China. The cuisine was one of the things I was most excited about. And toward the end of the trip, the cuisine was the thing I was most excited to be done with. My body felt pretty weird. But I certainly enjoyed trying most things!

My adventurous friends didn't quite ease me into it. For dinner on my first full day, we went to the Wangfujing Night Market, as seen on Travel Channel Bizarre Foods. There is a long row of street food vendors selling things like scorpion, snake, octopus and starfish. (I'm not sure how you eat a starfish.) 

Sorry, vegetarian friends.

I tried to be brave and embrace the cultural experience, but I was pretty queasy. We found some nice, familiar dumplings for dinner. And I ate a fried cricket because I wanted to eat something weird and it seemed the least likely to gag me out of the other offerings. Not too bad.

Apprehension.

Perhaps Nate, Sam and Leslie felt they needed to go easy on me for breakfast the next day, so we stopped at McDonalds before going to the pearl market. I couldn't remember the last time I had an Egg McMuffin, but it tasted great. And it was hilarious watching Leslie order for us.

My very favorite dish of the trip was at the pearl market food court. Cold noodles. I am going to make this some day. And if I can make it as perfectly as this, I will share the recipe here. I'm guessing rice wine vinegar, soy sauce and peanut oil...plus noodles and cucumbers and cilantro. I want some right now.

Most meals we ate were served family style, so I was able to try a lot of dishes. They eat lots of chicken, pork, fish and tofu. The meat dishes were good, but I would be perfectly happy eating Szechuan green beans all day (seen in the photo below covered in sesame seeds). Cold noodles and spicy green beans. I am easy to please.

I especially appreciated the vegetable dishes when things like chicken feet popped up in a dish. Supposedly this is the piece everyone fights for, but I don't think this one got eaten.

I did get to try the legendary Peking (now Beijing) Duck when these sweet boys made dinner for us. I feel like that completed my China food experience without having to eat chicken feet or donkey burger.

I can't talk about food without mentioning the grocery store. I love going to the grocery store anyway and was delighted to find one that appeared so similar to the ones I'm used to yet sold such different things.

Wasabi peas!

There wasn't much focus on dessert, which was new for me. I had to break the habit of eating something sweet after every meal. (You'll recall the mashed potatoes.) There was great fruit, and one sweet ingredient I particularly enjoyed was taro root. It is bright purple and usually found in a super sugary fried dessert. The one pictured below is really crunchy when they bring it to the table and you dip the little taro donut in water before eating it.

And when I was really missing 3 Spoons frozen yogurt, these little ice cream bars were easy to find. I think this may have had grape flavor in there somewhere.

Now that my digestive system is back to normal, I can better appreciate the things I got to eat there. The food was delicious and quite different than the Chinese food I am used to. I saw nary a fortune cookie or crab rangoon. But I was thankful for the chopstick practice I've gotten eating Thai and sushi in Lawrence. My new Chinese friends were very impressed.



With love.