I ate what???

Chris and Lauren eating seafood at a small place on the beach. They had a variety of seafood that you could choose from in a large tank. They would prepare it and bring it out to your table on the beach!


I don’t know where to start with this one… lets start with what I miss the most! Mexican food! I have actually attempted to make tortillas a few times… you can buy imported ones here, but they are somewhat expensive and previously frozen. My last attempt at making tortillas involved saving the fat from some pork sausage (because I have yet to find lard or shortening here). One thing that did make me say “Muy Bueno” is the fact that one can buy Margarita mix and tequila here in China… guess I should have brought those margarita glasses with me after all. I have resorted to preparing some of my favorite foods on my own. Since moving to China I have learned to make my own breakfast sausage and Italian sausage. They are very easy to make and you can adjust the flavor to your liking! Bagels are another food that I have discovered I can buy here but they look and taste not so much like bagels. I have attempted making bagels once. Wish I had taken a picture…they were hideous, but the taste was okay. I was pleased to find Philadelphia cream cheese and smoked salmon to top off my bagels!



Here we are eating at a restaurant in Bingyugou with our driver and his wife. Most dinners with large groups are eaten at large tables like this one, they are usually in private rooms.

Onto foods we can find in China. I started off going on and on about the grocery stores… but had to backtrack, that is a entire post in itself. Restaurants here are generally pretty cheap. We ate at one restaurant with some friends (18 people) and our bill came to 120rmb which is less than $20usd. Usually the four of us can go out to dinner at a nice place for less than $20usd. One of our favorites meal so far was a Chinese hot pot. It is kind of like eating fondue. The table has a heating element and they bring a pot of boiling broth and you can order an assortment of meats, veggies, tofu and sauce to cook in the hot pot. The biggest challenge to eating in restaurants here in China is that many do not have English or even Pinyin on the menus. Imagine going to a restaurant and looking at a menu with only Chinese characters on it… this presents a challenge. Many restaurants have picture menus with characters on them, which helps… a little. I have learned the characters for meat, pork, beef and chicken. I thought I was doing myself a favor except that if I don’t know the character for feet I could find myself eating a plate of chicken feet. I almost forgot to mention, while the food is very good here… it is not PF Changs. Aside from sweet and sour pork there are very few dishes that I recognize from Chinese restaurants at home. The Chinese people do not even know what fortune cookies are. Here is a short video from Youtube where they gave fortune cookies to real Chinese people. Pretty funny!



My saving grace here is that Monday through Friday our Ayi prepares dinner for us. She also does the shopping. Considering that she speaks NO English and I speak very little Chinese she has done a great job preparing dishes that we like. She is a very good cook, even Lauren who is our picky eater will usually eat everything she makes. We eat rice at every meal and generally she will prepare 2 different dishes which usually consist of meat and vegetables. Lauren is still struggling with the chopsticks. Chris and I have it figured out and Rick, according to his Chinese friends has mastered the use of chopsticks.

In closing one of my friends back home asked if I had eaten any bugs here and my response is not knowingly. We went to a potluck and someone had brought some Korean food. There was one dish that I tried and thought was pretty good, actually I went back to get a little more. Upon closer inspection the crunchy things in this dish appeared to be mealworms! I jabbed Rick in the side with my chopsticks so that he could check them out too. I am not sure if they were mealworms or not but I could not bring myself to eat any more of the dish after that! I guess that will teach me to look at my food before I shove it in my mouth!