Food, food and more food

Food was quite the adventure. This is a difficult section write. Hard to know where to start. Chinese food in the US has definitely been screened for the american palette. There is just a much larger variety here for one thing. One dish will look and taste like something right of the menu at Grand China in Tahlequah, and then the next dish will be extremely bizarre.

We ate in a variety of settings from big banquets, to neighborhood restaurants, to fast food to little corner noodle joints. A number of our meals were 'family style' where the dishes were placed on a huge 'lazy susan' and everyone shared them. Typically you'd have 2-3 dishes per person, so when there was 10 of us there could be 30 dishes to try. Some would be quite simple - just Chinese pickles, or some fruit and a sauce, etc.

The picture below shows an authetic meal at a little lunch spot. My main dish is the noodle/vegatable/meat dish in the lower right. Some of the sides were tomato slices with sugar, Chinese peanuts and 'noodles' made of tofu.

I consider myself to be a pretty adventerous eater, but there were times when I would get 'maxxed out'. I realized that part of what was odd was there were many times when you really had no idea what something was going to taste like. Odd feeling to pop something in your mouth without any idea what the sensation will be. In the US, one has favorties and less favorites and things one doesn't like, but generally you know what to expect. For instance, at one meal there were these little purple-brownish cigar shaped things. They looked a little like dates (or some other fruit). But the skin was a little wrinkled, so could be like a stuffed grape leaf. I couldn't rule out a piece of meat though either. I popped it in my mouth and...oh it's a little potato!

I ate a couple breakfasts with stuff from the bakery next door. This is not traditional Chinese food (they seem to be trying for some sort of chinese version of Europe). The three items below are typcial. One was like an inside out quiche (good), another was like a big puffy 'pig in a blanket'. And then there was the sandwich. It was on toasted bread (which is not at all chinese), but the three layers were not any combo I've tasted before. One layer was like ham and a pickle. The middle layer was fishy (looked sort of like tuna salad). The third layer looked like vegatable stew (corn kernels, peas, carrots).

In the core of the city, fast food is becoming more popular, especially with younger people. The meal above was a combo at a chinese fast food chain. Dumplings and vegatables is the main dish. Below was the meal at a Korean fast food chain (just like we do Taco Bell, they may do Korean). Their specialty is these stone bowls. The bowl was outrageously, melt your skin, hot and stayed too hot to touch most of the meal.

Hot liquids were a common theme, which seemed insane to the americans in the sweltering weather. They do have very cold winters in Beijing, when such meals would be great, they just don't know when to quit!

Here are some of the strangest things I ate: Pumpkin vine (pretty good greens). Squid. Corn juice, which is evidently a new fad. One could get the effect by taking a can of creamed corn, strain out all the solids and then add some more sugar. Very sweet and corny (about the consistency of eggnog). We had boiled and roasted chicken a couple of times. The head was still on the plate (just like 'A Christmas Story'), but that was no big deal. The odd part was that it was then cut into like 1 inch strips. Bone and all! Must be a heck of a knife. You'd have a piece of thigh or breast, but the ribs etc. would be cut right through. There would be bite sized pieces of meat but also small, splintery bone bits in there. Duck feet (one of the worst things I've ever consumed-you can live a full complete life without ever eating duck feet).