This week I was taken out to dinner! Rebecca knows someone who wants me to teach children once a month. I've been saying no for a long time, so they decided to take me out to dinner to try to convince me. This is the table of food. All food here is served communally. Then...this pot that looked a bit like a giant terracotta flowerpot came to the table. This is a first for me, I've never seen a giant flowerpot put on a table before. All was revealed. It was actually a giant pot of chicken soup. Very nice chicken soup too!
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This Friday instead of food, I'm going for drinks. I read an article about the strangest drinks in China, so I toddled off to the supermarket to see what I could find. Here are the 3 drinks on offer today: First off: Smart Watermelon Fizzy, pink, sweet. It smells like fake watermelon. Tastes foul. The first taste is quite sweet, but then the bitterness of the artificial sweeteners hits you as you swallow it. Not buying this again. Next: Mirinda Plum I love Mirinda Orange and their Apple too, so I've got high hopes for this one. Looks a bit like cola and smells like plum jam. Argh! It has a nice plum flavour that's totally overtaken by the bitterness of the artificial sweeteners as you swallow it. Bleurgh! Not buying this one again either. If it tasted like it smells, then I would happily get it again, but the artificial bitterness just ruins it. Lastly: The Ever Famous Grass Jelly Drink I read that it's supposed to be sweet and herbally. The grass is wheatgrass - the thing that all the smoothie lovers are raving over. Looks a bit like pondwater. You can't see it in the picture, but there are little cubes of jelly at the bottom. It's brown and cloudy and still. Tastes exactly as you'd expect grass to taste. Green, grassy. It's slightly herbal, but I expected it to taste more of herbs, and to be the kind of drink that makes you feel healthy. However...it tastes like I'd expect pondwater to taste. It's not that great. It has the flavour of grass, but a dirty grass flavour rather than a fresh green grass flavour. If you've ever tasted grass (I have) you'll know that it tastes green, vegetabley and fresh. This doesn't taste fresh. And the little lumps of jelly just make it taste like a pond with tadpoles. The bread here is usually sweet. I'm not sure why, there must be some ingredient in it that keeps it sweet. But I have my oven! On the left - Bagel Buns. On the right - Mantou rolls. The bagel buns are a bagel recipe made into rolls rather than rings. The mantou rolls are a Chinese bread recipe that's usually steamed, but i don't have a stemer so i baked them. Insides. Look at the grains on them! Delicious toasted with some butter and cream cheese. It's Random Food Friday again! So this week i had no late lesson, but i did find these in the local shop. They were quite delicious! Although the ingredients don't seem to indicate that they contain peas, they do actually taste like peas! Win! I'll be having these again. the actual pea things - like pea flavoured wotsits! Sometimes it's just the Chinglish that makes me buy things. This is a microwave pizza slice. I'd love to know what 'meet' tastes like. Apparently...it tastes like bacon... And in the positive food category - I love my oven! Here, I present banana cakes - the large one (hidden) is plain banana and the little ones are Banana and Raisin. Yummy. Welcome to this week's Random Food Friday! Looks like a Findus Crispy Pancake, doesn't taste like it. It's filled with egg and green stuff and deep fried. It really isn't that good. Won't be buying these again :( Fried Rice! This is from my favourite sellers here. They now know that i don't like cooked cabbage, or hot spices. They also defend me from the shouts of 'Laowai!' (foreigner). Last time someone shouted that near me, they looked round and said 'Not foreigner, our friend'. He shut up pretty quickly. When you get shouted at every day just for not being Chinese, little moments like this can really make the world a better place. Strange steamed bun thing. This came from a new stall outside the college. It's run by two deaf men, which is cool but not helpful if you can't read the signs. In the end i pointed at raisins and they understood what i wanted. The bun was really really nice! It's not sweet, but they add raisins when its steamed and sugar afterwards, so it ends up having a fruity top and a sugary bottom. Win-Win! I'll be going to them again! I think this should be a weekly thing... So. On Fridays i go and buy food somewhere because i don't finish teaching until late. I've been trying to try all the local food stalls to see what they offer. So now, my dear readers, I'm going to share the goodness (or...badness) with you! This is the fried rice i got tonight. There are about 7 fried rice stall and each of them has something different, so i'll start with this one. It's got rice, meat (?) green stuff, other green stuff, oil and seasoning. Don't know what the seasoning is. This one's ok, but not my favourite. I like my fried rice to have green onions in at least, if not real onions. I would like them to offer lotus root too, it's my favourite vegetable! Milk Tea! I love milk tea. Probably more than any other drink (except, of course, you, you cheeky Mr Daniels...). It is a milk based tea product. It's fairly strong tea here which is nice. I haven't worked out how to get different flavours here yet. It has tapioca pearls in the bottom and a really wide straw so you suck up and eat the pearls as you drink the tea. Right now it's cold, so i've gone with a nice hot cup! These are little patty things. As i walked past the stall i'm sure i smelt some kind of curry thing, and i was hoping they'd be like Jamaican patties. Sadly, they're not. I'm not quite sure what's in them but they're not the tastiest thing i've had. Nucky will get to try these!! |
The Fee Fairy
I'm an English teacher in China. I write about what i do and what i see. Archives
July 2012
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