Chinese Restaurant

We have many, many restaurants in our area of Shanghai that cater to foreigners. Lots of places with English menus, even places to get good burgers and milkshakes. But every now and then, we eat at a real Chinese restaurant. My friend Carol recently made a reservation for a group of us to have dinner at a big, popular Chinese place. Can you find her name among the list of many other names on the reservation board? Don't look too hard. :-)

Fruit

Not sure if this little fruit is available in other parts of the world, but I hadn't had it before we came to China. Lychee is in season here now, and oh so delicious. The sweet white flesh is wet and slippery, with a small dark brown oblong seed inside. Can I get this in the US? If you've seen it, please let me know. :-)

One of these things is not like the others....

Seaweed sprinkles on a donut... not so yummy to my Western palate.

Look What Was In The Stew Tonight...

Free delivery for many different services is commonplace here. Drycleaning, restaurants, even groceries can be delivered for free. Seems like a great idea... most of the time.

Last week I took advantage of a local import grocery store's email ordering and free delivery. Among other things, I ordered several sweet potatoes. I have ordered sweet potatoes from this store before, so I know they carry them, and I entered the product code for them when I placed my order. When the order came later that day, I noticed that the sweet potatoes seemed a little small, but I thought nothing of it until I peeled and began cubing them today and found this:
Well, I don't know if I've been missing something, but I hadn't seen these before. They certainly weren't the deep orange color I was expecting. I had heard of purple potatoes... but I guess I'd never really seen one. Is this a purple potato? After the bright color was revealed, I went back to the price sticker on the plastic bag the potatoes came in to see what they were called. There was a Chinese name, in characters, and then underneath it said, "Tianmuzishu." Is there another name for this tuberous veggie? And have you cooked with it?

I just tossed the purple contents of my cutting board into the crockpot with the other veggies and beef that were to form our stew for dinner tonight. By the time we had dinner, the purple had blended in with everything else and had no distinctive flavor. So, no harm done. I'll have to try the remaining two tianmuzishus on their own and let you know what they are like!

Summer Supper

-Fresh picked sweet corn
-Steamed green beans, buttered and seasoned with garlic, salt and pepper
-Caprese salad, consisting of sliced garden tomatoes and fresh mozerella, drizzled with olive oil and balsalmic vinegar, with fresh basil leaves and salt and pepper to top it all off.

Yummm. What could be finer?

Wish you had been here to share it with us, Scott. We miss you!

New Summer Drink

Starbucks is Starbucks, even in China. We take full advantage of this fact. Occasionally, however, Starbucks here in China has a few things on their menu that don't seem familiar (aka, American). Take, for instance, the mung bean scone. Something funny about that. Or the barbecued pork scone. I don't think these are on the menu in Seattle or Chicago.

I've thought that most of the drinks seem right, though, until recently. I noticed a poster in Starbucks featuring a new drink for summer. The poster read,

Coffee on Ice
Coffee in the Jelly
Jelly in Your Coffee

Hmmm... coffee and jelly... something isn't working for me here. I can picture coffee with toast and jelly, but not jelly IN my coffee. I read the fine print today and found out that the drink is a Coffee Jelly Frappachino.

I didn't order one. Would you?

Anybody Hungry?

They come in a handy, grab-and-go, single serving size.... chicken feet, anyone?

Concubine's Smile

... is the name of this salad that we ate in a Beijing restaurant. Very beautiful, mostly flower petals and cilantro. It had a yummy sweet dressing on it. Not sure about the name... from what we've learned about concubines in China, they didn't have too much to smile about.

These Little Piggies

...were at the market. Carrefour, to be exact. They are steamed buns, with red bean paste inside. We bought three of them when Shann and Sarah were visiting, and nibbled one of them. Not so very yummy, so instead of being eaten, these remaining two had their portraits taken, and then were relegated to a spot on the shelf in my kitchen where they still sit, looking cute. They are quite dry and hard now, and about ready for the trash. They must have been a sort of Easter-y product... haven't seen them before.

Before Dinner Snack

I've just posted recently about the amount of food boys eat. Here's a little follow up from this afternoon~


Half of a cream filled donut
2 eggs, scrambled with crumbled bacon
A bowl of leftover homemade chicken and rice soup
Pretzels dipped in Nutella
A small chocolate bar


My Word. Surely the boy must be growing. I exclaimed about all that he was consuming and voiced my hope that he would still be able to eat his dinner an hour from now. He reminded me that he had run a mile at school today, and of course he would be able to eat his dinner.


I remember my mom telling me about a friend of hers who'd had to limit her growing son to drinking only one gallon of milk a day. Only one gallon a day.

My Word.

Yum in a Jar

I'm not sure if this product is a China only thing, or even what the real name of it is, but I can tell you that it is Delicious. Peanut butter and chocolate swirled together, kind of like a Reese's cup in a jar. You really must try it... but do it on a day when you're "very active" (see previous post!), because you'll be tempted to eat the whole jar.

Or have four high school boys over for lunch. They polished off most of it, but there was a little left for me and Seth to have a spoonful tonight.

Lunch by the Beach

Have you seen the movie Mr. Bean's Holiday? Here is Caleb's impression of Mr. Bean eating his seafood lunch.

Dessert Options

Black Sesame Cream
OR
White Fungus with Chinese Herbs


I chose the Black Sesame Cream, thinking it sounded slightly more appetizing than fungus. It was a thickish soup-like consistency, just the tiniest bit sweet, and appeared to be made of ground sesame seeds, black in color. It was served warm, in a small, straight sided bowl with a lid. I consumed it fairly quickly, and it was Not So Bad.

But it certainly wouldn't be considered dessert where I come from.

Appetizing

Don't you love the delicious looking little entree featured on the box my new baking dish came in? Large prawns, I believe. Somehow they didn't strike me the right way.

Lunch is Over

Look carefully... someone ate a whole fish for lunch... and his eye is still peering out of his intact head! We came across this scene at what is called a "bird and flower market", kind of an old Shanghai scene, with many types of pets for sale along with some house plants. More photos coming.

Breakfast

At Starbucks in Shanghai, you too can have a barbequed pork scone with your latte.

Candy

Treat, anyone?I tried one, and it wasn't that bad. But I haven't had a second one.

Lunch

"On the last day of Chinese New Year, my true love gave to me, a partridge to eat for my lunch."

I don't think there's a song like that, but we did see someone about to dig into this little roasted bird at Yuyuan last week. I showed Mr. Wu this picture later and he told me it was a partridge. Don't you love the little curled up claws? I'm sure they are nice and crunchy! The head is there too, should you care to look closely.

New Recipe

This afternoon the kids and I found ourselves in a small restaurant in a museum in Puxi. I thought I would get them a little treat at the end of our afternoon outing. We looked at the menu and found that "Banana Split" was offered in the dessert section. The consensus was that we would get three banana splits to share among the five of us.

Of course we assumed that this ice cream treat would look the way it always has before~ a scoop each of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream; chocolate, pineapple, and strawberry toppings; whipped cream, nuts and a cherry.

This is not what was delivered to our table. These desserts had no whipped cream or cherry, no chopped nuts or chocolate topping. No topping of any kind. Each one did have two scoops of ice cream, a chocolate and what we think was peach. Caleb declared that the peach ice cream tasted how girls' perfume smells. There was banana in these desserts, several slices of banana around the ice cream. And, there was also cantaloupe. Large slices of cantaloupe where the banana halves should have been. There was chopped apple and pear in place of the chocolate, pineapple, and strawberry toppings. That's it.

Apparently a Chinese banana split is ice cream and fresh fruit. Nothing wrong with that. Seems like it might even be good, if you were expecting it. It isn't what we were expecting.

Expectations. They'll get you every time.

Dinner

This afternoon at the Chinese grocery store outside our complex I saw the smiling girl working at the fish counter wack a large, wriggling fish over the head with a short board. The fish gave a final flop and then lay still on the floor, where she quickly picked it up, slipped it into a bag that was not quite large enough (the tail stuck out the top) and handed it to the waiting customer.

I can't be sure, but I think I saw a look of fear in the eyes of the snakes, crabs, soft shell turtles, large frogs, and other fish that were watching from their tanks.