Food

 I'm not sure how many posts are going to be called "Food".  Perhaps I should get a little more creative with my titles.  But for now, it's such a big part of this adventure so there is much to be written and "Food" is inclusive enough to house all musings. 

Food is a persistent problem.  This part of our adventure is giving me a run for my money!!

1)  I don't have much cooking equipment (pans, dishes, utensils, appliances...) and I don't want to buy it if is going to be arriving in the shipment because storage is going to be a problem.  So *what* I can cook is severely limited. In addition to this, we are slowly acquiring things like plastic wrap, hot pads etc---things you don't always remember you need until it's too late!

2)  What food I do know how to cook is limited because I can't get ingredients.  For example, you can't buy salt in the grocery store.  Thankfully I found some in packets at Sam's Club, but it is table salt and I'm used to cooking with kosher or sea salt (table salt works, but it is a learning curve). And being in a bag, it's not too user friendly. It's too humid to store in a mug to pinch or spoon out.  I did finally find something that will work as a salt shaker that seals. That was a VERY welcome thing! As for other food items, I still have yet to find any baking powder, soda, cornstarch, vanilla and spices that I know other than cumin, chili powder, garlic powder and pepper.  I understand you can get these on the Chinese "Amazon", but we can't purchase from there yet because our bank card is still being issued.  The dairy that is available is very limited.  I would really like some cream cheese, sour cream and cream.  

3) We seem to get hungry at least three times a day....and that causes a problem because then we have to figure out what to do about that.  A relentless problem.  Especially when it takes so much effort!

Because of the above things, we eat out a lot.  At least once a day.  (Except Sunday, which took a fair amount of planning ahead.)  The food we have eaten out has varied.  We've tried a variety of cuisines.  Here is a sampling:

Pizza Hut.  Better than Mr. Pizza, but they still wanted to put corn on the pizza. You get gloves to eat your pizza with in China. What a lovely bonus! This cost $22 for 2 pizzas and drinks.

This was a Beef Noodle Soup joint.  This was really good.  4 big bowls of beef noodle soup, 4 puff pastries with sesame seeds, and two big beef bones to gnaw the meat off.  Only Tom ventured on the gnawing.  This cost $15.

I give Bullfighter Steak house 17 thumbs down.  There was a little bit of hangriness going on and Tom just quickly picked something he thought was safe.  Truly awful.  Look at that 'steak'. From a distance (a very far distance....) it looked like steak.  It was pressed meat of some sort.  Neither the texture nor the flavor represented beef.  Nice try with the sear marks.  The gravy was a chunky something with an uncomfortable amount of black pepper.  The fries must have come straight from Idaho--already cooked then served right off the boat--cold and rubbery.  The fruit salad was lovely fruit dowsed in mayonnaise and they served the ice cream before the entree! This was around $20.  Nearly the worst use of money ever.  Maybe a slight step above boiled lettuce. Yet the place was so busy! Crazy Chinese!  I'm sure they think the same of American 'Chinese' food.

This was our second Korean BBQ.  We really didn't mean to eat that cuisine again, but we can't read the characters and the girls thought it looked good.  In my opinion, it was better than the first one. This was around $25 for the 4 of us.

On the cooking-at-home front:

It takes so much effort to put a meal on!  When you have limited silverware, plates and bowls, you have lots of extra washing and juggling.  And the food you have is either too large or two small for the vessel being used.   As you can see here, such a small amount of veggies for a large wok.

Meal:  'Bacon', eggs, sauteed asparagus with onions, cherry tomatoes and lychees.  Please be impressed.  This was hard to do!

This was Sunday dinner the other day:  Blueberry chicken salad with grapes, red onions, cucumbers, candied almonds and a blueberry wensleydale with a lemon vinagarette.  It took me all week to hunt down the supplies and it was lacking something.... but still very edible!

This was Sunday night's fare.  Everyone got to pick a ramen noodle gig from RT-Mart.  They have a whole aisle of them.  Tom and Greta chose ones with cookers installed in them.  They were pretty cool, but extraordinarily spicy. And pricey.  One of these meals was $5--that's quite a bit given the price of eating out here.

This was tonight's meal:  teriyaki chicken, rice (I got a rice cooker!) and sauteed cabbage with red onion.  This again, was not quite the same, but very edible.  

The cooking scene is getting better little by little.  Tonight we picked up a counter top oven and so I can do a little baking--nothing very great yet because of lack of supplies, but I can throw together a small loaf of French bread!  Or make a puffy oven pancake.  Oh to have my kitchen abilities expand!  It's great! 

Next up:  try to plan menus for a week and so I'm not going to the grocery store every. single. day.  That sounds like such a dream life!  (A side note:  the grocery store/mall is not too far, about the distance from my house in AF to the church house.  Tonight we carried home the rice cooker, the oven and a bunch of fruit---- it's an awfully long way if you are carrying an awkward load! Bring on even more stares!)

One thing we have loved is the fruit. So many options and so many new things to try!  We have been having two different kinds of fruit for breakfast and often another kind mid day.  Lots of melons, cherries, berries, Asian pears and citrus. The mangos are divine.  We eat at least one of those a day.

Pomelo (my favorite, although they are not in season so I will hold off on buying too many of these; don't be jealous, KJ!)

Golden kiwi--one of our favorites we often bought at home, but these are very delicious here.

This is 'The Queen of Fruit" (a mangosteen).  You score it, and pop off the shell.  Inside it is a fleshy white, segmented fruit.  These are pretty good.

Not shown that we have bought almost every time we have gone to the grocery store:  lychees.  Pretty yummy!  And still so many new ones we have yet to try!  The fruit scene is saving our bacon in the food department!