Foodying Around

Thank you, Steph, for requesting that I post pictures of food. It inspired a bout of photography at the market today, which at least I am thrilled about. (You will see later one less-than-thrilled-about-it individual...)

But, before I throw those pics at you in the blogosphere, I will include a warning that anyone with too active an imagination and disdain for potential germiness should probably skip over this entry. The pictures... and stories... well... I don't think they are so bad that I would leave China or stop going to the market, but I have adopted a habit of bleaching everything from my fruit to my bread. You know, just in case.

So, first I will show a few pics of dinner. We all (Carrie, Lisa, Travis, & I) went to the nearest restaurant that was burgeoning with people and were soon met by Marie, the Belgian girl I do not get to see nearly as often as I wish I could. Too many people in a restaurant is usually a good indicator that people survive long enough to become regulars and recommend the place to their friends. I guess they could recommend the place to their enemies, too, but I try not to think like that. And, by the way, when I say "too many people," it means that other customers had to be asked to move from one seat to another and share tables with strangers so that we four (and then five) could be seated together. One of the two old men at the table we ultimately usurped was quite annoyed at the whole arrangement, which reminds me that, while I would not expect such a consolidation in the States, it is not exactly a fully embraced practice here, either. At least, not by customers.

Here is my dinner:

See those noodles? Those converted me back into eating heavily refined foods. I mean, it is going to happen here in China. Unless I eat only fruits and veggies and oatmeal, I am going to eat sugary fatty processed foods, so I may as well enjoy them. It didn't hurt that just beyond our table, the noodle dough was being beaten and stretched by one of the restaurateurs:

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Lisa did not benefit so much from the homemade noodles since her dish had glass noodles:

Carrie got a nice big egg to top her vegetarian noodle bowl. You know, the vegetarian noodle bowl with slices of beef in it? Yeah, that one. Carrie has accepted that, as a vegetarian in China, she is going to eat as much meat as I will have to eat processed, sweet, fatty foods. We both just laugh and enjoy dinner anyway (most of the time).

Here is Carrie's dish:

Ok, so now we are going to get to the more graphic, less appealing part of the story. My noodles, for one, were invaded by a big black fly. Yummy. One of our new Western friends complained that none of the food here has enough meat, but, really, the extra protein was not necessary tonight.

And, of course, once I considered the nearby market from which this fly was probably visiting, I was pretty sure that I would surrender the meal to the little guy and get the rest of my nourishment at home.

Here are a few examples of what I got to see on a much larger scale at the market:



Noodles, pickled vegetables, mushrooms, and other wonderful things cover this vendor's table. If it weren't for the flies coming from the next table, maybe this would have been overwhelmingly appealing to a consumer like me.

But this sat at the next table:
Yep. It is a cow's heart. I know, cow's have hearts. It is not a disgusting fact. It is the openness of the entire thing. Zhuhai is a hot place, and the market has nothing but warm bodies and incandescent lighting to affect the temperature. It was late by the time we got to the market. This heart had had a long day.


The lady waving her hand at me in the picture above was not saying "ni hao" but "weishenme? why?"
She did not like my touristy picture-taking, and she made me feel guilty for the fact that I was not asking permission to photograph everyone's stalls. I kept photographing after this, but the pictures get more blurry since I was actually trying to be subtle about the whole thing...

This lady is selling squid. In the sun. Out where the fish are sold, there are lots of guts and scales piled up in the permanent puddle you see on the cement. It doesn't smell so bad out here as you may think. I mean, it smells, but it is nothing compared to stinky tofu. Or our pears, now that I think of it.

We get lots of food for the holidays. Mostly mooncakes and fruit. Not fruit in general, but, specifically, lots of pears. We each got a big box of pears that smelled like horses. I know, it sounds as though I make that reference a lot here in China considering I have not yet seen a single mare, but my roommates agree, and when is anyone wrong about a smell when their roommates agree?

So here are our pears spilling out over the edges of the huge bowls they are in.

Each pear is bigger than a big apple and smells as though it were used in a New Age horse massaging technique before they were purchased for us. I tried cooking some. Carrie said that they smelled like potatoes, and Travis said he thought I was making bacon while they cooked. Umm, we'll see if those make it into a pie...

And, this is for you, Lei:

Our stockpile of tea is growing. We, of course, need a different box of tea for each of our tea needs. There is my bag of tea components when I want to make my own homebrew (in the deep red bag on the left), and then Carrie & I each need our own green tea for the evenings, red tea for the mornings, and a rose tea for a little extra touch of exquisiteness.

Below is a small portion of my tea collection at home in Ohio that I almost left Lei and everyone else in that house to deal with:

Looking at those teas does make me miss them. I liked every one of them. I don't yet know if the rose tea I bought today will stand up to a comparison with Wissotzky rose tea, so I will try not to do any comparing. I will just let the tea be what it is and enjoy it for that. This technique is what has made it easy for me to go without many of the things I love in the States and enjoy what I have here. It is only when I indulge in comparisons that I begin to wish for things thousands of miles away