Neverending breakfast possibilites, but all kind of similar

Yesterday morning I was offered donuts or wheat-flour rolls (donuts, please!), which I ate with chopsticks over an empty bowl. The soymilk was scalding hot, so I was instructed to take it to go. God, donuts.

This morning (a new personal favorite), was glutinous rice with soymilk poured over it. Sweetened with a dollop of sweetened condensed milk. Very satisfying texture. Again, every morning I am chided for eating too little too slowly, so every morning host mom sends along a hard-boiled egg with me to eat when I (inevitably) get hungry during class, so that I 'have enough energy' to learn.

after school special

After class yesterday I patronized one of the at least 3 Korean restaurants in the alley-ish street behind the university. These all cater to college students (foreign and non), and so are very diverse. There is even an Indian man who stands outside an Indian restaurant that I am afraid to go in. What I like about most of these restaurants is that they have a tiny second floor you can eat on. Somehow, though, I don't feel I deserve to eat on the second floor until I have friends. If this doesn't happen by the end of the year, I'll spend my last few hours in the upstairs by myself eating a bowl of tears.

The noodle dish (in chinese: "leng mian" - cold noodles) is very similar to the same dish that I ate all the time in Beijing at a Korean place there. It usually comes with meat on top, but other than that it contains buckwheat noodles, pickley carrots, cucumber, kimchee, and a boiled egg. This one had scallions that I picked around. It didn't have sesame seeds like my old timey favorite one, but the broth was the same 1:1 sugar water ratio that I was hoping for. When I got hungry later (what is it with Asian food?!?! Ladies?!?!), I sipped some expired yogurt from a bottle. In Beijing I know you could return the bottle and some of your 20c back, but I was on the move. No time.

More dinners at home

Here are some more pictures of the whole meal shebang at home. The picture above was my least favorite dinner so far. "boooring" (are you "LOL"ing yet? ROFLing???). That meal consisted of soybeans, and stir-fried red pepper, and then a nappa cabbage soup (with meat oil, since "not-meat oil doesn't go well with it"), some really fishy seaweed dish that they picked up at the store, and my fave from the bunch, was a mashed potato dish (all done in the wok) with hua jiao powder.

The meal below was much better. In the upper left corner is a dish with a lot of ginger, made of shredded lotus root. Red pepper and chinese leek stems next (yawn?), then "tea tree" (no relation to a tea tree) mushrooms, and that silly pumpkins boiled with soybeans.

pictures

i'm not sure if the pictures link I sent out originally updates automatically. If not, here's the most recent one: http://hestereats.shutterfly.com

breakfast at home

At top, Tang Yuan ("soup circles"), which are balls made of glutinous rice. Inside each ball was a filling of either black sesame, ground peanuts, or red bean paste. This breakfast was served with warm "corn milk", which I guess is like soymilk. It came from a package, but I don't know if it was originally powder or liquid. Next, Mi Xian ("rice noodles"). These usually have meat in them, but host mother acquiesced to not add meat. She used tomato, chinese leek, egg, and hua jiao (sweet peppercorn) paste.

home cooked

As much as I can put away, my host family claims that I eat too little, too slowly, and obviously not enough meat. "those who don't eat meat don't have enought energy, they get sick easily, and quickly get hungry again."

also, things that don't have meat in them don't taste good, so host mom likes to add "just a little little bit of meat", which is even less helpful than "a lot of big meat chunks" because it is impossible to pick around! and when I try and carefully select sections of food that don't have very small meat chunks, she thinks I am a fool with chopsticks and heaps a big pile of small meat chunk-full food on to my tiny rice bowl. But she doesn't mind that I watch her cook every meal, and she is patient about explaining everything that goes in a dish (mostly oil, salt, and MSG).

Here are a few choice close-ups of some of the dinner foods. You can see pics of the meals in their entirety in my china picture album. If my formatting is at all correct, they are, in clockwise order starting at the top: cucumber, tomato and egg stir fry, mushrooms with chinese leek stalks, and just the wee-est amount of pork, and very soft egg custard type food, a puree of boiled fresh soybeans, and eggplant stir-fried with garlic, hot peppers, scallions and cilantro. "wallah!"

Breakfast through a straw

black rice zhou, at your left. with peanuts and some little dried dates. and warm unsweetened soy milk served in a plastic bag, at your right. also, china is full of bamboo.

Secondly, disappointed

I was so excited to find someone selling Jian Bings on the bridge across the main street by the university. These were a staple in Beijing, complete with your-choice-of-flour crepes, with an egg cracked and cooked on top, covered with sesame seeds, bbq sauce, green onion, and cilantro. and wrapped around a piece of fried thing that made it crunchy. but this kunming jian bing was a total rip off. the crepe was flimsy, there was no cilantro, bbq sauce, sesame seeds nor crunchy thing, and, to kick me while I was down, it was filled with shredded potato (dry, boring, gag), and smeared in a sauce made exclusively of Hua Jiao, a sick-sweet peppercorn that is in everything here.

Fortified the first

My first meal on the mainland. My MO is to shout "NO MEAT! I EAT VEGETARIAN! ADD VEGETABLES" to any proprietor that will lend an ear. This is a bowl of noodles in some soy sauce, with cabbage, pickled veggies, carrot, tofu skins, and sesame seeds on top.

Sweet computery goodness

Without too much ado, I've successfully uploaded pictures! I'm weepy I'm so relieved, as I anticipated much cost or cross-lingual effort and embarrassment. At this point, I'm way ahead of myself, photowise, so I will post a few select pics via blog, and let you see the bulk of them here.

My First Post

I'm having a hard time getting up the nerve to ask the wicked sweet internet mavens about how to (and if I am allowed to) upload my digital pics from my camera. Even so, I can't even view my own blog for some reason, so I will have to be notified if things look crappy.

My time here has been given new purpose by this digital camera and its culinary subjects. Prepare your eyes to be bored by the excessive posting, should it ever happen.