The featured pork ribs from the Zhao family

Recipe of spicy stir-fried pork sparerib:

1. Chop the ribs up into pieces of 3-5cmlong. Rinse the pieces clean.

2. Add water until the water covers theribs in the pot. Add 1 teaspoon of salt for 3.3lb of pork ribs, 2-3 slices ofginger. Stew for 25 min until the meat is medium ready.

3. Drain the rib pieces and save the soupfor later use.

4. Add a little vegetable oil in the wok onlarge fire, and heat until the oil boils.

5. Stir-fry the rib pieces, add 2/3teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of pepper powder, 2 teaspoons of cooking wine, and2 teaspoons of soy sauce.

6. When the color changes to dark brown,add a little soup left from the stew and braise for 2 min.

7. Add 1 teaspoon of chicken bouillon powder. Stir fry a few times.

8.Congratulations! The spicy stir-fried pork sparerib is ready to enjoy!!

Gradients:

pork spareribs, ginger, water, salt, olive oil, pepper powder, cooking wine, soy sause, chicken bouillon powder

     The stir-fried pork sparerib is a feature dish of my grandma's. She is an excellent cook and her delicious cooking accompanies me throughout my childhood, but the stir-fire ribs are my favorite. Ever since I can remember, my family always has pork ribs during holidays and reunion. It's like a symbol of the family, and to me, a reminiscences of my grandma. This is not a unique meal. It's pretty common in other families, too. But the flavor of grandma is unique and nobody in the world can copy that, not even my parents.
    This is my first time cooking it, and it's very successful. (Well, it's actually hard to screw up with pork ribs. There are just so many ways of cooking it that you can fix it and improvise.) I never realized that there are so many complicated steps because it seems so easy when grandma is making it. Also, in Chinese recipe, they always tell you to add "some" salt, "enough" water, "a little" pepper, or cook until "almost ready." How am I supposed how much is enough?! It takes my grandma some time to figure out and she had to make it again to measure the exact amount of the gradients. I'm glad that we have a recipe now and my children and grandchildren can follow it easily.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptM6IZgZezQ

What's on the table this week?

Grocery List:
Grain&Starchy food: 7kg $6
rice
potato

Seafood: 3kg $5
grass carp
eel


Meat&eggs: 7kg $25
chicken
pork
veal
eggs

Dairy: 7kg $10
milk
yogurt

Condiments: 0.05kg $1
salt
MSG (monosodium glutamate)
pepper

Fruit&vegetables: 14kg $10
apple
banana
clementine
cabbage
cucumber
mushroom
black fungus

Beverage: 7L $4
orange juice
ice tea
beer
grain spirit

     Food is not the most essential thing in our family, but it's an important connection between the family members. When I'm young, we would always sit down and have meals together. But honestly food is just a functionary stuff for me at that time. All I care about is the TV cartoons around dinner time. When I get older, I usually eat lunch and dinner at school during weekdays, so most of the time it's just my parents eating at home and they eat very simple. When I eat at home during weekends, my mom would pay much more attention in the kitchen preparing for the meal and we would share about what happens in the week. There is a period in my life that I barely eat at home. I would make excuses not to eat home during the weekends and go out with my friends. The past summer holiday, I probably only had less than 10 meals at home with my parents if we don't count the meals we had together during traveling.
     Dinning out as a family seems very popular in America, but we are very traditional and we barely go out ourselves, except on holiday occasions or dining with other families. We all believe home made food is most healthy. My mom is responsible for most of the meals. But in fact, my dad is a much better cook and he cooks diverse tasty dishes. He is very proud of his cooking skills and often brags to me about his cooking when my mom is not around. My grandma is also an excellent cook. She stays with us every winter and goes back in the spring. I always gain weight when my grandma visits and lose weight when she leaves, and that's how my friends tell when she is here, from my size change.
     Our family eats very spicy food. That's the feature of the Hunan cuisine. We put pepper in every dish. Even when we make eggs, we add a little pepper as a seasoning.

 

Our closed kitchen

2.9 Dinner & 2.10 Breakfast: pork & cabbage dumplings

2.12 Breakfast: 250g milk, green-bean pancake, candied rice fritter

2.12 Lunch: stir-fried beef with bean vermicelli, braising chicken feet, spicy stir-fired grass carp, braised pork with taro, finless eel, stir-fried cuttlefish with pork tripe, chicken, rice, milky juice

      The pictures above are some of the mealsin my family. We are a family of 3, but wedon't always eat this much. It just happens to be the Spring Festival and myparents are staying with theirsiblings and my grandparents. The Spring Festival isthe time of the year when people all go back and unite with their family. Small families of 3 or 4 willcome together and emerge into the bigger family, usually more than 10. Thewhole point is to get abusy, lively reunion party.
     The traditional food at the Spring Festival is dumplings. We usually make sufficient dumplings forthe whole family for the Spring Festival eve and next morning, which, in our case, are about 220dumplings (about 12 dumplings per person per meal). Therest of the meals, as you may see, are mostlystir-fries. This ismore than a family thing. Chinese cuisine is famous for its stir-fired dishes.Steaming and stewing are also popular in China and more healthy.

2.12 Dinner: plain cabbage, spicy wild mushroom, plain black fungus, shredded ginger, chicken, orange juice, rice

2.13 Breakfast: 250g milk, pan-fried glutinous rice cake 100g

2.13 Lunch: stir-fried beef with bean vermicelli, plain cabbage, egg waffle, braised grass carp. stewed chicken, stir-fried mutton, steamed finless eel, stir-fried meat with cabbage, minced meat with black fungus, stir-fired beef with pepper, rice, ice tea

2.13 Dinner: egg waffle, braised fish, stir-fried roe deer, stewed chicken, stir-fried spinach, stir-fried pork blood curd, stir-fried wild mushroom, plain black fungus, ice tea, rice

Let's see what Mongolians eat

Country: Mongolia
Family: The Batsuuri family of Ulaanbaatar

Expenditure: $40.02

     The Batssuri family, two parents of mid-40s and two teenage children, is a moderate-sized family in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The weekly food expenditure of this family of 4 is only $40.02. That comes to an average of about $1.4 per person per day. But the picture indicates that the family has decent choices and diversity in diet, plus that fact that 75% of the population in Ulaanbaatar live on less than $2 per day. The Batssuri’s might be the middle class of this still-developing society even they spend little money on food.

     The diet of the family is relatively balanced and healthy but they are heavy on red meat. It makes sense that meat, especially beef and mutton, is cheaper because Mongolia is largely composed of grassland. Grazing is the No.1 industry in Mongolia. $13 is spent on meat, fish, and eggs, including 6.8lb of beef and 4.4lb of mutton. But meat is not a large proportion of their family diet. Comparing to their sizes and the amount of fruit and dessert they have, 1.5lb of meat every day for the family is not that much. The family also eats 30 eggs for the whole week, an egg for everyone every day. That’s a lot of protein in the diet. And meant and eggs probably don’t cost that much in Ulaanbaatar.

Cheese is not a common food in this family’s diet because it’s considered as a luxury food. That’s why the family eats very little cheese, which also indicates that the family is in the lower-to-middle class.

Starchy food and grains are not a huge proportion, either, but they do eat a lot of bread. $5.41 is spent on starchy food, much of which is bread (15.4lb) and potatoes (11lb). You can see the pile of bread and potatoes at the back of the table. The Batssuri family eats a lot of sweet stuff. 2.2lb of sugar is consumed in a week and 6.6lb of pastries is consumed. High meat and high sugar in the meal is not good to their body.

But the family is pretty healthy in terms of eating sufficient amount of fruit and vegetables. $8 is spent on vegetables and fruit and the No.1 fruit in the family is green apple (4.4lb). Cucumber is a major consumption in the family (5.3lb) because it's cheap and has a high yield in the local climate.

     Interestingly, the family doesn’t drink much beverage. You barely see any drink in the picture except three bottles of beer. Most of their drink is black tea. That’s a culture habit but it's also very healthy because the chemicals in tea help breaks down fat in blood. Another healthy diet habit is that the family mostly buys raw gradients and cooks the food themselves, which ensures that they eat fresh food.

Alien Invasion Report

 

Master Eatord:

     My assigned mission is successfully completed. During my two days of undercover stay at Rutgers Prep School, I have a lot to report about this place. According to my observation of their food, I think the school is worthwhile taking over and it will be an easy task because the creatures here are treated like animals.

     In terms of facilities, Rutgers Prep has a huge cafeteria called “Dining Commons”, a machine that spits out snacks, and an after-school cafeteria where the still-hungry creatures buy extra food. Interestingly, the machine that spits out food when fed metal coins or paper is very popular. I see the creatures crowd around the machine during break time every day. I don’t get why they are so eager to eat the machine’s vomit.

     On Thursday the school cafeteria serves typical American food, like hamburgers, French fries, and on Friday the school serves Asian food, like Thailand mango rice, and Cambodian marinated grilled chicken. It’s all yellow. Yellow must be the school color. The school must be well-funded because it provides decent places to eat and diverse food. When we take over the school, we can use their money as a fund for our further invasion to this planet.

     To further analyze the food in details, there are vegetables, meat, and main entrees, fruit, salad, and soup every day. The meal is designed to balance in nutrition to power up the creatures and apparently it gets the desired effect. When the creatures crowd into the Dining Commons during lunch period, they push each other, squeeze among the crowd, and compete for food. They seem very strong and healthy because everybody is competing fiercely. Those who lose have to stand in line and wait for another 5 minutes to be fed.

     Although the facilities and food are pretty decent here, the school treats the creature like animals. They have a rigid function schedule and they are driven to different rooms by time. They operate rather early in the morning, like 8 o’clock and whoever in charge of charging the creatures clearly does a terrible job because everyone seems to run on a low battery. Then they are all fed during the 30-min lunch period. Those poor creatures just take food and stuff it in their mouth without actually enjoying it. When the period is over, nobody dares to stay for another bite and they all run back to the rooms. With such inhuman treatment, their bodies might be strong but their minds are weak and we can easily destroy them.

     There are three large bin-like robots in the cafeteria and the creatures feed them what they can’t finish. The robots seem to enjoy the leftovers because they have no complaints at all. They are only half-filled at the end of the lunch period, and I’m amazed how little food those creatures leave to feed the robots. But when I see the food the next day or the soup the day after the next, it’s all clear to me where all the leftover food goes.