Wednesday, February 13, 2013

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

6 comments:

  1. It's interesting how you guys had orange juice for dinner on the 12th. Is that a usual drink to have with dinner in your home country? Here i'd say most people only drink it with breakfast. Interesting how that varies country to country.

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    1. My family doesn't drink much coke or soda. My parents think juice is more healthy and I basically just drink water. Here in America, I see a lot of coke drinking

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  2. It must have been hard translating some of these dishes into English. I love all of these dishes. Do you ever miss the food? Because I know you can't find all of that here.

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    1. You have no idea how much time I spent on the translator trying to get the names right. Food is probably the thing from home that I miss the most.

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  3. Do you guys ever order take-out food or go out to eat? If so, I'm interested to hear what types of food you guys get for take out.

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    1. We normally don't order take-out. I think the reason why we don't eat out often is that my family eat very little. We can't finish the large dishes served in the restaurant.

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