Shall Run And Not Be Weary: Our Trip I The Food

We left for a trip to tour China on Sept 2. We wanted to visit the cities in which some of our children were born. I didn't blog much while we were gone because the internet was a bit funky even with Nord VPN and I really didn't think we needed to advertise that our house was empty for that period of time. I wasn't sure how to blog about the trip...chronological, order of importance, or what?So lets do order of importance-

FOOD!

We arrived in Seattle when our bellies were telling us that it was lunch time.

The flight from JFK to Seattle was 5+ hours and the only food that was served was stuff you had to pay for. We had snacks. So the first McDs that we found sounded like the best place to eat.

We only hit McD's for ice cream one time on the entire trip.

Airplane food well, it is what it is.

We flew Hainan Airlines so the food was Asian for the most part.

The first morning in Beijing we thought about going to the buffet in the hotel, but it wasn't included in our room price and we figured we could find something for less than $7 per person.

We did.

Mr Lee's had a bunch of people slurping soup and we joined them.

The tables at most restaurants aren't big enough for six people.

No, Shekinah didn't have to stand, she just was grazing at Daddy's table to see what they had.

For kids who don't normally use chopsticks, I was impressed.

I still don't know what the thin green strips were, it was pickled and garlicky

I just wasn't sure if we should eat it( wasn't sure if it was raw or not). We steered clear of raw fruits and veggies if we didn't know if the water was clean at that establishment. We did however forget to tell them "no ice" here and had drank most of the juice before my jet-lagged brain remembered.

Shekinah managed to get soda with most meals.

Coke and Sprite were usually our choices.

We ate at quite a few round tables.

When our tour included a meal, our guides had restaurants that

accommodated a larger group.

The room was usually separate from the main room.

Probably so our poor eating skills weren't so noticeable.

Sometimes you just spear the food, it doesn't fall off so quickly that way.

We didn't usually leave too many leftovers

We did surprise them at how much rice we consumed.

After our first meal when we cleaned out the bowl quite promptly,

he made sure he ordered more the next few times.

snow peas, celery and mushrooms (I think tree ear?)

tomato and egg (bottom right) and the stringy things were potatoes this time. (Beijing)

Sometimes there were long stringy things that looked like pasta but were mushrooms.

The stand-by staple in this country...even for the locals apparently.

The selection was better than we have in the US.

Oh and the serving sizes were twice as large as at home.

Half-way through the trip we bought a pack of disposable bowls and disposable chopsticks.

Couldn't find any packs of plastic spoons or forks.

We thought we could probably down-size our kitchen table at home and have more room in the kitchen. Wonder how long they would eat just ramen noodles?

Actually I know the answer to that. ....about two weeks then they say

"We're hungry, just don't buy noodles!"

They sell applesauce in bags too!

The price is 29 RMB not dollars.

We got pretty good at dividing by 7 as the US dollar

was worth about 7 RMB when we were there.

This stuff was about the same price or more than we pay at home.

We loved this market. We found it after our first breakfast and found they had this

deli/kitchen thing at the back.

It was doing quite a bit of business in the morning and we ordered

"sun-gu" (3) and pointed at one kind

"liu-gu"(6) of another .

She cut one of those English muffin things in half and threw in an egg and some sauce

hoisin maybe? Whatever it was, I'd love to be able to copy.

The brown bread with green sprinkles (chives) was chopped into little squares and put in a bag.

You ate it with a toothpick.

This one was full of chives/onions, it wasn't quite to our liking for breakfast.

but this one....ummm!

Cooling off and waiting for some of the best parts of the day

food delivered to my table while I wait!

Our dishes all came wrapped in plastic wrap.

Did they have a dish-washing service?

Quite a few times we found evidence of broken cups.

Some places the guides rinsed our dishes and theirs with hot tea and dumped the "rinse water"

in a dish provided. They didn't do it everywhere I wasn't sure of the protocol.

Was it to clean the dishes or to warm them?

Some places we had two sets of chopsticks, one was to select your food from the dishes

the other was to eat with. A few places put serving spoons in the bowls on the lazy susan.

Some places you used one pair of chopsticks for both duties.

Here's a pretty bowl of 'shrooms. They had an interesting texture.

Flavor was good.

Rice!! One place served only a tiny bit of rice close to the end of the meal.

That time we had many vegetables and not a lot of meat.

Kung Pao chicken

chicken or pork of some sort....just call it yummy

Hope's dish before she dug into it and filled her hollow leg.

More 'shrooms (not the same meal)

Tofu....actually was good

bok-choy

Not to mock our guide, but this is the fast way to consume a whole lot of food without putting most of it on the floor.

The place we found ice cream

We did break down and eat Burger King on one of our last nights.

Daddy complained that there was no "regular" chips

Breakfast!! Steamed buns, fried rice, noodles, home fries,

steamed black bean something (center)

and many cups of tea.

We had breakfast included with some of our rooms

and it was sort of nice to just go downstairs for breakfast.

Shekinah decided pumpkin congee wasn't the best, but I actually

liked it with some pickled vegetables.

Oh and fried spring rolls. They were similar to what I make.

This was the meal with little meat. The white loaf stuff close to the center was

fish of some sort. The two dishes in the front had mushrooms in them. The breaded-fried sweet potatoes to the right of center were very good. This meal was described a "very local"

The setting was different than most of the places we visited, it was outside of the city and probably

has more of a story behind the Mao memorabilia museum that was also there.

The tea making set up....but the nice bags of tea cost extra...so we stuck with Lipton.

Now I'm hungry !

This meal was served at the Chenzhou Orphanage

Chicken wings, steamed egg, beef with hot peppers, corn with peppers, shrimp...

There were deep fried green beans and I think there was brown butter on the steamed eggs

Very tasty.

We didn't read the packaging very well....oops

Shekinah thought it was meat packages....like tuna

She was gnawing away and said, "How do you eat this ! It's mostly bone!"

First chicken foot that I ever bought.

Elvin our wonderful guide in Guangzhou.

He made sure we all ate plenty.

Guangzhou noodles. I still need to find a good recipe.

Now walnut steamed buns...I think we have those

figured out...except the bread, what makes it brown?

walnut, sugar, and butter?

One fail....meat on a stick

I figured that as crazy busy as they were, we hit a good spot

Well....no

We ate one meal at a dim sum restaurant.

Faith sat beside the tea making station and we needed to figure out how to make it

Thank goodness for photo menus and Google translate.

We got this, but not the piece below

that was ordered by one of the guides....the rest of the bird was good.

Then when they said "no MORE noodles" we bought oatmeal and bananas.

Classy restaurant...same as here, you can tell by the number of pieces in your place setting.

scallion pancakes....mine never looked like that

We splurged and ate the raw fruit.

watermelon and pomegranate before the seeds developed.

Oh and Italian cuisine in China.

"red" fries and burger with goose liver

Some kind of pasta that included an egg on top...it was good

whatever it was called.

Faith ordered the last chicken sandwich they called it a

"mama burger" and was huge. Shekinah had ordered the same thing, but they came back and said they only have one. Shekinah reluctantly ordered a burger, we didn't spend a lot of time reading the description.