liuzhou

I first heard of this in the late 1970 / early 80s. It seems to have originated originated during Mao's 'Great Leap Forward' (1958-1961) during which millions starved to death due to a man-made (Mao-made) famine. People knew it didn't help but maybe took comfort from some psychological effect. Estimates for the fatalities range from 30-55 million. Still in living memory so nothing really to LOL about. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/great-leap-forward.asp

Just wanted to say that peanut sauce and peanut butter are the same thing in Chinese - 花生酱 (huā shēng jiàng), just alternative, equally valid translations, hence my confusion as to why you would use one but flinch at the other.

From what I've researched, it's a standard nonsurgical treatment for my condition,

I've just been told that I can be discharged tomorrow. They have ruled out surgery for various reasons and ruled that bed rest is all that is needed, something I can do at home without taking up (and renting) valuable, medical real estate. Ancillary benefits will include food dishes devoid of duplication of pork.

These lists, and there are many of them, are stupidly pointless at best, highly offensive at worst. People in culture A eat different things than those in culture B and each often finds the other's unappealing, while preferring what they are accustomed to? Hold the front pages!

With nothing better to do in my hospital bed, I just searched Xiaohongshu, where these stones are supposedly going viral, and found a whole one video with 200 'likes'. Hardly world news.

I can't find anyone here who has ever heard of this. Idiots on social media are hardly news.

... then I found out. Pork ribs with lotus root and shiitake; pork slices with luffa; cabbage and rice. Same pattern. The lotus root was severely undercooked. 17元.

Another day. Another round of needles and probes. Another lunch. Another 14元. Pork with carrots. Pork with some kind of squash. Bok Choy. This duplication of pork dishes seems to be a feature. Minced with the carrots; sliced with the squash, today. Other features are the three vegetables and excessive (to me) mound of low quality rice. Can't wait to see if the pattern is repeated at dinner. Probably.

Sorry, Woks of Life, but 捞面 does not translate as you have it. 捞 translates as 'dredged' or 'fished out'. 面 translates as many things but here 'wheat noodles'. Nothing to do with stirring or any other wok technique. The noodles are briefly cooked in a pan of water from which they are dredged or fished out before being incorporated in with the other ingredients in the wok.

Before I end up on the missing members' list, I should report that I am on the back-in-hospital list. While this is obviously not a good thing, it has some benefits. This is my third stay in hospital in nine months but this time I had the choice of which establishment to grace with my broken body. I chose the city's largest non-TCM hospital rather than the TCM place I used before. Within an hour of arriving at this hospital they had diagnosed what the TCM had missed and therefore left me suffering for nine months. Now I'm being treated with good, healthy drugs and painkillers instead of witches' brews and tiger penis soup. For the technically minded or just the purient, I am suffering from a previously undetected compression fracture probably caused by a fall in September last year and which erupted in excruciating pain yesterday. I feel better already just from finally knowing what the problem is rather than having to make increasingly ridiculous and ever more terrifying guesses. Two main problems remain now. First a near total lack of internet. This hospital doesn't have wi-fi so I'm reduced to my cell phone which sadly has no VPN to get me past China's insane censorship. In addition to a lack of internet, there is a lack of food. The choices for lunch and dinner is limited to two set meals at each. The 14元 meal or the 17元 meal. There is no indication what these may be until they turn up at your bedside. Breakfast is slightly better with a choice of buns, rice porridge (congee) or noodles. Here is my 14元 meal tonight. 茄子肉末 🍆, eggplant with minced pork; 莴笋肉片, celtuce with sliced pork; stir fried cabbage and a ton of rice. It wasn't bad but could have been better seasoned - as ever Not only is my meal choice sparse, so may be my posts here for the immediate future but don't give up on me yet.

I realise this is a very old topic, but as David Ross reminded us often, Cook-Off topics are not time limited. And anyway, I'm sure there's more to be said on the subject. I just came across this one today and feel I must point out a couple of oft-repeated errors and attempt to resolve some unresolved confusion. The errors both involve the name. First of all, @alanamoana claimed twice that xiaolongbao literally means 'little dragon buns'. No. It. Doesn't. 小笼包 (xiǎo lóng bāo) literally means 'little basket buns'. The confusion has arisen here from the Chinese for 'dragon' (龙) being a homophone (having the same pronunciation) of the word for basket (笼). Different, if similar, characters. I see that Ah Leung also addressed this but disagree that the confusion being anything to do with 'mainlanders' being too lazy to write the character correctly. I've never seen it mis-written in Chinese. Only seen mistranslated. Then a different member says that XLB are soup dumplings. Again, no. Soup dumplings are XLB, like dogs are animals, but animals aren't usually dogs. There are many types of XLB which aren't soup dumplings. Then there is the wrapping confusion and the question of whether these should be of the pasta-like variety or more bready like found in Baozi or steamed buns (often made with high gluten flour). Here in China both can be found. Soup buns, more properly known as 汤包 (tāng bāo) or 小龙汤包 (xiǎo lóng tāng bāo) tend to be of the former type, but certainly not always. Finally, Ding Tai Fung is a Taiwanese chain and their soup dumplings slightly different from those found in Shanghai. Not that they originated in Shanghai either.

I usually head to the fresh fish section where their wares lie on beds of ice, then rub my fingers on the ice to moisten them.

Insane! For the price of your single lychee, I can buy a kilo! Almost.

Sorry, it's an old post and I just noticed that sentence. May I ask why?

This was somewhat optimistically described as 海陆空至尊炒饭 (hǎi lù kòng zhì zūn chǎo fàn), sea land air supreme fried rice. The sea was a couple of shrimp, the land was both beef and bacon and the air was chicken. Yeah, I know they can fly but... It also contained, egg, carrot, green soy beans, green onion and the dreaded c⊘rn, which I carefully extracted and threw out of the window.

Spicy, salt and pepper prawns (with coriander leaf and Chinese chives).

Today's harvest. And a refill of bayberries.

I'm sorry, but I only know the local Chinese names which I don't think will be of much help to you. I'm not sure how they relate to Canadian names, if at all - they may be local cultivars. For the record, these are known as 王中王大芒果 (wáng zhōng wáng dà máng guǒ) which translates as 'King of Kings Large Mangoes'

That's my usual excuse, too!

That is exactly the misinformation I was talking about. Waxberries are emphatically not Myrica rubra. These do not have any waxy coating.

White wine vinegar is a fruit vinegar!

Rice vinegar and rice wine vinegar are the same thing. All vinegar is technically some kind of fruit wine based. The name is from the Old French vyn egre, meaning 'aged wine'. In botanical language a grain of a cereal plant is not a ‘seed’ but a ‘fruit’ of the kind called caryopsis. As with most things, the flavour varies with brand but, in general, I find the rice vinegar milder than many western vinegars.