liuzhou

Lunch 藕芽炒牛肉 (ǒu yá chǎo niú ròu) - Lotus Sprout Fried Beef. Rice. The lotus was pickled. I prefer fresh, but wrong time of year.

I stab my spuds with this. It is sprung so that the spikes retract safely for storage. One stab - 24 holes.

Yes. I don't know what the percentage is here, but I can see that it is higher. People ain't going to pay me for my trash then throw it away!

Everything here is recyclable. We have three or four different bins for different categories of waste. Everyone, including me, ignores the designations. We all know that within minutes of our depositing our waste there will be a queue of independent recyclers picking through our trash for anything they can sell. You might need 500 plastic water bottles to get any cash worth having but one more gets you there. Some people specialize. I've got my cardboard and paper lady who comes to my door and pays me to take away my trash. Similarly, the glass bottle guy pays me. It's not that long since even human waste was gathered in cities and recycled to agricultural land. In the countryside it still happens. A few years ago,a friend and I sat for an hour near a trash can on a busy shopping street with branches of McDs and local eateries etc and counted how many times it was searched. In one hour it was searched 42 times. Normal. Bottles, paper cups, Styrofoam boxes, plastic bags - all recyclable.

It almost 50 years since my first wife died but I always think of her when I scramble eggs. For years I couldn't make them as I like them, but I always somehow nailed hers. (She wasn't being polite; she didn't do fake polite!) To put it in steak terms, she liked hers medium well - minimum liquid but not 100% dry. I'm more a medium rare guy. With both steaks and scrambled eggs. Not together! Omelettes we agreed on. Medium rare, light and fluffy.

I'm fairly sure I've never burnt carrots in my life and I cook with cast iron 90% of the time. I don't do sweet potatoes - not a lover.

This is as much a warning as aything else. For decades, a type of yogurt has been sold on the streets of, especially Beijing, but also throughout China. It is known as 北京酸奶 (běi jīng suān nǎi) or, less commonly, 北京奶酪 (běi jīng nǎi lào) and in the past was sold in these returnable bottles, although they are disappearing and disposable containers are taking over. The latter term, 奶酪 (nǎi lào) is now mainly used to refer to cheeese rather than yogurt. Beijing Yogurt Returnable Bottles Image: Nikolaj Potanin licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. The literal meaning of 酸奶 (suān nǎi) is 'sour milk', although it is used to describe all types of yogurt. The author of the relevant Wikipedia article makes the rookie mistake of confusing etymology and meaning by claiming it 'means' sour milk'. It doesn't. However, Beijing Yoghurt is no ordinary yogurt. It is in fact yogurt mixed with rice wine and has added sugar and sometimes nuts and raisins. So it is mildly alcoholic. Recently, I have seen examples labelled as 酸奶酒 (suān nǎi jiǔ) and flavoured with various fruits - mango, blueberry, strawberry etc. 酸奶酒 (suān nǎi jiǔ) means 'yogurt wine' and these brews reach from 6%ABV up to 12% ABV. So if you are with kids and they ask for strawberry yogurt, check it is only strawberry yogurt. Look for the character 酒 (jiǔ) meaning 'alcohol' or 'wine'. China has no particular age-related laws concerning sales of alcohol to minors so the sellers aren't going to help! Kid Friendy Ad for Mango Yogurt Wine 6% ABV

Lunch: 土匪猪肝 (tǔ fěi zhū gān) - Bandit Liver North-western Hunan, known as Xiangxi, was one of the last places to fall under Mao's communist control. For decades it had been bandit country, ruled over by warlords and the lawless. Whether that gives its name to this dish, a specialty of the region, is open to debate. One legend claims that the artist and gourmet, Zhang Daqian, was kidnapped by bandits as a boy and 'employed' as a scribe/teacher due to his ability to write. While he was in captivity, the cook taught him this among many other dishes. He went on to claim "As far as art is concerned, I am good at cooking and I am better at painting." On the other hand, there are many dishes known as bandit something in the area. Bandit chicken, bandit duck, bandit fish etc. He didn't come into possession of all their secrets. More likely, the dish is so named because of the lack of finesse. It is a hearty rustic dish of quick-fried sliced pork liver with dried chilli as well as both fresh red and green peppers*, shallots, ginger and garlic. * Hot chilli peppers; not those bell monstrosities! 肉末香辣土豆丝 (ròu mò xiāng là tǔ dòu sī) - Minced Pork with Potato Slivers I mentioned these recently. Simple slivered potatoes, here with minced pork, stir-fried with a little white rice wine vinegar and served, not as a staple as in western cooking, but just as another accompanying vegetable. Hunanese comfort food

Someone with way too much time on their hands has come up with this horror. What do you want for breakfast? Steamed Chinese baozi buns or leftover pizza? Hey! Let's combine the two! We can call them BAOZZI! Available in the following varieties: Salami and Margherita Salami and Spinach Salami and BBQ Chicken Salami and Roast Duck Margherita and Spinach Margherita and Chicken Margherita and Duck Spinach and Grilled Chicken Spinach and Roast Duck Spinach and Cheese BBQ Chicken and Roast Duck Available in Shanghai for around $7 USD a pack of two. Delivery to me costs another $4. Pass. By a wide berth.

Flounder is a pretty unhelpful term - it just refers to flatfish belonging to a group of distantly related families, namely the Pleuronectoidei (families Achiropsettidae, Bothidae, Pleuronectidae, Paralichthyidae, and Samaridae) Turbot is in the Scophthalmidae family and therefore not a flounder. That said, they share similar qualities and appearance.

Turbot Turbot is very common here in southern China - usually steamed with soy sauce. Here is one example I ate (along with other chopstick wielders) in Hunan. A fine fish!

Dinner: Still working my way through the big plate chicken! I'll be here for days! I was concerned that it might be too potato-ey (they are cheaper than chicken, of course) but I found otherwise. It is full of chicken (on the bone, of course). In fact, I would have liked more spuds! They soak up the flavours. Washed down with my nice 20-year old Shaoxing.

Always hot oil in Chinese cooking. Heat the empty wok, then add oil, when shimmering / beginning to smoke it's ready to fry.

Sorry, of course I should have said. Round here they are normally stir fried in shallow oil. I know that in the west many Chinese restaurants deep fry them. Never seen that here.

捻子 (niǎn zǐ) or rose myrtle, Rhodomyrtus tomentosa is a plant native to southern and south-eastern Asia (i.e. round here). It too is used to make a wine (捻子酒 - niǎn zǐ jiǔ), not only in China but also on Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam where it is called rượu sim The plant is considered an invasive species in Florida and Hawaii (among other territories) after being introduced in the 1920s. Rose Myrtle Fruit - Image from Wiipedia Commons The dark-purple to black coloured edible fruit is fermented to make a light wine (10% ABV) often consumed with seafood.

Lunch (and dinner): 新疆大盘鸡 (xīn jiāng dà pán jī) - Xinjiang Big Plate Chicken I seem to be on a Xinjiang cuisine trip. No apologies. Actually invented by a Sichuanese chef who emigrated to Xinjiang, China's north-western mainly Muslim province bordering Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, this dish is of chicken and potato* with typical Sichuan flavours - chilli and Sichuan peppercorns. It is normally served over noodles or these are served separately at the end to mop up the juices. It is a huge robust dish. Most Xinjiang restaurant s here in town offer two versions the standard and a small. It is always amusing to watch a couple come in and the man (always the man) insisting that he is hungry so must order the larger one and a few side dishes. They are never able to put much of a dent in it. The restaurant is happy! Hence, this will do me for two meals. It heats up well. That dish / container is 10 inches / 255mm in diameter. Big Plate Chicken 大盘鸡 *The potato marks it out. Potatoes are not particularly common in most Chinese cooking. In fact, they are looked down on upon as peasant food by many. Only one other dish springs to mind. These slivered potatoes (often mixed with carrot slivers) with chilli and vinegar. Delicious.

Yes. The 'whole' is a bit misleading (I just translated the Chinese as on the listing). They mean not just the legs. That said, there isn't much in the way of innards with frogs.

Breakfast: 新疆羊肉烤包子 (xīn jiāng yáng ròu kǎo bāo zi) - Xinjiang Mutton Baked Baozi Buns

That, I didn't know. That said, the only reference I can see to age in the article specificies young people looking for hallucinogenics.

Given it's a children's hospital, presumably the victims were kids. Schools and parents need to be more aware of potential problems and educate the kids. Chances are, as the article hints, the kids were looking for psychedelic mushrooms. Even more risky.

Food today was mostly repeats of favourites from the last few weeks of survival on delivery. A couple of newbies, though. 内蒙牧场羊排肉中串 (nèi měng mù chǎng yáng pái ròu zhōng chuàn) - Inner Mongolian Ranch Lamb Chop Meat Skewers 碳烤牛蛙年 (整只) (tàn kǎo niú wā nián (zhěng zhǐ) - Grilled Bullfrog (Whole) Both were sprinkled heavily with cumin and chilli.

Grapefruit is an interesting plant. It is a natural hybrid of a hybrid. The name comes from the fruit growing in clusters as do grapes. Over half the grapefruit (Citrus × paradisi) produced world-wide is cultivated here in China and a small amount of that is made into grapefruit wine. The wine is low in alcohol at 8% ABV and retains the sweet but tart, even bitter nature of the fruit.

No crisps are something else. They'd be freedom chips.

Well, I haven't tried all of them. They tend to be low alcohol and sweet, as we have discussed. I like the tart ones. The grapefruit is good. I tend to drink them as aperitifs.

My problem, too. The only ones I really like are those with some tartness to counterbalance the sweetness. Especially the yangmei. Still couldn't sit and drink it all evening, though. Yes, we get plum and lychee wine (The Japanese got most of their good ideas from China! 😃) We also get peach, strawberry, grapefruit, hawthorn, passion fruit and blueberry among others.