liuzhou

That is roughly what I said but recall my 'ouch' began with an 'f'!

... check that the rice cooker is up to temperature by sticking my hand over the steam release valve thing. It was 100 ℃

from Encyclopedia for the Home by Cincinnati Times Star 1890s

@Katie Meadowexactly

I never thought that anyone was trying to confound me. I remember the great swede / turnip debate in the UK, then we Scots threw 'neeps' into the argument just to screw with people's minds!

A no-reason photograph. My local lychee tree, today.

My problem with 'bok choy' or 'bok choi', however you spell it, is that it's almost meaningless in Chinese. My problem; not yours. Bok Choy is Cantonese, a language spoken by 4.5% of Chinese people. The majority language is what you probably know as Mandarin Chinese, another unknown term in China. In Mandarin, it is 白菜 (bái cài) which literally means 'white vegetable', but more pragmatically just means 'brassica'. It covers literally scores of vegetables. So when you tell me something is bok choy, I have no idea what you are talking about. But one thing I do know. What most Americans and British etc call 'baby bok choy' is never called that in China! As I already said, and before the wicked witch berates me again, I repeat - call it what you will, but please try to understand my confusion.

In the highly unlikely event that you ever enter my kitchen and put my tomatoes in the fridge, you better be in full body armour and be backed up by a platoon of bodyguards.

OK. Update. Here is a picture hopefully showing the cup nature of this veg. You don't, I think, ever get that with Shanghai Greens. And here it is cooked. It would be good to stuff, I guess! Otherwise, it just tastes like a minerally cabbage.

Tonight, unusally, I made myself a starter and a two plate main. Starter: Smoked sturgeon with litsea oil. This has a citrus flavour similar (but different) to lemon. I love smoked sturgeon. Main: Cast iron pan fried pork steak with flower shiitake, toaster oven roast potatoes and, on the side plate, 鹤斗白 (hè dǒu bái) simply stir fried with a smidgeon of garlic. Dessert: A six pack of beer! (OK! Two six-packs!)

That is one of the reasons I seldom buy veg in supermarkets. I live alone and don't need 18 tomatoes, thank you! Instead, I use the local wet market where I can buy one tomato if need be (I never have!) or just enough of what I need. They all know me and happily oblige. I've been going there 25 years. The supermarket staff changes every day and they don't know me from Adam and don't care, either. (Not blaming them as people!)

The best way to do asparagus, in my humble.

The main trouble with term 'bok choy' is that, in Chinese, it simply means 'cabbage' which covers hundreds of different varieties. It's a family, not a type.

No. I know what that is. Different.

I seem to have started a civil war in China over this one. One friend called it 'Shanghai baby bok choy'. So I asked my Shanghainese friend what she called it and she said "Never seen that in my life!"

Yeah. I know it gets called that, but it isn't the name used in China. And curly 'baby bok choy' is not the same as regular 'baby bok choy', is it? Only the former has that cup-shaped interior.

When I first moved to China (1996), virtually no western food was available. Butter, olive oil, sardines, anchovies, bread, onions, pasta, capers, coffee and certainly, cheese were all distant dreams. But slowly it changed. I remember the first time I found olive oil. The first time I took a selfie (or is that shelfie, now) was of me holding a bottle of EVOO I had found! I sent the pic to my family in celebration! I'm still not the selfie type, though. Now EVOO is in every supermarket. As is pasta. We found one shop in town which carried random imports. Butter, liver pâté, anchovies etc. We called it the butter shop. And one day, we even found a bakery making really good French bread. Today, there is very little I can't get. China adopted on-line shopping very early on. In fact, China's equivalent of Black Friday is a bigger earner by far! And while most of the food is, naturally, Chinese there are also a lot of sellers of imported goods. Still can't get haggis, though!

I just weighed one of my eggs. 34g. So same ballpark.

Here is a brassica variety I don't recall seeing before. In Chinese, it is 鹤斗白 (hè dǒu bái, which is untranslatable into anything sensible*), but I have been unable to find a proper English name or a more specific scientific name. Each head is about the same size as what many of you call baby bok choy**. 鹤斗白 The leaves of this one are darker and curled and the whole head forms a sort of cup shape (which is the meaning of the second character. I'll be having it with my dinner later and shall report on the taste. * The name translates literally as 'crane (the bird) cup-shaped white) ** but the Chinese don't - it's called Shanghai greens here. Baby bok choy here is something different. See up thread.

Nah. I've eaten top grade beef and pork and still been unimpressed by the beef..

Interesting. I too, prefer pork to beef every time. I've never understood the fascination with steak and I have had them in MIchelin restaurants. Yes, prefer all the other proteins. Pork, lamb, seafood, duck, chicken, snails, hamster, snake. Camel ain't bad! The only cattle-related thing I regularly eat is yogurt.

These are the smallest chicken eggs I've ever seen. Heading down to quail size. And I totally misjudged the cook on them. Over-boiled eggs on toasted muffins.

Yes. I've never worked out what that's about. They do have a thing about saxophones here, though. Santa Claus is regularly shown playing one and they actually think Kenny G is a musician! One of my first batch of students in China came with a couple of her friends to see me - bearing peanuts to munch on during the visit. She ate most of them herself and I renamed her Peanut, to everyone's delight. She is still called Peanut 25 years later and proudly uses the name on Chinese social media. Lovely lady. She did shock me during that visit. One of them asked me what my hobbies were and I turned the question back to them. Peanut said "I love sex!". I spat out my mouthful of beer. This very demure,virginal Chinese girl said that? That contradicted everything I'd been told about young Chinese women. Turned out she had accidentally mispronounced "sax". Yeah! Being a Kenny G fan was her only sin!

Well, as you know, Western people add tons of black pepper to everything. We have black pepper sauce on our cornflakes! Everyone in China knows that! They have gotten much better at serving cold drinks (sadly including the red wine!), although you do still sometimes have to specify that's what you want. I've trained them well! 冰的 (bīng de), meaning iced is the magic word.

It certainly looks like it.