liuzhou

Yeah. That's why I have never gone back 'home'! Between that artwork and my marble mortar and pestle, I think I'll have used up my luggage allowance weight and some!

What I described is not pandemic related. They've always been the same. They are now obliged to charge a tax for plastic bags at the checkouts, but you just end up using them to trash all the unnecessary plastic you fill them with!

If this is vintage, what does that make me? Prehistoric? But I feel I need it. Published in London, January 1st, 1965. Still available used on Amazon USA (eG-friendly Amazon.com link).

Here is a selection of fruit and veg at my local supermarket this morning. Everything is plastic wrapped. Some items are double wrapped. 'Baby' Pumpkins Sweet red potatoes Regular potatoes Tomatoes Onions Garlic Assorted Greenery Chili Peppers Carrots Peaches Various Mushrooms Shiitake and worst of all Bananas There is separate section of loose product, but you can guarantee the people on the weigh station are going to wrap it in plastic anyway, so you can't win.

There are (or were) two restaurants near me with somewhat idiosyncratic decoration. The first has now gone, as the building was demolished to make way for urban 'improvement'. I.e. they are going to build yet another shopping mall which no one wanted and few will frequent. This place, actually a bar and restaurant, was called '1970s' and featured a number of areas, each with a different 'theme'. One area was what I called 'the art gallery'. This had items of decorative art festooning the walls, which were roughly papered with brickwork effect wallpaper. Nearly all these pieces were for sale. The next one now hangs on my wall at home. It weighs a ton! Another area, which I called the nautical area, had tables like this one which is actually a military dugout canoe with a glass top - one of number of strange tables. Again, there were some objets d'art and random pebbles inside the boats. These were not for sale. Then there was the utterly peculiar 'army ordinance cinema' area. This is where, in the evening, they showed movies from the early 1970s, i.e. the cultural revolution These were silent movies shown using original film and a tempamental, 'working' 1970s projector. The actual movies were usually of the red guards going about their mayhem and anarchy, or of rallies depicting the millions chanting and waving their little red books. Alternatively, and most bizarrely, they would show the 'politically correct' Chinese Opera's Mao's mental wife, Jiang Qing introduced in place of the traditional fare which was banned. Yes! Chinese Operas, purged of 'bad elements' and counter-revolutionary thinking, in black and white and thankfully silent - always the best way to 'listen' to Chinese opera, PC or not!. Scattered around the 'cinema' was military hardware of the type which the red guards used at the time. Machine guns and the like. You could even pose with a gun and pretend to be a red guard, if that was your fancy. Photos are of scenes of contemporary life during the cultural revolution - i.e. armed chaos. I'm not sure what the random drum kit was about. It was never used and wasn't old. To the right of the young man posing is, I think, the projector for the movies. Despite the macabre theme, the place was quite fun but it may be significant that I remember nothing about the food, although I know I did eat there more than once or twice. ______________________________________________________________________________________ Secondly we have 韶山饭店 (sháo shān fàn diàn) or Shaoshan Restaurant. Shaoshan is the Hunan village where Mao was born and which has now turned into a sort of Mao theme park is popular with elderly tourists. The restaurant, situated near my home was a shabby, three floored place with, of course, a Mao theme. As you eat, the insane dictator, responsible for the deaths of miillions, stares benignly down at you from the walls. There were dozens of photos of the 'Great Helmsman'. Despite the shabby and grisly decor, the place did great Hunan food and was popular enough for the owners to save for years and finally to afford to move across the road into smart, newly built premises, just after I took these pictures. Now, although it retains the same menu, the decor is more conventional and the Chairman has disappeared. So far.

Here's a real Chinese plate.

What the heck is that? Two broken plates glued together? The left half looks like willow pattern. aka blue willow, which isn't Chinese at all, but originated in England. The right hand side looks like faux-Chinese, too, but I don't recognise the pattern.

Yes. Just as good with duck blood.

Understandable, but when you eat rice at least twice a day as most people do here, the rice cooker will always win. Indeed. I've never seen such an environmentally irresponsible, idiotic method in my life. To say nothing of the expense.

Pig Blood Soup. As featured in the Soup Topic with more info.

I bought this bundle of congealed pig blood with garlic chives and chilli. Here it is spread out to separate the components. Then cooked it in a garlicky, chicken stock with a little MSG. Delicious.

In my experience, even different batches of the same brand of rice can require different amounts of water. The age of the rice is also a factor. Literally many thousands of years ago, the Chinese worked out how to cook rice reliably without scales, ovens or faffing about like that. Today, almost everyone, at least in cities, uses a rice cooker which gives reliable results every time. My current batch of Thai Hom Mali rice is perfect with a 1:1.5 ratio of rice:water, by weight. Not that I ever normally weigh it. I can eyeball it after decades of cooking rice almost every day - as can most of my friends and neighbours. There is certainly not one magic ratio which applies to all rices.

Here's a rice washer machine for you. This lives in the kitchens of the state banqueting room in the Independence Palace (ex-Presidential Palace in Ho chi Minh City / Saigon, Vietnam.

Adding another bit of kit to the process sounds like an unnecessary complication to me. I've managed all these years without a glorified sieve!

Another thrown together dinner after a busy day dealing with nonsense. Deliberately left-over chicken leg meat with asparagus and garlic (lots) served over linguine. I'll get back to proper cooking soon.

I have this stainless steel cup hanging on the kitchen wall, near the rice cooker on the counter. It holds exactly how much rice I want to cook at any one time. If I have guests I add extra cupfuls. Like most people here, I wash the rice thoroughly in the rice cooker bowl, pouring the starchy, dusty, insecty water away until it is clear. So, I'm effectively washing the rice and the bowl at the same time.

I was talking about hard boiled eggs. They don't take 15 minutes in my world.

Now I'm confused (as usual) I regularly make "perfect" boiled eggs and eat them them in under 15 minutes. Where's the time saving? I never steam vegetables either, but that's a Chinese thing I've picked up.

That's not wine, you know?

and dust and bits of dead insects. If you've ever been in a rice packing station, you'd wash that rice to death as do most Asians

"Penguin on a Stick! - Monty Python.

Yeah, that's common here, too. I do it when I am finished cooking all the dishes. Between dishes I usually use the bamboo brush. It kinda depends on what I am cooking, though.

Of course, the fish being live tells you nothing about its provenance, but at least it's fresh!

Hmm. I don't think I want to know your sponge habits. I get through a bamboo brush about every two weeks, but I do use my woks at least once a day; usually more.

I had to look up 'scrubbie'. Never seen one in my life! China don't have! I agree the bamboo brushes need constant replacing, but are cheap and environmentally friendly. You had one for many years⁈⁈