liuzhou

Yes I get that. The question for me is why is cinnamon so popular. I happily admit I know very little about Mexican cuisine. How is all that cinnamon used?

The only things I dry myself are mushrooms, chilli peppers, cherry tomatoes and tangerine peel. That said I use a lot of dried ingredients, but store or market bought. Some rarer mushrooms I can't get fresh, seaweeds, various fish, shrimp, squid, scallops, longgan and more. Chinese stores carry vast selections of dried foods for cooking or as snacks (especially fruits). I extremely rarely use dried herbs, though.

It depends. If I want to remove the shell then I find the scissor type more useful. However, I often cook shrimp shell-on, so I use the small knife style one to devein them.

I'd send you a set of these if you weren't on the other side of the world. I have about ten of each. A couple of years ago I was in the habit of buying live, wild caught shrimp online from the nearby seaport city. Every delivery, they included another set.

Lion's head meatballs (狮子头 - shī zi tóu), tennis ball sized meatballs from eastern China are possibly the tenderest meatballs I've encountered. They usually use hand chopped pork with 30% fat, tofu and finely chopped water chestnuts for a bit of crunch (but these can be omitted). Beef can be substituted. There are various recipes on the internet but many have been very westernised and include breadcrumbs and similar - something rarely used in China. This one from Serious Eats is the closest to what I find here. The recipe suggests that canned water chestnuts are acceptable. They are definitely not used here - in 30 years I've never even seen them! That said I can see them being OK in this context.

Hmm. Oxtails round here are easily sourced but, by local standards, expensive. ¥228 CNY / $32 USD per kilo. That is for skin off tail. I coud save money by buying them unskinned (¥114 / $16 per kilo) but skinning them is hard work and, of course, and a significant part of the weight. Either way, they are not particularly fatty. Maybe we just have skinnier cattle around here. I would actually prefer them a little fattier so I could collect the fat for other uses, à la @Tropicalsenior.

Image: Newsquest British restaurateur and owner of multiple Indian restaurants in Northern England and Scotland, Shabir Hussain has died aged 56. He is said to have invented the 'hanging naan', so hated by Gordon Ramsay in an episode of Kitchen Nightmares.

https://www.allrecipes.com/article/cooking-frozen-chicken-in-instant-pot/

They did root and were doing well for a couple of months until they suddenly keeled over and died. I have no idea why. I have grown rosemary this way successfully before and don't think I did anything different.

炒粉 (chǎo fěn) - Stir fried, hand made, handcut rice noodles with pork, shiitake, mung bean sprouts, white chilli, garlic, Shaoxing and soy sauce.

Seafood fried rice. Squid, shrimp, scallops.

Why mad? It is simple truth. What is sold as cinnamon in much of the world is not cinnamon, a specific species. Therefore 'not true'. They are different species; taste diffferent; smell different; have different monetary value.

I'm delighted to learn I'm not the only person who finds such oddities in the freezer.

Cinnamon (also known as Ceylon cinnamon) is indigenous to Sri Lanka*. Most true cinnamon comes from there. Most of the "cinnamon" in the USA and other countries is actually cassia, which is more plentiful and therefore cheaper. In some other countries (including the UK) cassia cannot legally be sold as cinnamon. I'm guessing Mexico is another with such a law. Why Mexico has such a large appetite for cinnamon, I don't know. But it certainly seems they want the real thing. * The Seychelles also cultivates a small amount.

No, the list wasn't penned by Norm, as he explains. It was written by someone using the name Grendel Khan.

Yes. And Twinkies have been sold in the UK for years. Most supermarkets have them, Damn, I can even buy them in China. Not that I want to! The whole list is seemingly written by someone who never gets out much. Most of the list can be found in the UK, certainly in the larger cities. London has many American eateries selling most of these. I ate Jambalaya for the first time in London in the 1970s. Also, much of the list exists in the UK, but under different names. I remember my mother making what was basically chicken fried steak but she didn't call it that. The very similar Scottish dish seems to be older than chicken fried steak, appearing on menus and in cookbooks earlier thatn any American reference to CFS.

馄饨 (hún tun), pork and mushroom wontons (homemade and frozen) with a chilli dip.

Insalata Caprese Fresh Buffalo Mozzarella, Tomatoes, Balcony Basil, EVOO, Maldon Salt.

I find it very difficult to believe that anyone from England wouldn't know grilled cheese sandwiches. I'm British have been eating them for about 70 years. They are common. Cobb and Ceasar (sic) salads, too. Meatloaf, although not so common as in the USA, is also well-known.

There will be, yes. One of my close friends is a well-known wine and spirits expert in China, hence the invitation. She assures me the majority will be Scotch and other whisky without an 'e'. I've tried whiskey before and it's OK in its place I suppose, wherever that may be. But, they will never let me go home if I do otherwise. With 100s more whisky choices, I'll definitely be concentrating in that direction but after the first 50, I'm not sure it matters! Hic!