liuzhou

I used to wash my large board in the bath tub. I lived in that apartment for 13 years but never used the tub for its intended purpose, preferring showers. Now I have moved and don't have a tub, so I have to agree with you. Cleaning the large board in the shower doesn't feel right.

Fried sole with lemon and capers, new potatoes, asparagus and Hunanese pickled vegetables with chilli (湖南泡菜 hú nán pào cài).

Still on my doctor-prescribed high protein thing, so breakfast tends to look like this most days, but this morning I got a surprise. One of my eggs was a double-yolker. Duck eggs and flatbread.

David Lee Hoffman is credited with popularising Pu'er tea in The US. This article describes his battle to save his business.

I always grind/mince my own meat so that I know what's in it. If I put it in a bun, it's a hamburger, not a sausage! No sage here, unfortunately.

Remember that salaries/incomes are much lower here. You can't just look at the prices of goods. Eating out can be expensive here. Noodle shacks are cheap, restaurants not so. I didn't have great hopes for the sausages, so I'm not disappointed. THe thing is I don't like the vast majority of Chinese sausages and although I have made my own western style sausages, it is a lot of work for something I only eat very occasionally.

Highly unlikely. The place they are on sale is a concession inside the local supermarket. The Chinese company running the concession import a lot of food items, many of which I have bought and which I am certain are real. Also, counterfeiters are unlikely to go for reproducing something which is very much a tiny niche market. I have never seen anyone apart from myself buy anything from their stand. I do see many locals look, then shake their heads in disbelief at the prices. For the price of a couple of their Australian steaks, you could take your entire extended family for a slap-up dinner. It is not unusual for export items to be packaged differently from those on the domestic market. Different packaging and labelling regulations often apply in different territories.

Yes, but 40 years ago non-European wines were difficult to find in England and Spanish wine was considered to be undrinkable.

Mid-which century?

Tonight. Beef marinated in Shaoxing wine with a little potato starch. Stir-fried with garlic, yellow garlic chives (aka hotbed chives), coriander leaf, ginger, red chilli, and green chilli. A little soy sauce and sesame oil. Very spicy dish. With rice.

I've given up thinking about them, really. If I could have bought one or two, I might have given the brats a go, but I can only buy packs of 10 at an outrageous price, so I passed. Thanks everyone who put in their time to answer my question.

I gave it a go (kits) about the same 40 years ago, but decided the French and Italians do it so much better than I do.

I'm male but I'd go for the tuna.

From what I can make out (she has a horrible, strident voice), it is all nonsense. Bad science. No science. Rice and potatoes cause serious disease? Utter garbage.

Fried duck breast, chips and what my son calls "mangy trouts". The duck is overcooked for my liking, but I'm still getting used to the new cooker. It is great for Chinese cooking (i.e. damned hot), but impossible to turn low enough to do the duck as I like it, so I used a stand-alone induction cooker for the first time for duck breasts. More experimentation needed. Stil, it wasn't bad. Served with a nice bottle of Italian Rosso Conero 2013.

I pulled a couple of bags from the freezer - one of bones, skin and off-cuts remaining after filleting a piece of cod a couple of weeks ago; the other containing some cod flesh. Made stock with the bones etc, drined that through cheesecloth then added the cod pieces, some shallot, chili flakes, baby bok choy (小白菜 xiǎo bái cài) and noodles. Fishy noodle soup.

"Oolong" (Chinese:乌龙 wū lóng) means "Black Dragon". So, Black Dragon Oolong is tautological Also, it's Pu'er or, less commonly, Pu'erh. (Chinese: 普洱 pǔ ěr). Hope that is helpful.

Thrown together after finishing work late, tonight's dinner can't really be described as spaghetti with pork in a tomato sauce. Despite long cooking, the tomatoes were unwilling to saucify themselves, so it's spaghetti with pork and tomatoes. Added some onion, garlic and chilli. It was not so bad as it could have been.

Yes, Chinese cooks normally cook the whole beast, but 98% of the meat is in the rear legs.

To be fair(ish), the Cultural Revolution artwork was produced by the local importer and possibly has no real connection to JBS. That said, the meat does seem to be highly industrialised (as are the sausages imported by the same local company - as mentioned here).

I find it interesting that Chinese people almost never drink tea with food. Before or after, yes. but during the meal, no. This is not to suggest that you are in any way "wrong" to do so. I just thought it might be an interesting observation to throw into the conversation.

They operate under a number of different brands. These are the beef brands.

Don't believe everything you read about the medicinal benefits of Chinese tea (or Chinese anything else). There are many wild, unsubstantiated claims. For example, this typical site lists some of the same supposed benefits you do, but hedges its bets by saying "may" or "could". If something may be true, it at least equally may not be true. They also note that

While I'm sure that your advice may be useful to someone else the OP's kid must be around 14 years-old by now!

I think I've mentioned this before somewhere on eG, but I keep a small pair of regular office scissors, bought from my local stationery shop, on a hook above the kitchen counter. They are useful for opening many packets, snipping herbs etc. There is a large pair of kitchen scissors there too, but they don't get half the use the small ones do.