The liang jin challenge

There is a lady in front of our apartment complex that sells vegetables. This lady has endeared herself to me over and over for a few reasons. One, she is sometimes grumpy, which scared me at first, but now since I have discovered that most grumpiness here is weather related I find it amusing. Two, she understands when I speak the language. Three, I understand her when she speaks the language. Which really isn't so unique since I do understand most people. It's the fact that she continues to speak to me in her language over and over again even though she knows I can't really say anything back that is very endearing. And that occasionally we even approach a dialogue. And finally the real reason I think the vegetable lady is endearing...she vouches for me to others. Once I overheard her tell someone else that I could speak the language when they asked if I understood what was just said. At least I think that's what she said. The vegetable lady may vouch for me, but really the jury is still out as to whether I have any clue to what is happening around me.

So Wednesday morning, I stopped by the vegetable cart on the way home to buy two things: eggs and green onions. (I was making fried rice.) Unfortunately she wouldn't have eggs until the evening and the green onions were bundled up in bundles of two jin. (Please note: one jin equals half a kilogram, two jin equals two kilograms. Knowing this will take you far around these parts. I thank MW for making this known to me. I thank BL for her many trips to the market with me for helping cement the tones.) Over the course of our "conversation" I became so excited by the fact that I understood the eggs wouldn't be available until later that when my vegetable lady asked if I would in fact still like the green onions, even though they were in a bundle of two jin, I immediately said, "ok." Well actually, what I really should say is I used my non-verbal communication skills of nodding my head up and down to say "Yes please, I would like liang jin of green onions."

I knew I was in trouble as I was walking away. Two jin is a lot of green onions anywhere in the world. Here in our country it's even more because green onions here are huge! See look at this picture of the bunch taken on our kitchen window sill. I promise we don't live in a smurf-sized house, the green onions just grow that big. In fact the farmers here would scoff at the farmers in America and tell them to quit picking those pansy green onions and let them grow into real men before taking them to the market.


So back at home as I stared at these green onions, which in case you were curious are called cong, I decided the only thing to do was to create the liang jin challenge. Here is the challenge: use the liang jin of green onions before the green onions go bad. Since vegetables are picked and then brought to market pretty quickly they actually have a fairly long shelf life here in our city. Last time when I bought yi jin (half a kilogram) of green onions they made in through about two weeks of life in our home before going bad. So I think I have about two weeks to complete my challenge.

And although I do not proclaim to either A. Be a foodie. B. Be a food blogger. or C. Create grammatical correct sentences on my blog, I think I will go ahead and document my challenge. You will see how both A, B and C are important to note or will become important to note as you either: A. Are appalled at how simple or ugly the food I make is in comparison to the delicacies you may experience elsewhere. B. You become more appalled at the horrendous pictures that I take of the already not attractive food created by myself or C. Are trying to read this sentence and have become paralyzed by your desire to grab a red pen and start scratching red edit marks on your computer screen.

There is one more thing you may want to know before I show you how I got started. If you are living in the states you will probably find that green onions tend to be sold in bunches of six. Usually half a bunch or the whole bunch will be enough for any recipe you use. Of course that's because the farmers in the states grow pansy green onions. Here in this country, one single green onion equals half a bunch of green onions in the states. Two green onions will equal the whole bunch. So part of the challenge will be using the nine stalks that comprised this two jin before they go bad.

Here's what happened to the first stalk. I made the fried rice:


Yeah, I know, I need to cut up the eggs smaller next time and make the rice stick together better by using more oil and salt. There's always next time...and of course this dish may appear again in the challenge.

The second stalk went into tonight's dinner which I am proud to say was made completely from scratch. My mom made this a lot when I was little and I loved it! She makes a cream sauce, and then adds a bag of frozen mixed vegetables to the sauce. The she pours it all over Pillsbury biscuits. Yummy!

Today I made homemade biscuits just to see if I could and they turned out great...I'm actually still amazed. So for dinner we had a favorite from my Mom: creamy vegetables and biscuits. You can also add chicken and call this little dish chicken and biscuits. Of course you can't buy a bag of frozen mixed vegetables in our new city, but you can also make them yourself by cutting carrots, green beans, etc. up into little cubes resembling what comes out of the frozen vegetable bag and then just boiling them.



Sidenote: If you are trying to secretly, and I mean so secretly that you aren't even aware of it yourself, turn your husband into a flexatarian then go for the creamy vegetables and biscuits option. But don't let your husband notice, because even though as a flexatarian he can still eat chicken, more often then not in foreign countries flexatarians prefer to eat less meat then normal.

I now have seven stalks of green onions left. Unfortunately one of the difficulties in the challenge is leftovers. It seems like ever since we moved overseas we are either eating less or I am making more food then in the states. At every meal we have more then enough food for the two of us. In fact if we had two or three kids I think they would have probably left tonight's dinner table sufficiently nourished. But fortunately if this challenge does in fact last for two weeks that's exactly 26 remaining meals for these green onions to be consumed. Which is plenty of time for new dishes and leftovers to be consumed. And that's just if you don't count breakfast...because let's be honest, who eats green onions for breakfast. Unless of course you make omelets...hmm...