The End of the Challenge...

Just to bring you up to date on the liang kuar challenge, formerly titled the liang jin challenge until I realized my language error, the challenge is in fact complete!  The results are in, and the judges have declared it was a success.  And when I say the judges have declared it a success I am using the following criteria as a measurement: Uncle Rico’s taste bud approval and my feeling of satisfaction in using up the entire kuar of tong in just two weeks. Uncle Rico gave the challenge a huge thumbs up, except for the unfortunate basil chicken incident which I will tell you more about it a moment. And my sense of satisfaction was a 10 on the 1-10 scale.  Sadly enough after the challenge I haven’t been as committed to using up all our tong, in fact this morning I threw away a few strands of tong that were sitting on the windowsill shriveled and ugly. 

Here’s where the rest of the original batches of tong (green onions) went.  We had basil chicken that I took from this website because it sounded excellent.  It wasn’t.  In fact it was kind of gross.  But I dare say that anyone who actually has access to fresh basil might really like this chicken, don’t try it with dried basil.  I have sufficiently warned you.

Then I made my Mom’s vegetable soup because Uncle Rico got sick.  He was actually sick for almost a week, which when coupled with the start of school and onslaught of a massive about of vocabulary that needed to be learned, meant that I didn’t feel like making time to blog for awhile.

PS.  Please do not let my Mom know I added green onions to her soup.  My sweet Mom refuses to cut onions and also garlic. Which means that anything she makes usually requires the absence of both onions and garlic.  Growing up I must have had pretty good breath.  I guess I’m ruining that by not taking up her boycott on garlic and onions.  Oh well…

And finally to really make Uncle Rico feel better and because the vegetable soup was running out, I made chicken soup.  The base required white onions, but since I wanted to finish the challenge I used green. 

I’ve been inspired to blog and finish the story of the tong because yesterday a new challenge entered our household called the pinguo (apple) picking challenge! Yesterday we went pinguo picking with the international students at our school and came home with probably 30-40 pinguos.  I lined them up in the kitchen according to size, need to be eaten sooner rather then later and by sweetness.  I figure we have about 2 weeks for these pinguos before they go rotten which means it’s game time.  So far here’s what we have…

My first project was apple sauce, which came out more like baked apples.   Please if you try to make apple sauce cut your apples into chunks not strips…don’t listen to what the recipe says.  On the other hand if you want to try to make baked apples go for the strips, they taste great!

And then I made apple cobbler, which turned out looking more like an apple tart…we decided to from now on call this a cobbler-tart and eat it with lots of ice cream.  Side-note: Do you like the way all my pictures of food are half-eaten?

And because this entire post has been a collection of random thoughts and because I like writing my thoughts on this blog, here are a few more things I’m thinking about today…

1)    When you buy sugar in this country you should ask for bai tang not just tang.  I’m not sure why this is important.  Maybe the da jie at the store has brown and white sugar.  All I know is that every time I ask for it she always asks if I would like bai tang. 

2)    I fortunately will have the chance to ask the da jie for more of this bai tang soon because after I hui lai le (came home) I tried to pour the bai tang into a storage container using a measuring cup.  Unfortunately the measuring cup still had a little bit of water left in the bottom from making apple sauce and now my yi jin of bai tang is a lumpy wet mess. 

3)    When you buy chicken in this country do not ask for a jin amount.  Instead point to the type of piece that you want and ask for yi ge, liang, ge, san ge, si ge, etc. etc. based on how many pieces you need.  I am pretty sure that this is the second time the lady selling chicken has explained this to me, but it’s the first time that it stuck.

4)    This is not a food blog…as you can see from my applesauce and cobbler-tart that if this was a food blog anyone reading it might be sorely disappointed.  Or they might think I’m super creative and start trying to make cobbler-tarts themselves.  If that is the case then they should use powdered milk…I blame the powdered milk on the cobbler tart incident.  Why use powdered milk at all you may wonder.  Well it’s because the only other milk alternative is yucky milk bags.

5)    I personally blame the yucky bags of milk on global warming, the economic crisis, ethnic unrest and other major world problems.  Disgusting, who wants to drink milk that comes from a bag and sits on a shelf.  I much prefer milk that comes from a cow, is placed in a large gallon container and sits on a refrigerated shelf until it comes home with me to sit in my refrigerator.  Unfortunately I am going to have to start buying these revolting bags once again because powdered milk is just not a good substitute for liquid milk.  

6)    Today I was thinking about a point in my life when I thought two things were really dumb.  The first was blogging.  The second was cooking.  Isn’t it ironic that today on my day off that those were the two things I was looking forward to most?

7)    To explain this period of my life when I felt like blogging and cooking were dumb I should say that it was when I was single and lived next to Central Market.  Ahh…I miss Central Market, but that’s another post in and of itself.  It happened to be 2006 and blogging had just became popular.  The only person I knew who blogged also wrote comments on their posts disguised as other people so that it would  look like their blog had readers.  You can see how the combination of Central Market and self-commenters would lead to these two biases against cooking and blogging.

8)    I’m glad that God changes us and helps us grow.  Simple huh? I’m also glad that I’m getting old enough, well kind of old enough, to be able to look back and see ways I’m different then I was before.  It gives me hope that He will continue to change me.  It also gives me hope that someday I will go to the market and actually be able to understand the chicken lady the first time around. 

9)    I am now an international student.  After hanging out with and spending time with international students since 1999 I am now in their shoes.  This is a post in and of itself but I will leave you with this thought.  Being an international student means that sometimes you are privileged enough to pick pinguos with a group of Pakistanis, a bunch of South Koreans, a Japanese dude, a few peeps from Kyrgyzstan, some Romanians, two dudes from Nigeria and a bunch of Americans.  I’ll leave it to you to decide which group spent the majority of the bus ride to the pinguo grove singing and dancing… 

I may not be able to offer you...

Living overseas is a mixture of good things and bad things. This afternoon I spent some time reflecting on some of those bad things. Probably not the most uplifting way to spend my xiuxi (little rest) but still I feel better after identifying what exactly gets under my skin here. And no, it's not the humongous green onions. Then I got online to read a language blog when I stumbled upon this article. If you aren't able to view the video, click here instead.

And I started thinking about what it would look like if this country "DTRed" with me...what would that look like. Then I wrote myself a letter from this country...

Dear Ruo Xi,

So you've been living in my borders for a couple of months now, zenmayang? Do you feel like you fit in? How do you like the food? Will you ever not feel surprised to see raw meat carcasses not only hanging inside the meat market but occasionally hanging by the side of the road as well. Probably not, sorry about that chicken heart in the road a few weeks back, I'm sure that was a shocker.

Are you used to people staring at you? I know it's probably uncomfortable, but don't worry. They are just staring because they think that foreigners have beautiful eyes. At least that's what I'm told. It's ok, because if someone is staring at you it means you get to stare back. And you know the better your language gets the more often you will have the fun experience of responding to what they say while they watch you.

Oh and I know the bathroom floor is always wet because most people aren't into western bathtubes here, the sun really is blinding and riding a bike everywhere can be extremely ma fan, but you know this place really isn't that bad. It may not feel like home yet but I'm sure that over time it will, especially if you let this country prove itself to you.

So while I cannot promise you there will not be spit or human excrement both in the streets and in the stairwell to your apartment, I can promise you that friendly people will always take the time to help you here when you ask. I cannot promise you cream cheese, bagels and mercury free fish, but I can promise you delicious homemade noodles at every restaurant you visit.

Give it time my pengyou, you will feel like you are at home in no time. And until then comfort yourself with the fact that you live in a place where you might just get to see a group of people break out into the dance from Thriller in the middle of the city at any given moment.

With love,
Your new home

Renaming the Challenge...

To give you an update on how the challenge went this week on Tuesday (maybe Monday?) I made more fried rice, didn't I say it might repeat itself, and green beans for a light dinner. Green beans have made their way into the challenge a few times now due to the same linguistic struggle I faced when buying the green onions. Oh well, maybe some day I'll become a savvy Asian shopper.

Monday or Tuesday night's dinner:



Here's where the challenge gets tricky. On Wednesday night we had people over and unfortunately we served dumplings. So no new green onions were used in the dinner. On Thursday night we had dinner out with people which also meant the green onions would have to wait for another day. All these dinners are of course good in that we are doing some of the things we came here to do, but of course they are not good for my challenge.

So when Friday came around I realized it was time to make potato salad for Saturdays gathering of foreigners. And you know what they say, when there are Americans in the bunch sooner or later there will be a potluck. And where there is a potluck, there should be potato salad. I don't mind filling in that role because of this recipe from the women who is my own personal Martha Stewart.

Fortunately this particular potato salad recipe calls for five green onions. Five! Yipee, that's like two from my mammoth batch of big mama green onions that I had bought last week. But here is where my dilemma appeared. Would I in fact use two week old green onions to put in the potato salad that I would be bringing to other people to consume.

If it was just Uncle Rico and myself, then yes, in fact I would. But since these green onions would not be cooked, since I live in East Asia and because I am certain that my personal Martha Stewart would never allow two week old green onions to be put in her potato salad I did the unthinkable. I bought another kuar of green onions. Yes folks, that's right. I now have another kuar of green onions to go. And here it is sitting on my windowsill alongside the leftovers from the first two kuar.



Before I finish my thoughts on purchasing another kuar of green onions let me give you a look at the potato salad. I took this picture just because the eggs look pretty cut up next to the green onions.



The final salad, it tastes really good, but for some reason in this picture it looks like play dough. Weird huh? I hope people still eat it at the potluck.



Well in my internal dialouge I have decided that buying the extra kuar, renaming the challenge and bringing yet another bunch of green onions into our home is ok for several reasons. First, when I bought the next batch of onions I both said the word green onions and I said a new word I had wanted to use for a while. The word altogether or in total, yigong. As in "Yigong how much will these liang jin of tuduo, yi jin of ji dan and yi kuar of cong cost me." If your curious it all cost shi kuai wu mao. But be careful not to hear the vegetable lady say si kuai wu mao because that's a totally different price. Not that you would find me making that mistake by the way...ok, so maybe only occasionally is that mistake made by me.

Secondly, I have decided after embarking on this challenge that more green onions are not bad...in fact they are good! Green onions can go in so many things and they make everything delicious. But to complete the challenge tomorrow I will attempt by popular demand to make...drum roll please...green onion pancakes. I'll let you know how it goes.

The Challenge Continues...

After my last post I begin thinking through the linguistic and mathematical implications of saying I purchased liang jin of green onions. That was when I realized that my listening skills are still poor and my memory skills are even worse. We won't discuss my mathematically abilities. During one of the first sessions with my language tutor she taught me that green onions are not sold by the jin, rather they are sold by the bundle. Or by the kuar. So instead of the liang jin challenge what I should have titled my last post was the liang kuar challenge.

After pondering my next move in the challenge I realized that I could always pull out the ace in my pocket that so many cooks through the ages have pulled out when they have purchased too much food...just invite people over. So the challenge continued Sunday morning when we invited two of our friends over for dinner.

But before dinner came lunch and before lunch came counting and cutting green onions. I decided we would eat baked potatoes for lunch and then Asian food for dinner. I calculated that we would use 1/2 an onion for the potatoes, 2 onions for the stir fried green beans, 1 1/2 onions for the chicken and bok choy and 3 onions for the oniony noodles. (This is a dish that requires ginger, garlic, sesame oil and butter. I don't think it really counts as an Asian dish, but since half the ingredients qualify I let it slide. Those whities, always adding butter to their Asian dishes.)

I got to chopping away and by the end of the day here's what happened.

Lunch went well, baked potatoes are always delicious with cheese and green onions.



Dinner went well too, so well in fact that we forgot to take pictures until after dinner was finished. Here's the chicken and bok choy.



The green beans.



And the oniony noodles.



But here's where the challenge lies. After all my calculating and cutting this is what the green onions looked like. Three bowls ready for stir fry and potatoes, one bag ready for noodles. Two full onions waiting in the fridge to be used later this week.


Side note, how can you tell if someone is a truly interested in creating the perfect blog post? I'll give you a hint, it's not the person who refuses to take the time to flip the picture that posted sideways on their blog...

At the end of the day I was left with one bowl and two full onions waiting to be used. And the bowl wasn't small...



So in other words, the challenge continues. I'm thinking that with the popularity of the green onion pancake suggestion that I might have to try it out!

In other news I would just like the world to know that when I purchased liang jin of chicken breast this weekend that I didn't know I was getting a little bonus. If you look carefully you will see the chicken esophagus still attached to that chicken breast on the left. At least I think that's the esophagus, I'm not sure what the heck it is. The large pile above the esophagus would be the bonus fat and bone that also came with our chicken. Looks delicious huh?

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...

The Unthinkable...

I recently finished a book called The Unthinkable: Who survives when disaster strikes---and Why by Amanda Ripley. Now you might be thinking, "What, why would you read such a horrible book! That just sounds morbid." And I'll admit, it was a little morbid, but it was also really fascinating. Ripley breaks down the individual experiences of survivors from major disasters like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. She also points out what those who didn't make it through the disaster had in common.

For example, and this took me by surprise, did you know that the largest demographic of those who died during Hurricane Katrina was not those paralyzed from leaving by poverty? The greatest number of people who died during Hurricane Katrina were older folks who had survived a previous category five storm during the 60's and thought that Katrina wouldn't be any different. Their own experience and willingness to take a risk was what in the end kept them in New Orleans even though they were ordered to evacuate. Interesting huh?

There were a lot of other interesting elements to what happens to a person psychologically and physiologically in the middle of extreme terror, but what the author continued to point out is that people tend to have a disaster personality. Some people freeze, others take control, most people say that time begins to do funny things, either speeding up or slowing down to the point that it is hard to know how much time has passed from the beginning of the disaster. A lot of people pee their pants. But the reason is not only fear, well ok, yes essentially it is fear, it is also a very physiological response to the environment. The reason a person loses control of their bowels is because the strength of other physical responses are actually increased so that those not essential to survival actually shut down. So instead of being able to hold in your need to pee, suddenly your hearing or your eye sight is strengthened. One man's eye sight became so strong on 9/11 that he didn't need to wear his glasses for three days after escaping the towers.

Anyways, it was a great book. You should read it if you're morbid like me. But here's the thing. There was one disaster personality that Ripley did not explore. What does a person's disaster personality look like if they are in a foreign country, surrounded by a language they do not speak and in the middle of circumstances they do not always understand and suddenly find themselves the casual observer of a disaster taking place in the early evening across a crowded street? Hmmm...

What would happen let's say if a person saw a large cloud of billowing smoke escaping a local restaurant they pass by each day. Would they just pull out their camera and start to take pictures? Or would they run as fast as they could to the nearby fire station employing any and every new vocabulary word they had learned in the short time they had lived abroad to try and communicate the situation. In the case of my disaster personality, I pulled out the camera. Sad but true...but in case you would like to view what a disaster looks like over here in East Asia, here it is, documented by yours truly.

There is a huge cloud of smoke coming from a local restaurant. Suddenly people begin running from the front door, at least five minutes after the smoke starts.



A waiter runs to the fire station, conveniently located just four doors down.



Unfortunately it takes the fire truck a while to make it to the restaurant because of the crowds.



Meanwhile the people sitting on the second and third floors notice the smoke and find out that the only way out is through the windows. They open the windows and begin to squeeze out. Sidenote: Until this point the fire was slightly comical, but when we saw that people were trapped inside the restaurant we all were struck by how scary this actually was. Another part of my disaster personality appeared and I started praying.



When the fire crew realizes they will need ladders they rush to the top of the fire truck only to discover it will take almost five precious minutes to untie the ladders from the truck.



Unfortunately the ladder is only tall enough to reach the second floor.



But don't worry...a ladder stretching from the second floor to the third is also a possible solution.



And what does the crowd of locals do while all this is happening? Well some as you can see stop to watch like us foreigners, others just keep walking by. Some stop to look at the foreigners because even during a very interesting fire foreigners are also still interesting.



My heart then lurches into my stomach when we realize on the third floor there is a grandpa and grandma who are trapped. How will they get down this crazy, unsteady ladder?



Don't worry, the fire department will strap them in and help lower them down.



In an interesting cultural side note. If you look careful you will see that behind grandpa and grandma are children and grandchildren. I wonder in American culture if we would choose the older generation to be rescued first or the younger? I'm not sure what I would do...that's a tough question. I don't even known if that choice displays any cultural values, but it's an interesting question.

In this case it also might be because after grandma and grandpa are finally down the ladder that the younger girl decides she's too petrified to actually go down the ladder and instead panics. The firefighters are forced to take her down through the smokey restaurant where the fire is now under control.



Sometime after the situation has gotten under control, the firefighters have decided that this would be an excellent time to get out the video camera, hop on up the ladder or maybe the smokey stairwell, to the second floor and start videotaping the rescue. Maybe a training video in the making? Or maybe they have a disaster personality similar to my own.



Ripley ends the book by inviting the reader to consider how what they have read can impact their own experience during a disaster. For the record, I actually saw this fire first and then read the book. But even without reading the book I know the single factor that determined my reaction during this fire was the fact that I am a foreigner here. In the states I would have at least called 911 or done something. At least I hope I would have done something, maybe the only thing that can be done when you are the observer of a disaster is to stop and pray, and look to see if there is a way that you really can help. As far as we know no one was hurt in this fire, thankfully! Now, just a few weeks later, the restaurant has reopened for business. I think I'll wait a little while to try it out though.

I interrupt this blogging silence to bring to you a blog post...

For many weeks I have not blogged and I will say that I found myself missing the self reflection. The reason for my silence stemmed not from a lack of desire, not from a lack of things to say, not from the stress and pressure of learning to live in another country but from one single character flaw...my impatience. Our new apartment, while cozy and conveniently located to many neighbors we desire to befriend, unfortunately also shares bandwidth with a internet cafe. Not only that but blogger is blocked by friendly eyes in our country. So with those factors, and probably several others I do not have the technical expertise to a. understand b. explain and c. stay awake during, anytime I tried to open blogger I was denied. It was explained to me that there was still a way for me to blog, but alas, it still took too much time to open the page. And for my lack of patience I suffered.

So then what has made the difference today? What has brought me back from the silence of being a non-blogger to leaving my mark across the internet in witty banter, or what I like to think is witty banter? One thing has saved me from my silence. It's the man I married, who is now affectionately called Uncle Rico. I like to call him Uncle Rico due to the unfortunate mustache he attempted to grow last week. Walking around the house saying "we would have won state if I'd been on the team" did not help him either.

So to you, Uncle Rico, I thank you! You have freed me from my silence and brought me back to several things I love, not just blogger but also google reader and to staying close to my friends. Where else would I see DM in all his cuteness trying to lift his head for tummy time? And know that MK got a haircut that is not growing out as fast as he would like, a feeling I know too well. How would I know that MW took the boys to Disneyworld in Hong Kong and that RW is getting too big too fast if it were not for the ease and convenience of google reader! And to everyone else whose blog I have marked, for the birthdays I have seen, the babies I oohed over and the parts of life you are sharing with this girl half a world away I say...keep blogging! Because I am back and I am reading what you have to say once again!