Frog, donkey, and "pig treasures."

So we got taken out to lunch a couple more times recently and ate some interesting things.  I've been having connectivity issues, so I haven't been able to get to my blog to post about it in a timely way.  I'll try to remember all the things we ate and describe them for you.

The first restaurant was a Sichuan-style restaurant, so we had to be careful to get not-spicy dishes.  My kids don't do spicy. 

We didn't order this, but I had never seen "pig treasures" on a menu before.  Looking at them closely, I'm confident that they're exactly what you think they are.

This is the waiter pouring hot water into our teacups with the coolest, longest watering-can style thing I've ever seen.  It was fun to watch.  I wonder how much they had to practice to get it right without spilling.

This is our waiter cooking the egg dish right at the table.  Tasty!

I confess, I hardly remember this dish.  Not that it wasn't good.  It was vegetables and tasty and I liked it.  But I don't remember it well enough to describe it very well.  A lesson to me about blogging promptly.  My descriptions in this post are going to be lackluster at best.  But at least there are pictures!

This is the best sweet and sour fried fish I've ever had. I will go back to this restaurant to order this particular dish.  It was fabulous.

Head shot.  (ha ha ha)

This was pork, I was told, and spicy.  But tasty.  Mark ate most of them because it was a little hotter than I like.

This fish was spicy, too, but it was REALLY GOOD.  Gideon actually loved it.  For a little while.  I think the heat got to him after a bit.  But the flavor was fantastic.  I may have it again.  Mark had leftovers of it the next day and they were almost too hot for him, though, so it's definitely a finish-in-one-sitting dish for people who don't glory in spicy.

The eggs after they were cooked.

This is donkey meat.  It was really good.  It had the texture of beef and a flavor halfway between pork and beef.  It didn't taste gamey and woodsy like venison; it tasted domesticated, for lack of a better word.  I'll never watch Shrek the same way again.

This was the "grains basket."  Corn, sweet potatoes (purple ones), white potatoes, edamame and peanuts, all steamed.  I really enjoyed the steamed peanuts.  They were a little like boiled peanuts from the US South but less slimy and salty.

This dish was "bones."  I'm not sure if it was beef or pork.  I had a little.  It was good.  A little spicy.  I don't really get the thing they have around here with bones and cartilage, though.  They're on the menu a lot.

These were corn cakes (I think).  Fried, a little sweet, and really really good.  Everyone liked them.  They were a hit.

This is the frog.  It didn't taste like chicken to me.  The texture was similar, but the flavor was much milder.  It's probably the mildest meat I've ever tasted.  It was yummy.  I just wish they didn't simply chop up the frog so that I have to pick out the bones.  Call me a lazy American, but I don't like chomping into the bones by accident.

This was our "flower tea."  You can see some flowers and some I think rosehips.  It was lovely.  My kids, of course, didn't like it at first, but they learned that when they "stirred" it with the lid enough it started tasting sweet.  There may or may not have been some sort of sweetener in the bottom with the leaves and flower parts.  I'm really not sure.

And this is the spit on the stairs on the way out.  Lovely.

There's another restaurant we went to and pictures from it to share, so I'll try to get that up soon.  And we've been to Papa John's, which was fun and interesting, and a few other places.  I'll try to piece together those blog posts soon.  Oh, and I've come up with a pretty darn good fried rice recipe that I could share so you can all eat delicious fried rice.  Next time I make it I'll try to take pictures and post about it.  :)

This is how Hot Pot is done!

So last night we visited the company Mark's company works with, and two of Mark's work associates took us out to dinner.  For hot pot.  And it was verrra niiiiice.  We had a private room with two hot plates built right into the table, and the food was delicious.

First of all, the dishes were beautiful.  So thin!  That's part of how you know it's classy.  I was so worried that Juliet would break one of them.

There were some little appetizers on the table when we got there.  The green (seaweed?) one was kind of spicy, but the peanuts were kind of salty and vinegary and very tasty.  The kids really liked them.

The first thing they brought out was this (below).  I'm not really sure what the white part was.  It was crunchy, not sweet, and had little tiny circles at the end.  It might have been some kind of root vegetable, but I can't be sure.  The berry sauce on it was really really good, though.  I wish I could have had more of that.  Over ice cream maybe.

Then they brought out the "pots," which were really big square metal pans with brothy stuff in them, and some leeks and tomato slices.  And then they started bringing out the food.

You can see that there's another rack like this one to the right.

Quail eggs, already hard-boiled and shelled.

Tasty tasty beef

I don't know what kind of veggie this is, but it was good, and I was glad there were vegetables.

Tofu strips.  I was surprised that the boys were so enthusiastic about them.

It may look like bacon, but it's beef.

My favorite mushroom.  They were best in the Japanese hot pot our friend Tamako made us, though.

Bamboo shoot.  Mmmmmmm.

So at this place they put the food in for you.

Eventually they added water chestnuts and brought some of the best fried rice I've ever had.

And then they brought dessert.  They called it ice cream (bing qi lin or bing ji ling), and it's pretty close, but a little different.  It was really good though.  There was peanut, mango, and strawberry.  The strawberry was my favorite, but the peanut was surprisingly tasty.  The mango was a little disappointing.  The flavor wasn't very intense.  The kids loved it, though, the kind-of ice cream.

We mostly had waiters, but here's one of the waitresses serving up the strawberry bing qi lin.

Tomorrow we head to Hong Kong for the day.  Expect dim sum and who knows what else in the near future!

Be jealous. It's lychee season.

When I tell people my name in Chinese (Li zhi -- pronounced Lee jr), they sometimes laugh and ask if my name is Lychee.  It's pronounced the same way in Chinese, you see.  They're homophones.  I smile and say no, and tell them the characters for my name (beautiful and sesame: it refers to a mythical flower, I was told).  I don't mind.  I mean, I wouldn't really want to be named Cherry or Peach (or Apple) in English, but I'm not really named after a fruit, and the fact that it sounds the same doesn't bother me, because...

I LOVE lychees.  They're not my favorite fruit.  That's summer Georgia peaches (nectarines if I'm eating them whole) but they're delicious.  And cool looking.

So the outsides are red and the insides are white, with this pretty, smooth, brown seed/pit in the middle.  The flavor is mild, a little sweet, and light.  I've had canned lychees, and they have the unique flavor, but it's just not quite right.  Like all canned fruit, it's just off from the taste of the fresh.

So for the next few weeks, while lychees are in season, we will be eating as many of these as we can stand.  Then they'll be more expensive and we won't have them often.  Gotta get them in while the getting is good.

Next up, I believe, is mango season.  *drool*

My dinner is staring at me....

I've been in China less than three days, but I've got enough for an opening post. My first meal here was fish and chips from the hotel's late-night menu. It was past 11, choices were limited, and I was jetlagged out of my mind. It was quite tasty -- at least I thought it was in my semi-conscious state. I ate what I could in bed mostly lying down, and immediately passed out afterward. The hotel breakfast pretty much caters to waiguo (foreigners). I haven't tried the Korean-style noodle option for breakfast. I've been having bread and cheese and fruit and the most heavenly fresh squeezed orange juice ever. And I think I had some herring this morning.

One thing that's only slightly food related, that I'm trying to get used to, is brushing my teeth with bottled water. It's very interesting. You don't use tap water for anything that goes in your mouth unless you're going to sterilize it or the water's been boiled first. Instead you pour water in a cup to get your toothbrush wet, rinse it out, and rinse your mouth.

So here is some of what I've eaten here so far this trip.  Some of this I've seen in the States, but a lot of it I haven't, or at least I haven't had a chance to try it there.  So because I'm in the middle of a busy trip trying to set things up for our move, it's picture dump time.  I promise to be more elegant and interesting later.  <3  Up first: lunch!

I'm not sure what this vegetable is, but it's slightly pickled and very tasty.

Lotus root, with the holes stuffed with rice.  I was surprised that it was sweet, but I really liked it.

Itty bitty squid.  SO GOOD!

Crunchy <3

Beef.  They said it wasn't spicy.  ....  Must have been from Sichuan.

Green beans and eggplant... and peppers.  But it was still really good.  Just watch out for the peppers.

This was the most expensive dish on the menu.  We weren't looking at prices when we ordered it.  But we also didn't have to pay.  ha ha ha ha  It's abalone over pigs feet.  Mark said it tasted like chicken.  XD

Tasty tasty abalone.

Less tasty pigs feet.  It's mostly fat, and I'm not a big fan of fat.

Chinese spinach.  Apparently.  It was good.

Up next: Dinner!

This is the statue outside the restaurant where we had dinner.  Tasty tasty seafood!

This is where you pick out your dinner.

Prawns....  I love prawns.

They're looking at me as if to say, "How could you do this, you evil human?"

This is pigeon.  I will never look at these birds the same way again....  They're delicious!

You could make a death mask off of this.  I'm not sure why the Chinese think that including the head (which you don't eat) is somehow decorative.  It strikes me as rather macabre.

I think these are a kind of crayfish.  They're called mantis shrimp, but they're not the kind of mantis shrimp immortalized on The Oatmeal blog.  They're a little longer than my finger and about twice as wide.

They look like some kind of alien life form.  Tasty tasty aliens.

Let me show you how to eat these:  First you peel the armor off the back.  Watch out.  It's pointy.

Then you take bites out of the back.  This is the egg sac, so this one is female.  The egg sac is hard, harder than egg yolk, and has an unusual flavor.  Our Chinese friend says it's the best part, but Mark and I don't so much care for it.

This is what the egg sac looks like from the top.  I pull mine out and eat the rest.

Sea snails.  Mark says they were better last time.

Clams with... stuff.  It was tasty.  I've never liked clams before.

The happy gourmands.

Oh, and we had some vegetables.  I forgot to take a picture when they first came out.  They were really stringy, and I kept having issues with swallowing.  But you never say no to fiber when eating Chinese food.  Seriously.

Flounder.  It was delicious.

That's all for today's installment.  We had dim sum on Monday and I'll post pictures of that later.  It was tasty.  Less weird than some of this, though.  And we'll be going by a MaiDangLao (McDonald's) later.  I'll be sure to get something you can't get in the States so you can see how they localize the menu over here.  Until later, then.  Eat well.