26th October 2010

Cooking chinese food in China

Yesterday Rich and I decided that we could no longer live on street/bakery food so we headed to Walmart to buy some ingredients that we could cook at home. We ended up with very little as the food mostly fell into two categories.... 1- Had no idea at all what is was so left it alone, and 2 - Was 99% sure that if we ate it we would be violently sick (examples include chicken feet and a pigs face). We headed home with some rice, noodles, soy sauce, eggs, sweetcorn and ham stuff, some bread and some kind of meatball that we really pray is not a poor animals intestines. Today we decided to cook our own lunch. Attempt one was special fried rice..... FAIL! The rice was swimming in some kind of vinegar and as the cooking instructions were in chinese we ended up with a big lump of vinegar flavoured rice- yuck. Second attempt was some fresh noodles..... FAIL. Again instructions in chinese is never going to work for us. Third attempt..... HALF FAIL. This attempt was half successful as even though it ended with me running to the bin to spit it out, Rich managed to eat a couple of spoonfuls. It was noodles with the sweetcorn and ham. The ham was the culprit of me feeling like I was going to projectile vomit- don't ask me why as I have no clue what these people do to some of the food here. Completely disheartened, with a mess of a kitchen, a burnt saucepan and a still empty stomach I had a brainwave..... eeeeggggggs. Back in the UK I was never a huge fan but seeing my freshly made scramble eggs sitting on my plate with some ketchup we had miraculously managed to find, I had never been so relieved. So that was lunch done....... am braving a hot pot (not our kind of hotpot.... think less potato and more oil and spice) restaurant for dinner tonight- I pray that I will like something there as I am beginning to feel slightly malnourished. Current cravings include a cheeseburger and some Ben and Jerry's icecream- oh how I miss you Morrison's buy one get one free!

Going to read for a little bit now to try and take my mind off my hunger spasms. Hope you're all enjoying your breakfast/lunch/dinner.....b******s!

xkx