Making food is hard... to... do

With all of the street food I've been eating I fear I may start to get fat before much longer. A colleague of mine even said my face already shows some signs of added weight. So I figured I should try my hand at some home cooking.

After eating these really delicious rice and chicken filled dumplings in the street shops I decided I'd try making them myself - though I had no recipe.

I made rice, mixed in some fried chicken,








...and used flour and water to make dough and wrappers like I would for regular 饺子.




















My kitchen hardware does not include a rack to steam things on, so I had to jerry-rig a steamer by placing some chopsticks in a pot of water and suspending a plate of the dumplings over the boiling water. In the process of steaming, the water in the pot completely evaporated and the chopsticks got a little charred - fortunately I wasn't using any of the chopsticks I brought with me, only the ones left over by the last tenant.


The dumplings I made weren't like the ones on the street, for one thing the dough I used resulted in a thick cover - also the filling I used did not have as much sauce, so the taste wasn't as strong. Good news was I could eat the filling with or without being steamed (or boiled as I later tried) in a wrap of dough.

与时具进

(keeps going, and going, and going...)

The days have gotten longer, the weather a bit warmer and brighter, and all in all things feel more alive.

For several days this past week there has been sunshine in the afternoons and such a rise in temperature that one can go outside without wearing a long-sleeve shirt. I took full opportunity of such breaks in the weather to sit out on the grass and let the sun wash over my whole body.
After being wrapped up tight for the past few months, and going through such a lull in activity it felt like near-hibernation, the joy that these afternoons brought me is beyond my grasp of any language to express.

Besides that I've been going to the alley of small food stands called 小吃街 near the medical college almost every night for some time now. I've had a variety of foods including 鸡肉泡饭 (chicken soup with rice), 宫爆鸡丁 (Kung Pao chicken), 大排面 (pork and noodles), 蒸饺鸡丁 (steamed chicken dumplings) and 肉菜蒸饺 (steamed meat and vegetable dumplings) to name a few.
Every night I try to get something new, and it seems almost impossible for me to get something that isn't delicious.


An interesting addition to the ensemble of crazy things I've seen here - Disney has decided to grace our small corner of China by sending its mascot