Things I Miss

Full-size washing machines
Blue Bunny Bordeaux Cherry Chocolate Ice Cream
The Stoltenburgs
Newman's Own Creamy Caesar
Lunardis
blue skies
all y'all back in the Midwest. (but NOT the Midwest)
Aveeno
butterscotch chips
7 digit telephone numbers
precipitation

Ways in which our new school is better than our old one, part 1.

I could make this a very short series by just saying, "Every possible way, except for Mrs. Midwest 2nd Grade Teacher and Mrs. Midwest Kindergarten Teacher, who were beyond fabulous." But I won't.

Instead I will give you a little sampling of the lunch menu choices (choices? yes, choices, five per day to be precise.) for this week's school lunch. Remember, though, this is the menu for the Lower Elementary School only, preschool through 2nd grade.

Spinach quiche

Chicken teriyaki

Gnocchi with fresh tomato sauce

Roast chicken with wild rice

Stuffed mushrooms with roast sweet potato

Couscous with eggplant

Spanish omelet with chickpea rice

Roast duck

Korean Style Chicken

Ratatouille

Yes. Ratatouille. On a kindergarten lunch menu. I mean, SERIOUSLY! Can I go eat school lunch?



The answer is yes, yes I can. Whenever I want. Which just could be WIWONSIBTOOS part 2.

Eating in China, Part 1: Produce

Now, to (finally) begin our multi-part, probably multi-year series of posts on China, we will begin with PRODUCE! One of my favorite features of the Beijing experience thus far has been food shopping at the local "wet market." This is like a giant farmers' market, only indoors (kind-of) and with stuff you've never seen before.

For instance: this. Though you could be forgiven thinking that this is a bromeliad flower that is suffering from some sort of strange growth, it is, in fact, a dragonfruit. And as if this isn't weird enough--

. . . here is what it looks like inside. Snow white, with tons of what look like poppy seeds all over. Weird, weird, weird. But very, very good.

This is how many giant green beans you get for $0.60




These are my eggs. Why are they in a colander, you ask? Because when you buy eggs at the wet market, you really really need to wash them. Because they probably came out of the chicken mere hours before. This is clearly evidenced by the fact that they still have feathers on them.





Also, when you buy eggs there, you need to specify. Which kind of eggs would you like? Duck? Pheasant? Turtle? Just chicken, thanks.

This is a yellow watermelon. That's how we like them here.

This is not an apple. No it's not. Not it's not, no it's not, no it's not!!

This is, in fact, a pear. And it is delicious. Just ask Leafy Isaac, who has 3-4 of them a day.

Also available at the wet market, but I don't have pictures of them yet: dried fish of every description, crazy watermelon sized vegetables that stink like rotten eggs, carrots the size of my arm, and sugar snap peas for $0.50 a pound.

And to close, here is my all time favorite food in China (and my old favorite from Hawaii)--

Lychee fruit! No, this is not a sea urchin. This is a fruit. It tastes like a combination of a strawberry and a grape. Only the kind they grow in heaven. Yum.

Don't you wish you were here?