I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving week and a delicious Thanksgiving dinner. I did not do Thanksgiving on Thursday but instead celebrated on Saturday. Some of the Western teachers (about 15 of us) got together and had a potluck. We didn't have a turkey (the turkeys in China are really just chickens on steroids and super expensive), but we did have a chicken. We even had pumpkin pie that one of the teachers made from scratch with a real pumpkin! Very delicious! I made home made mac-n-cheese "hot dish". What is hot dish you ask? Well, a lot of the teachers are from Minnesota and instead of a casserole they call it hot dish and they say most everything is better as a hot dish! So I made the mac-n-cheese then put it in a casserole dish topped it with more cheese and bread crumbs and baked it in the oven. Needless to say it was a big hit! My favorite of course was the pumpkin pie. Nothing says Thanksgiving and the holiday season to me like home made pumpkin pie. We had Chicken casserole (with stuffing and gravy), cranberry salad, sweet potatoes with marsh mellows on top, fruit salad, garden salad, garlic mashed potatoes, deviled eggs, hummus, beans Cameroon style (we had a guy from Cameroon come and his bean dish was delicious and spicy!), and shrimp gumbo. Quite an eclectic group of dishes! It was a lot of fun and after a variety of desserts including a pear and apple cobbler, apple crumble, brownies and of course pumpkin pie!
After dinner we had major competition in wii tennis and wii bowling. I can say I wasn't last in bowling (just 2nd to last!) and did very well in tennis. Then the music got turned up and we got down and boogied the night away. All in all it was a lot of fun. My only regret for the evening was that I forgot to take pictures of all the delicious food! I was going to but then I forgot in all the festivities. So since I was so remiss in documenting the American faire I have decided to post pictures of some of the delicious food I have had since coming to China.
Here is one of my all time favorites, sweet and sour fish. It is so delicious and the way it's prepared you don't really have to worry about bones.
Another one of my favorite fish dishes is custard with Silver fish. This is a delicacy of Suzhou.
The fish is cooked in a custard and the fish is eaten whole. The bones are so small that you don't have to worry about them. It isn't even crunchy. Very smooth, very delicious!
This is a black fungus dish that although it doesn't sound all that appetizing is actually quite good and very healthy too.
This is qie zi or eggplant. It is a fav with all of my friends. It's not on my top 10 but I included it because everyone else is crazy about it so it is always ordered whenever we go out to a restaurant (off campus, they don't serve at the 5 campus canteens) to eat.
Here is a typical dinner at a restaurant off campus. We usually eat at one of the 5 canteens on campus or cook for ourselves but every couple of weeks the western teachers try and get together and go out to eat off campus at a nice local restaurant. If you can see, everyone is eating with kuai zi (chop sticks). It is the normal eating utensils, so much so that most of us (myself included) eat with chopsticks even at home.
This is a stall in Wuhan on a street that is famous for it's street food stalls. I took this picture on a trip to Wuhan that I took during Mid-Autumn festival. The street was packed with people (almost all Chinese) buying wonderful street faire.
Here's a close up of the crabs. Very delicious. Each region has a special crab that it specializes in. In Wuhan it is the hairy crab which is only eaten in October.
This is a pancake stall where they served tasty pancakes stuffed with pork, scallions and spices.
This is my good friend Wes (a teacher at JXNU) buying street food at a street that has many street food vendors in downtown Nanchang. It's right across the street from Walmart, so after a little shopping, a nice bite to eat before hopping back on the bus to head back to campus is the order of the day.
And of course I couldn't write a post about food without including my all time favorite dish in China, Malatang! I eat Malatang at least 3 or 4 times a week either for lunch or dinner. Noodles with different greens (you pick out the greens that you want), usually (for me anyway) bok choy, spinach, lettuce, also lotus root and pressed rice cakes, lots of la jiao (chili pepper spice) and delicious broth. In fact my students all know how much I love it and often tease me about it and join me for a nice hot, spicy bowl of Malatang!
Well my peeps, I'm sorry I got caught up in the Thanksgiving festivities and forgot to take pictures of our eclectic feast but I hope you enjoyed seeing the wonderful and exotic faire I have had the privilege of experiencing since coming to China. I did however not forget to remember how thankful I am for having this opportunity to come to China, have so many wonderful adventures, and exposure to so many new experiences (on a daily basis!). I also want everyone back home to know how thankful I am for you and how much I miss you. I appreciate all of the correspondence though e-mail and Skype. I am definitely thankful for the electronic age where I can communicate clear across the world in the blink of an eye. Snail mail takes at least one month each way so I really appreciate my computer! Don't forget, I have given an open invitation to all my friends and family to come visit me in Nanchang. I have a spare bedroom and would be more than happy to host you on your visit to the wonders of China!
