Food

When we first arrived a year ago I was overwhelmed.  That is probably a gross understatement but it is as close a description as I can come up with right now.  I was most overwhelmed by the food dilemma  which was mainly the issue of getting my kids to eat.  We do not have a oven and western food and ingredients are pretty rare where we are located.  In the large cities it is much easier to get what you want.  So for example Chinese people do not eat much dairy.  So butter and cheese is imported.  Yogurt as my kids know it does not exist.  They do have some small yogurt cups here, but you drink it with a straw it is the consistency of thick milk.  Also things like flour are imported so they are harder to get and come in small quantities.  Inventory here is pretty basic.  When the shelf is empty, order more.  The only bummer is that when it is an imported item it can take weeks to restock the shelves.  I waited for 4 weeks for butter when we first got here.  The lesson, stock up!  The other issue I had was the meat.  When you go to the supermarket if you want fish, you grab a net and catch dinner.  If you want chicken, rabbit, duck, or other odds and ends you just dig into the bins with everyone else and grab whatever you want.  Raw meat.  Hundreds of people touching it.  And they aren't just touching it, they are carefully inspecting it.  I've learned that it is pretty normal to be super cheap here and they inspect everything they buy very carefully, even if that is just a little chicken leg. Basically I found it super hard to come up with ideas for meals.  So for the first few months that we were here we ate out for dinner every single day.  It cost about $5 to feed the whole family so it wasn't that big of a deal.  But by the end the kids were seriously sick of going out, they would rather eat pancakes every single night and stay home (I brought over pancake mix and syrup). Their father was not super pumped about the pancake idea, something about me ruining pancakes for him after Kenz was born.  Long story, actually that is about the whole store.  Anyway,  my goal this time around was to start cooking again.  Basically this blog is for my sister in law because she wants to know what the heck I'm making over here!  :)   

Breakfast:

 Steamed bun, usually has veggies or ground pork inside, Madi and Kaylie like these.  The other stuff is Kenz favorite, not sure how to spell it but it is pretty delicious.

I brought cinnamon and sugar from America so the girls have this on toast or they have peanut butter toast.  We also are able to buy oatmeal and some cereal.  The cereal has a real funky taste but the girls are used to it now so it is no big deal.

 This is where we get breakfast - the big round containers is what they make the steamed buns in.  These are very very popular here.  In the top picture you can see the pan that they make the flat bread in, it is on the right side of the picture.

Lunch:

Lunch is the same.  Every.  Single.  Day.  This does not phase the kids, but I'm over it!  They have either grilled cheese or PB&J with chips, Chinese yogurt, an apple or banana and Kaylie and Madi like to have scrambled eggs on the side.  It seems like they eat a ton at lunch.  This has slowed down since Kenz went to school, she eats lunch at school and then comes home and just has a little something with the other two.  

Dinner:

 When Kyle gets home from work he and Madi sit in the kitchen and chat with me while I make supper.  They always eat peanuts together :)

 This is beef with corn and carrots on top of rice.

 This is called Coke Chicken, Kyle's translator taught me how to make it.

 This is a basic at our house, almost every dinner includes fried eggs.

 We often have them with a bowl of noodles.

All the kids love coke chicken, but we usually have to give them a bath after eating it! :)

We have chicken and dumpling soup.  We also have a lot of chicken noodle soup and chicken and rice soup.

 This is one of Kyle and I's favorite.  It is beef and broccoli over rice.  I also make something very similar with pea pods instead of broccoli.

This is little chicken legs covered in seasonings and fried.  We usually either have rice or noodles on the side.  I also brought pancake mix and mac and cheese mix from the States.  I've tried a few other things but these are definitely our favorites so far.  It is still hard to find ingredients but it is getting a lot easier and I have discovered that you can eliminate a lot from a recipe and still make it work :)

We avoided sweet tea the entire time we lived in the south.  It took China to finally get us addicted.  I mean serious addiction going on here.  I cannot even guess how many gallons of this stuff Kyle and I have drank in the last 14 weeks.  Kyle's favorite is the red and mine is the yellow.  It is seriously amazing.  In fact I'm slightly concerned about what in the world we are going to drink when we get back to America!