Food, Food, Food!!!

When in China, one must eat. All the time, all kinds of food. Winsome and Kathy (visitors from New York) and I have all decided to become food journalists thanks to our obsessive compulsion to take pictures of every single item we eat here. :) Since you all can't be here to enjoy these dishes with me, I'll let you drool over these pictures (or maybe just be thankful for your own American food, whatever the case may be) . Yum, yum!

Sizzling Chicken Skillet



Fruit gelatin thingy :)



Chow Bing....cut-up, stir-fried scallion pancakes....YUMMY!!

Green peppers, onion, and lamb

Baby bok choy and pearl onions

One of my FAVORITE dishes so far....roasted pumpkin!!!

Unidentified melon. :) Tastes like honeydew but not quite as sweet.

The quintessential Chinese yogurt....you drink it with a straw because it's so thin

Sara Z. (staff member at the orphanage) took us interns out to a barbecue place one night. This was the first dish we had there...chicken. Everything at this place had the exact same spices on it....mainly cumin. Sara's originally from Sichuan province (known for SPICY food!), so she dipped these things in a dish of hot pepper on top of the normal spices. They were *plenty* hot enough for me, though!

Barbecued buns (we eat these cold too for lunch nearly every day at Shepherd's Field)

Chicken Wings

Squid. It tasted fine, but was so leathery and thick that I could barely bite into it!

Barbecued green beans....we have green beans for so many meals! I love them!

The barbecue-ers. There were little coolers full of raw meat and vegetable skewers outside which they would take things from to put onto the grills. It was an all-outdoor restaurant with plastic lawn furniture for tables and chairs. It didn't look like much, but the food was pretty good!

Irene (another intern) and I were craving something cool after all that barbecue, so we walked to DQ in the University District and got Blizzards. Mine was green tea flavored....so good!

Philemon, Irene, and Sara

Roomies! Me, Irene, and Sara.

Friday's lunch at Shepherd's Field. Rice, glass noodles and eggplant, celery, and cucumber. The green triangle-shaped thing on the left is called Zongzi and is served around the time of the Dragon Boat Festival in Ch1na (which is this weekend). The inside is made of slightly sweet sticky rice and dates which is then wrapped in bamboo leaves. It was tasty!

Grady (an older orphan at Shepherd's Field) turned 16 on Friday so I made him a birthday cake. It's banana flavored and I had to bake it in a toaster because there aren't really any ovens here. One side baked dark brown while the other stayed light. A little frosting and it still tasted good, though!



Sausage and potatoes....part of our birthday meal for Grady at the Garden Restaurant outside Langfang.



Mini mushrooms with a flower decoration. This place was deluxe by Ch1na standards!



Unidentified meat served with celery, vegetable flowers, and a thin basket made of crispy noodles



Flower tea....Sara called it daisy tea

Tea...the accompaniment to every good dinner!

Sort of a sweet-n-sour chicken thing, but not as sweet as you'd get in the States



Fish...it was really bony, but tasty!

More green beans! This one had meat and peppers in it too.



Garnish



I think this was eggplant :)

I've also had chicken foot (see a previous post for photographic proof!), mango/orange-filled oreos, frozen dumplings from Wal-Mart, and mini apricots and am excited for more! :)