We have
-fully furnished kitchen, bathroom, living room
and everything is provided and furnished. I love the fridge, the electric stove, the sink and some useful kitchen utensils, and A TOASTER!!!! THe best new features about our newer apartment that I relocated after a month (finally!!!) staying in my temporary place are the MICROWAVE, THE LAUNDRY MACHINE, and the RICE COOKER!!!!! Everyone is supposed to get an iron/board....where did ours go? I am thankful for the big drying racks too.
For the most part, I feel that my diet in Shanghai is far better than what I encountered last year when I was in Beijing.
It's hard to believe that I have spent so much time in China the past year. As I look back through all the pictures that I snapped, I have a obvious sense of nostalgia . In this case I will always remember how much my amazing Fall roommate Sarah and I would op-out of the 食堂 (Dining hall) food and fork out US prices for vegetarian pizza from Kro's nest (best pizza you can get in Beijing!), or grab some naan bread/curry at Ganges. Yes we would eat an incredible amount of food, food babies did come and go.
It got too repetitive for Sarah (as a vegetarian) to only eat vegetarian dumplings, and some vegetable dishes at Beida. What was frustrating was when she bought a veggie dish but there were tiny pieces of meat hidden under those leafy greens. Veggie dumplings or any dumpling at all every day will get tiresome.
I felt like all I ate in Beijing were carbs, carbs and more carbs. I got tired of eating stir fry, noodles, noodles....more noodles, and congee for my daily meals.
I craved what my western stomach craved; salad, fresh veggies, a sandwich, and a home cooked meal. Sadly enough we didn't have any fridges or a kitchen at our dorms. Many of us pined for something home cooked or the overwhelming desire to bake cookies.
My diet sucked hands down. I should have been more pro active about buying fruit and veg and thus I gained about 10 lbs or an uglier face....who knows.
Now living in Shanghai I feel more motivated and finally got my bearings straight to go get groceries and finally getting my groove on (As Aunt Dora says) to cook.
A few weeks back I finally managed to make thai peanut noodles with Rob while Jamie and Kelly (my other roommates) prepared a GIANT feast of steak, pasta, mashed potatoes and veggies. Here's a pic of our splendid meal. Sadly my recipe called for the minced garlic and ginger to be thrown into a food processor and make it into a pulpy juice matter, but I don't possess that amazing luxury here. Minced to the death I did to those poor veggies!!
Success!!!!
My next goal was attempting at making some thai green curry. In Boulder, Tim would always make this fantastic creamy green curry. So one day I snatched the recipe from him, fairly simple really, but the only challenge was finding the ingredients...
This cooking adventure led me to learn something/meet new people (no joke)
-There was no green curry paste at walmart, so I had to substitute for thai red curry sauce.
-Finding lemon juice and fish sauce (I finally learned it's also known as oyster sauce and I finally learned how to say oyster sauce in Mandarin)
- Getting coconut milk (thank god for foreign supermarkets)
-Basil (after searching high and low, I couldn't find IN TIME at the supermarkets for basil, but LUCKILY I managed to get some from our USAP VIP kitchen a handful of fragrant fresh basil leaves. Thank you Chef Tony!
(Starting up the curry, cooking the onions with curry paste)
The recipe called for veggies, so we decided to put in a colorful amount of vegetables; carrots, cherry tomatoes, chinese eggplant, and squash. To Tim's lovely advice, we boiled the carrots till soft so then we didn't have to cook everything so long. Jocelyn is about to do a taste check!
30-40 minutes later
HOORAY!!! WE HAVE CURRY!!!!!!
As Julia Child said, "Bon Appetit!"
