Day in and day out we often eat in. Megan is quite the cook. However, we also eat at the school canteen on a regular basis since the school was kind enough to provide us with a meal card with a good amount of money for the semester. When we choose a rice dish we often find ourselves coming back to tangculiji -糖醋里脊 and suantairousi 蒜薹肉丝. Or Sweet and Sour pork with Garlic shoots and pork strips. I am not sure if garlic shoots are available in the US but I do know they are our personal favorites. And the sweet and sour in China is quite different then your average Chinese restaurant in North America.

It seems I should have at least one post about tea since the country the live is famous for it. However I am not going the usual black or green tea route. Instead I want to introduce a popular tea called 八宝茶 babocha or 8 treasure tea. You can find this tea at Hui or Xinjiang restaurants which are the Muslim people group and are famous for their Lamb Kabobs and dried fruits. 8 Treasure tea is a mix of goji berries, jujube (a type of red date,) dried citrus peel, dried ginseng root, rock sugar crystals, dried chrysanthemum flowers, green tea, and dried longan fruit. So flavorful is definitely an understatement. So next time you are eating lamb Kabobs in Northwest China make sure to get some 8 treasure tea.

This semester our school graciously gave us a meal card to use at the cafeteria on campus. This was very generous and there are a few options including two teacher restaurants. One of our favorite restaurants we call the backdoor restaurant because it is behind the main teacher cafeteria. In reality it is a Shanxi style restaurant. Shanxi is famous China wide for their expertise in noodles. So Megan and I set out to try all of the noodles the restaurant carried. And I think we have succeeded! Not only did we try all of them, but we took pictures and translated the menu (at least the noodle part) in to English. So next time you are in town you can borrow our full color, fully translated (sort of) noodle menu.

This has become Megan's standard. When we can't decide where to go, more often than not this meal comes up. The Noodles on the left side of the picture are call dīng dīng chǎo miàn (丁丁炒面). A tasty mix of pork slivers, green and red peppers, carrots and tomato sauce. A little spicy but delicious. On the upper right side of the photo is ròujiámó (肉夹馍) sometimes translated as a "Chinese Hamburger." A hamburger this definitely is not, tasty it definitely is. 

Some of the foreign teachers went out for 火锅 (hua guo) Hot Pot. While hot pot is normally an intense spicy experience with no letting up, when you get a personalized bowl you have a little more control of the level of spiciness. While I still want a good level of spice my fellow teachers can enjoy the rest of the flavors without the unwanted heat. You order raw ingredients like lamb, beef, vegetables and if you live on the rooftop, yak. Then you cook the ingredients together in your own bowl and despite using basically the same ingredients each person gets their own taste experience. As you can see we did pretty well.

A new mall opening in town and with it a range of higher end restaurants and shops followed. Megan and I have made a few stops on date night to check out the new digs. Last week we checked out the Krabi Thai Restaurant. While the Pad Thai tasted more like Hong Kong style fried noodles, the spring rolls and green curry were quite nice. Not quite authentic Thai food, but a nice change from the normal tastes of the rooftop. 

So sometimes when you are at a restaurant in a foreign country you just point to a picture that looks good. Often that works out great! Other times it is a learning experience. Dan and Mendell went off to a small restaurant in the mall and seemed to be taking a little longer than the rest of the group. When they finally arrived dan had a monster plate and Mendall had a huge plate. Come to find out they both pointed to the picture of 大盘鸡 DaPanJi literally translated big plate chicken. Usually this is a dish ordered for a table to share. So needless to say Dan and Mendall had more than enough and plenty of left-overs. 

So we figured we should check out the local noodle shop. It looked unassuming enough. One thing that was different was that you chose your own ingredients, they weighed it and charged you accordingly. When it arrived it was massive and covered with a brown sesame sauce with a similar taste to a thai peanut sauce. When we ordered the woman at the scale asked how spicy we wanted our soup, which we both replied just a little. Come to find out this was MaLaTang. Which loosely translates hot hot hot, but more accurately translated as numbing spice hot pepper soup. We couldn't even get close to finishing it. My lips were numb for probably 30 mins after we ate. Next time no added spice, it is plenty spicy as it is.