Food, glorious food

Most of the time we have absolutely no idea what we have ordered until the food arrives! This has made eating and mealtimes quite exciting. The added pressure of using chopsticks makes mealtimes quite fun. Thank goodness for the sporks that Nanna bought for the children in the Scout shop, although Ellie is getting pretty good now with the chopsticks. The only thing with Ellie and chopsticks is that because she is left handed, she often crashes into you with her chopsticks, making you drop your food! We have eaten off street stalls and at night markets. These are quite good as you can point at the food, and the vender tends to hold up their fingers for the amount of Yuan. The foods are often wontons, dumplings, noodles, skewered meat, pancake type things and fruit that we bought here. Eating in a restaurant has been a real luck of the draw. Sometimes there are pictures to point at, but as Ellie found out when she thought she had ordered noodles and got shredded vegetables, you can’t always tell what the pictures are! Up north in China we didn’t get any rice dishes. It has only been since Chengdu that we have had rice. The region here is Sichuan, which has a lot of hot and spicy food. ( I had a near death experience while eating from a very hot chilli hotpot! I couldn’t breathe until a large swig of water calmed the swelling in my throat! Although Matt thinks I’m being dramatic, as I was still able to gasp, water! ) The local speciality dish of Gongbao chicken was delicious. The foods we ate while on our Chinese tourist trip were also delicious. It came out like a table banquet. Eating with Chinese people meant we didn’t have to order, and we could copy them. We weren’t too keen on the breakfasts though as these tended to be rice water soup and bland dumplings. At the hostels they have a restaurant where you can eat either western or local food, so we tend to have a fry up in the morning and then shop for snacks and eat a meal out either at a restaurant or in the relative comfort of the hostel later. While travelling on the trains most people take pot noodles with them, as there is boiling water on the train for you to use. Yes, I have now had my first pot noodle!!! You still have to be careful because it is not obvious what the flavour is and we have had a very spicy one! Although missing my Cadbury’s chocolate, Marmite and Yorkshire tea, eating in China is an adventure!