Food (Courtney)

There are days/weeks when our lives seem to revolve around food. When's lunch? What's for dinner? Should we go to the market? And even though there is no possible way to go hungry in this country, the actual procurring of food can be very difficult. Whilst there are a million restaurants, venturing out to new ones is a complete leap of faith as we cannot read any of the menus. Obviously this is our problem, not theirs! We've branched out a lot in the last couple of weeks with a fair lot of success, but there are nights when trying to order, then basically being the restaurant's entertainment for the evening just isn't appealing. So then we consider cooking. For all of the market's exoticness, there are days when I would give a kidney to just duck down to Safeway. For all of its flaws, Safeway has some good points that I hadn't really considered prior to coming to China. Firstly, I used to be able to drive there. I'm completey happy not having a car, but any grocery shopping here involves a half hour walking trip, which is made all the more arduous when you are laden with bags, dodging scooters and it's raining. The second good point about Safeway was that everything is magically in season in Australia. Obviously this is not good for you, but man it makes it easy when you feel like something very specific. Thirdly, and this is probably the most crucial...things in Safeway have price tags. You know what you are in for before you get to the checkout. Here, even a simple trip to buy bananas can be a drawn out experience. What's most surprising is that in my list of reasons, I haven't mentioned hygiene/cleanliness....the market is like nothing you could imagine, but it doesn't even rank as a reason, it's just now expected!

So since coming to China, we have basically ceased to cook. Which I find sad because I actually love to cook, regardless of the different level of success I may have. But here, I basically cook nothing. Our dishes really only ever consist of cups and cereal bowls, it's as though bachelors live here! The main reason for not cooking, is not the sometimes difficult nature of purchasing food, but I think I've lost the ability to cook. It's disappeared along the way. We've given up on making anything "asian", and the only things we now cook are either steak and chips, or a throw it all in the pot kinda stew that I have developed out of desperation (it's pretty damn good though!) Our nights consist of a mix of either going out for food, or heading to the canteen probably twice a week for slop. Then there are weekends when we kind of eat at all times, so somehow we get by without actually cooking. Tonight though I decided to cook. I probably could have given this some greater thought though, particularly when you consider that we walked up the street this afternoon and were only a few minutes away from the market. So as I scoured the fridge and cupboards I was left with one option only...risotto. My pathetic ingredients included rice, a can of tomatoes, a pre peeled onion that has been in the fridge for a fortnight, and a capsicum. Yup, that's it. Other than chips, cereal, milk, eggs and beer. That's all we have in the house.

Yet again I say, it looks as though two bachelors live here.

So risotto it was. Now, we don't have a lot of kitchen stuff. The house came with some things, and we've since bought a whole ton of things, but there are still a lot of things missing which you only realise when you need them. For instance, the pot we have is too small for risotto, and the stove for that matter. It's one of those great quality ones where the handles start to melt as soon as it gets hot. So I pulled out the pressure cooker. Then I thought...what am I going to stir the risotto with? We don't have any big wooden spoon things! I was left with two options, either a chinese soup serving spoon, made of porcelain, or a dessert spoon. So here I am, trying to loving stir my ingredient lacking risotto with a normal everyday spoon. It was a mess but you make do with what you've got.

So in light of that, below are some photos of a food market we stumbled upon yesterday with our kiwi mates. This place was very similar to the food market down the road from us, but was one of those places where it feels a lot more acceptable to take photos because you are never really going to go back. I desperately want to take photos of the market near us, but feel silly doing so because I am a regular shopper there. This should give you some idea of what our shopping entails! Never will I complain about the snotty teenage girls at Camberwell Safeway again....

Berjerck! My favourite part of the meat sections are not the fact that there is no refridgeration. Oh no...I like that the shop holders are smoking, spitting, eating and handling the meat with their absolutely filthy rotten hands. Nothing like trying to haggle over a piece of pork whilst the lady shop owner coughs up a big spit...

So this is very much what our local grocery market looks like, except ours is in a dark, dingy unlit, wet concrete dungeon of a place underneath the supermarket. Note the slop all over the floor, and a store holder's washing hanging up to dry. It's all exotic and fun until it's 7pm on a Tuesday night, you're starving and you've had a shit day at work!

however, there was a very cool section full of row upon row of mushroom, chillies, you name it. Our market is sorely lacking in this department.

One of the best things I've seen so far. What an ingenious way to save on washing up! For those who can't see it, the bowls have actually been covered in a plastic bag prior to food being put in them. I can only imagine the bags are then taken off and new ones put on before the next lot of food goes in. I tell ya, once bird flu figures out how to jump person to person it's all over for this country...

The birds! The birds!