Chinese Cooking

This evening Jeff and Cecilia, two teachers at the school that also live at the school, cooked me a traditional Chinese meal. First we went to the market to get all the food. The market is a two story building, the first floor has meats and fish and the second floor has vegetables. This market is very much like the one in Florence, where after work each day you would go and get food to cook that night for dinner, unlike our supermarket shopping where we get stuff for the whole week. Pictured above are images of both floors.

Then we went back and Jeff prepared 7 dishes in a tiny kitchen that the teachers share. They are shown above. Here the shrimp is bought and cooked whole. You eat these like you would sunflower seeds, by putting the whole shrimp in your mouth and spitting out the shell. I could not get a handle on this process. But there was other food to eat so I didn't worry too much about not being able to deal with the shrimp. Chicken wings were eaten with chopsticks, which was also a struggle for me. I can use chopsticks to pick things up and eat, but trying to eat a chicken wing with them was also a difficult task for me! So I ended up using my hands for this. We also had bamboo root with scrambled eggs, cucumbers in soy sauce (this was the only cold dish), fish, a spinach like leafy veggie, corn on the cob and for dessert - sweet dumpling soup. All of the food was delicious. I would like to return the favor and have the teachers over my apartment and cook them something 'American' but I only have 1 burner and 1 pot in the apartment, so I don't know what I could cook for 6 people!!