If You Want it Done Right

They say that if you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself. Nowhere is this truer than in China. Friends working in quality control would agree - this is not a place where you can offer simple instructions and expect to know the end result. Although I should say its a great place to get a copy made. I could hand someone a photo of the plate above and get a replica which looked just as tasty. But nothing that tasted nearly as good.

I'm a Kansas City girl, and we've been importing our Arthur Bryant's and our Billardo Brothers for years now. But as our stock dwindles, the time has come to man up and make out own. Here are the photographic results of our day of barbeque.

the makings of the sauce

the makings of the bacon -
you could still feel the piggies little back hairs on the skin!

Believing ourselves to be in China only temporarily,
I never bought a food processor.
Enough is enough!
This machine is loads of fun!

the beans, after a 14 hour soak

the beans, after an hour of boiling in sauce

after 4 hours of boiling

after sitting in the coals of the grill for 2 hours. yum!

the grillmaster and his assistant,
cooking late into the night

and once again, the final product

We need to keep refining. The beans were still a bit tough, the Root Beer was too expensive an ingredient, and something about the ribs just wasn't right. We think it might have been the meat itself, which we've got no power to fix.

But the best part? I shredded the leftover meat into the beans, and boiled it all with the rest of the sauce the next day. Poured the whole mix over fresh corn bread. Oh, heaven!

Peanut Butter Pie

My mom bakes, and always has. If I learned anything from my mother and grandmother, its how to roll out cookies. Sadly, I didn't pay very close attention, and cookies is as far as my baking expertise went before I left home. I had certainly learned to appreciate a good brownie, a moist cake and a flaky pie crust - but I had no idea how to make my own.

Well folks, lets thank China for leaving me with time on my hands and a total lack of good pie. For Dave's birthday, he asked for Peanut Butter Pie. I am not sure how I stumbled across this recipe, as most of this food blogger's other recipes are far too high in calories to be worth it. But Dave loves peanut butter deserts in any form, this somehow found its way into my recipe file.

And in the process of making the pie, I learned a few things.

1: I learned that the pre-Thanksgiving apple pie fiasco was less due to the dripping apples and more due to the drips of butter falling from my oh-so-flaky, buttery crust. The same quick remedy - turning off the oven, scrubbing it down with the fans on high, and then coating the rack with aluminum foil - went ultrafast this time.

2: Our oven is capable of reaching temperatures higher than 350.

3: It doesn't seem to hurt this pie crust to bake it at 500.

It came out of the oven feeling flaky, smelling good, and tasting wonderful. But presentation still must be learned. This is an awfully mottled and uneven pie crust:

Still, once you fill it with peanut butter custard and meringue, the appearance of the crust becomes less important.

And yes, that's an awfully flat meringue. Apparently, I need to practice my meringues as well as my crusts. My food photography could use some work as well. But the pie tasted so good that our small family polished off half of it in one sitting!

Here's the recipe. And although it is hardly a China-friendly recipe, it does rely primarily on ingredients I stock on my shelves and so worked well in our kitchen. Enjoy!

Pie Crust
Mix:
2 C. flour
1/2 C. ground almonds
1 t. salt
1 heaping t. brown sugar

Cut in:
1 C. butter, cut into 1/2" cubes and frozen at least 15 minutes**

Use your hands, if the butter is too cold to cut. But be careful not to overknead - those clumps of butter are what make the crust flaky (and the oven smokey!)

Sprinkle:
3-6 T. cold water

Add the cold water sprinkles or tablespoons at a time, and mix until the dough clumps together.
Form the dough into 2 round discs, and refrigerate for 1 hour.
After an hour, bring out one disc of dough and allow it to adjust to room temperature for 10-15 min. During that time, flour your workspace and your rolling pin. It worked well for me to wet the space just before flouring it.
Roll out the crust to a circle large enough to fill your pie plate.
Poke it with plenty of holes, and bake it at 350 until brown.

Peanut Butter Pie
Now that your crust is in the oven, begin work on the custard.

In a saucepan, combine:
2 egg yolks
1 1/2 C. milk
3/4 C. sugar
5 T. flour
1/4 t. salt

Stirring constantly, allow this to bubble and thicken.

Remove it from the heater, and add:
1/2 t. vanilla
1/8 t. cinnamon
1/8 t. cayenne
3/4 C. peanut butter - we used unsweetened, chunky and it was perfect

Your custard's done, so now move on to the meringue.

Beat:
2 egg whites
1/8 t. salt

When the eggs starts to get fluffy, add:
4 T. sugar

Now I've always been told that you should beat meringue until peaks form and it becomes glossy. With this meringue, that took me a crazy-long time, and it still came out of the oven flat. If you've got a good meringue, I may suggest you sub it in.

Assemble your pie - crust, custard and then meringue - and pop the whole thing in your 350 degree oven to bake until those peaks begin to brown.

Just Another Food Blog

When we first came to China, I didn't know how to cook. I believe I admitted this in an early posting - The Shanghai Kitchen Contest - where I asked for suggestions on fixing dinner with only a stovetop, a wok and a rice cooker. People came through with very few suggestions, but one friend put me in my place. He emailed that I could always just throw some rice, veggies and meat into the wok and create a simple stir-fry. His answer left me flummoxed - which veggies? how to cook the rice? what to do with the meat? I really didn't know how to cook when we came to Shanghai.

And now, after nearly 3 years in this town, I seem to have figured a few things out. Primarily out of necessity, I'll admit. The convenience foods are mighty expensive here, and it is much more cost effective to make your own pasta sauce and pumpkin pie. But the shops just don't hit the right chord here, either. If you want good wheat bread or brownies, you've got to make them yourself. And so I do.

Yesterday, I made homemade chicken nuggets for dinner, and then spent the evening making honey wheat bread from scratch, filling in the rising time with a batch of double chocolate cookies. Today is not so impressive - I ate the double chocolate cookies, and we had strawberries and whipped creme for dinner. The way we live when Dave is away.

Still, I am happy with this progression. Before, I needed a recipe to fix a good dinner. Now, I enjoy a good recipe, but I can also pull dinner together based on what is on the shelves. Before, I couldn't imagine finding the time to bake a loaf of bread. Now, baking bread seems simple and just requires a bit of forethought and a decent memory for time.

I've toyed with adding recipes to this blog, or at least stories about cooking. I toyed with this as I made caramel from scratch last weekend - yum! and beautifully simple. At some point I may, but at this point I'd feel like a hack. Anything truly impressive that I do comes from Simply Recipes or Cooks Illustrated, so anything worth writing and photographing would be a simple copy. Maybe upon arrival in a new land, my cooking stories will be more worth sharing.

The older my girls get, the more I have time for indulging hobbies like cooking and photography. And I'm quite pleased to say that the time is beginning to pay off. Unfortunately, the girls get older and they both talk more and nap less. The disappearance of the nap has led directly to a drop in blog entries. You'll have to bear with me until A: life becomes more interesting again, or B: the talkers spend more than a few hours per week in school. I may not have many stories for show for my time, and I won't soon be adding a food section, but there are some awfully tasty cookies in the kitchen!

Christmas Traditions

The day before we left Chicago for Shanghai, Dave and I sat around his family dinner table with a few of his family members discussing family traditions. Dave's family has observed the same Christmas Eve and Christmas Day routines for years - they have very clear Christmas Day traditions. His brother in-law shared how his family has NO Christmas Day traditions. He was quite adamant about the lack, and his wife agreed. No routine for the day.

I sat quietly, thinking about what my family's traditions may be. Our Christmas Day has always been rather simple. Presents immediately in the morning, but only after everyone was awake. Breakfast afterward, something tasty but pre-made, like coffeecake. Dinner of ham or turkey at around 1:00pm. And an otherwise quiet day spent playing with new toys and enjoying each other's company.

Not a day filled with tradition.

But what I've come to realize is that my family's traditions come during the Advent season. We have always shopped together for a live Christmas tree. I have memories of trudging through snow deeper than my ankles to find the perfect tree; always passing up the first one that seemed pretty good, only to return to that perfect tree after our boots had let in the wet and the wind has seeped into our ears. Hot chocolate and candy canes while we stood around the little window to pay, and feeling far away and in the midst of a forest. We bake. We bake cookies like nobody's business - a cake saver full of sugar cookies, some frosted and some left plain; my grandmother's snow-on-plowed-field recipe; cherry bon-bons; peppermint patties; macaroons; and always at least one new recipe. And then there's pie. My mom would make 2-3 pies for Christmas Dinner, leaving her cooking them throughout the upcoming week. The weeks leading up to Christmas would see her counterspace lessen on a daily basis, as tins of different types of cookies and pies began to pile up. And the Advent Calendar. We read the same Advent Calendar together every night of Advent for as long as I can remember. I now have the calendar, and we've been reading it with the girls this year.

So, to return to our home on December 21st did not leave me too disappointed. I experienced my family's traditions this year. We picked out a live tree with Nana and Poppa. The girls helped my mom make Christmas cookies. We decorated the house together. And we all read the Advent Calendar together in a hushed silence, every night. These are my Christmas traditions, and I loved sharing them with my whole family.

So, this year we began creating our own Christmas Day traditions. For Christmas Eve dinner, we planned a homemade Italian pasta dinner, followed by Christmas cookies and hot chocolate while watching a Christmas movie. Dave picked up The Polar Express on the way home from work, and I spent all afternoon making manicotti with homemade sauce. It tasted wonderful, but one piece filled up Dave and I. The girls were too tired to try any, still suffering from jet lag. We packed them off to bed at 7:30, with promises that Santa might come early if they went to bed. They were sleeping by the time we finished the final Advent story.

Tomorrow, we'll share Dave's mother's cardamom coffeecake for breakfast; a turkey roasted for us by the kind folks at the Hilton hotel with homemade stuffing, cranberries and potatoes, and a lovely bottle of wine; plenty of hours of playing with toys, and a few hours of cookies, hot chocolate and Christmas movies. Just like the good old days.

And then supper at a local Chinese restaurant.

A Good China Day

8:30am
The family bed awoke, and Dave and Lilly bravely went downstairs to explore the various mouse traps set throughout the house.

9am
No rats or mice in the traps, so Dave made waffles, bacon and apples. We talked to Nana and Poppa via Skype.

9:40am
The landlord's contractor arrived. I had greatly feared coming downstairs first thing in the morning. I had no desire to see a mouse dying a slow death on top of my kitchen cabinets. My second fear was greeting and working with this morning's contractor. You see, a pest control company came to our home yesterday afternoon with a mouse-free guarantee. They left behind glue traps, poison pellets, and a big hole in the side of the wall that they refused to seal. So, after many phone calls to many different people, a contractor arrived this morning to fix the hole. I had no expectations that he would complete the job, but I was pleasantly surprised. He climbed right up onto the neighbor's higgledy-piggledy roof (none of us would have been surprised to see him fall right through) with a bucket of mixed concrete. And he tightly packed every pipe going into our home. He either sealed the mouse into our home, or outside of it. But he certainly left no holes. And he was done before we had even finished our waffles!

10:00am
With waffles and bacon chased down by grape juice, and the table cleared away, Dave took the girls out to color the lane with sidewalk chalk. They moved onto sports gear, and enjoyed a chilly autumn morning outdoors while I tried to make my first ever pie crust. I began work on it promptly at ten, cutting my butter into exactly 1/2 inch squares and measuring all of my ingredients just so to be fully prepared for this intimidating task.

11:30am
I followed every procedure, down to the last detail.

1:15pm
Everything went smoothly. The apples smelled delicious. The crust laid out well.

2:00pm
It even transferred beautifully from the tabletop to the pie plate. I began to pat myself on the back. Who says making a pie from scratch is so hard?

3:00pm
Wendy arrived to babysit for our Saturday date. I put the pie in the 375 degree oven. I began to clear up a bit, when I noticed smoke coming from the oven. I whipped open the door, and saw the egg wash dripping from the pie onto the oven floor. With cloth hot pads, I pulled the doughy pie back out of the oven and set it on the stove. I watced the bottom of the oven spew out smoke, and tried to come up with a solution. Nothing brilliant appeared.

3:15pm
A small shard of brilliance. Turned off the gas to the oven, used a wooden spoon and a wet washcloth and cleaned the base of the oven. Replaced the wet with a dry washcloth, and finished the mopping job. No more smoke - very nice.

3:20pm
I turned the gas back on, and waited for the oven to get back up to 375.

3:55pm
It didn't.

4:00pm
Dave and I left on our date. We left Wendy in charge of the pie. Now is a good time to remind you that Chinese people don't bake. They don't buy flour or butter. They don't have ovens in their homes. I had Wendy monitoring my first pie crust, which had baked for 10 minutes and then sat on a countertop for an hour. What's done was done.

4:30pm
Dave and I reached the Fabric Market. For a total of 3,750 RMB we began the tailoring process for 3 suits of Super 180s Wool suits with silk lining, 10 work shirts, a pair of jeans and a white cashmere scarf. That's about $500.

6:00pm
We reached our dinner destination, Yu Xin Sichuan Restaurant. It was a thoroughly Chinese restaurant, with red decor throughout, wait staff bustling around the many corners, partitions between every table, and a long menu full of photos. And nearly every food on the menu had been cooked with chilis. The meal was delicious.

7:30pm
We stopped at the video store on the way home. People don't rent movies in China. We buy pirated versions at full-blown stores with really interesting selections. Yu Xin was near one of our favorites, and so we perused. With a baby in my belly, we find ourselves watching movies more frequently, and so we grabbed movies freely. For 126 RMB we walked out with 9 movies and 1 season of Entourage. That's about $20 - heavy spending at the video store.

8:00pm
We walked in, and put the girls to bed. A very strange looking pie sat on top of the oven. We haven't tried it yet, as our bellies are still too full of Sichuan peppercorns. But by about 9:30pm...

Hairy Crab

We've had a lovely autumn in Shanghai. October stayed warm throughout, with golden sun inviting us onto parks every Saturday and warm evenings pulling us onto our balcony for dinner almost every night. Halloween saw a high temperature of 81F, and also the end of our Indian Summer. The high today will be only 52F, and the girls went to school in sweaters.

Autumn in Shanghai means hairy crab season. Allow me to explain by excerpting from the San Francisco Chronicle:

It's October, and if there is any local food that defines Shanghai it is the freshwater hairy crab. These freshwater crustaceans, originating from within about a 100-mile radius of the city, fatten as soon as the first autumn wind chills the Yangtze River delta. Although the official season opened in late September, aficionados await the first autumn chill after the mid-autumn full moon festival (usually by mid-October), so they may relish the fattest, most roe-laden crabs.

From now until mid-February, crab feasting dominates the local scene. Crab vendors ply the gray-colored crustaceans in every neighborhood and every street corner. Restaurants offer crab specialties on their menus. Entire 10-course banquets, with each course being a variation, riff on the theme of crab.

Dave's co-workers joined us for an American BBQ on Friday night. I made potato salad and Dave grilled sausages and chicken wings. The girls made jack-o-lantern cookies for dessert. And knowing that we would prepare American food, a few of his coworkers picked up a box of live crabs on the way home.


Mark is the foodie of the crowd. He prepared each crab, by removing its plastic tags and setting it inside the wok to steam for 20 minutes.


These ugly creatures turned a lovely autumn shade of red once they were steamed, and eventually stopped banging their claws against the top of the pan. No pictures of us eating, because the party did stay on the rooftop balcony, lit only by the night sky. As you would expect, Dave ate it. I tried a bite of the roe - supposed to be the best part. It seemed like far too much trouble to both Dave and I, as you have to really dissect these little buggers to get a few tasty morsels out. But the rest of the crew had a blast tearing these crab apart, and sucking out the guts.

The hit of the evening, though? The Jack-O-Lantern cookies, decorated with help by the girls. Apparently Dave's co-workers have a serious sweet tooth, because these cookies are generally much too sweet for a Chinese palate. But all cookies had disappeared by the end of the evening!

Our Favorite Restaurant

Every place where Dave and I have lived, we've always found a local eatery where we ended up grabbing a disproportionate number of meals. Sometimes it takes longer than others, but generally we eventually find that our favorite restaurant is within walking distance of our home. The trend began when we lived in Budapest, Hungary and found an excellent little restaurant called Hemingway, perched out over a lake in our neighborhood park. The setting was lovely, the food was comfortable, and we could walk there within 5 minutes. We moved from Budapest to St. Louis, and lived in a small apartment on the edge of Saint Louis University's campus. There I began work waiting tables at a small pizza shop called Vito's. Since then, the small pizza shop has opened a bigger (and nicer) place down the street, but it still stands as the best pizza in St. Louis. When we moved a few miles away to Forest Park Southeast, we were lucky to have The Billy Goat open up at the edge of the neighborhood. Hands down the best burgers in town, the Billy Goat also had great chicken salad, grilled cheese, and more. They specialized in bar food done well, with a chef on staff who would occasionally put together 5-course meals for regular customers. We loved it.

We moved to Shanghai, and immediately found a love for street food. In Pudong, our most frequent meal was dumplings purchased in the lane by our home. But when we moved to Puxi, we found very little street food near our home. We have only discovered our new favorite, and nearly too late - as we plan to move into the French Concession (still Shanghai) on September 1.

I don't even know the name, as I've never noticed a sign out front. But you can tell the restaurant because there's always a man with a little white cap standing at the grill in front, cooking up amazing lamb kebabs. The man is Uighur, a Chinese minority group hailing from Xinjiang, the northwestern-most province of China. The Muslim tradition of this province as well as its borders along the K-stans and historic trade with the middle east create a wonderul distinct food. Many dishes have some connection to Chinese food, but seem closer to the middle east. Grilled lamb, baked flat breads, and all sorts of foods which I can't identify but love to eat are succulent and juicy, or fluffy and warm. The milk tea and the bitter yogurt make perfect compliments, and we all down everything.

Now that we've discovered what we thought to be our little hole in the wall - apparently also discovered by the NY Times! - I've vowed to eat there every week until we've moved to our new home. And maybe again until we find our new local haunt.

Guest Blog: At least there were no feet

One of my last nights alone in Shanghai this past January, a few coworkers called with an offer I couldn't refuse.  They asked me to join them for a snake dinner.  Since snake remained absent from my list of Chinese treats tried, I naturally agreed.  This time I brought along a camera to photographically document this epicuniary adventure.

Before we even ordered, I asked if I could see the unlucky fellows who would be my dinner. The staff complied happily: they uncovered a pile of crates, slid one out, and there they were, slithering around in a big pile. I have no idea what kind of snakes they are, but my guess is that they weren't poisonous.  The poisonous ones are much more expensive.

Just look at those tasty morsels, slithering around in a big crate.

To add to the sense of adventure, we decided to throw a turtle into the pot.

The Pot: We ate our snake hot pot style.  Much like fondu, hot pot is where a boiling pot of stew sits on the table in front of you.  You cook your food for a few minutes, and then eat it freshly boiled.

Slices of snake, fit to be cooked.

Javin maneuvering his snake bite.

At a hot pot meal, after you've boiled your food you dip it in one of many sauces.  Anything would taste good with the right sauce!

Dave takes his first bite.

Guest Post: Culinary Delights

Since Lynne is without internet access this weekend, I will fill in today and make a guest post regarding one of my favorite topics: food. Since we arrived in Asia, we have had the opportunity to sample many new dishes - most of which we are glad we tried, some of which we love, and a small minority, well, end up exiting our bodies much quicker than they entered...

Today I will give a few highlights of "interesting" foods I have tried (3 of them in the last 2 days). The octupus-looking squid with black gunk squirting out at the hot-pot place in Qingdao would have been on this list, but Lynne covered it already. And I'll leave out a bunch of things I'm pretty well used to by now (cow stomach, pig knuckle, chicken/duck feet, tongue, eel, etc. etc.).

As one more piece of background: I am a "try anything once" type. My coworkers tend to take this as a challenge... "anything?"

1. Stinky Tofu: This is tofu that is marinated to make it smell as bad as humanly possible. There are a number of times in China where we have been walking along the street and were suddenly overcome by a strong odor and assumed we were near an outdoor latrine used by construction workers with a fondness for Mexican food and placed on top of a sulfurous geyser. Nope, just a stinky tofu stand.

The good news: it doesn't taste as bad as it smells.

The bad news: that's about as much as I can say for it. Use lots and lots of chili sauce.

2. Silkworms: Apparently, after a silkworm's "useful life" is done, they get retired to restaurants, where they are dried out and fried. I've got photographic evidence of this one. Again, it wasn't as bad as it sounds (it wasn't slimy or anything) but it sure wasn't good either.

3. Drunken shrimp: In the US, when a dish is called "drunken", it generally refers to a dish that was prepared using beer or other alcoholic beverages. In China, when you are served drunken fish, you take it a bit more literally. The shrimp are, in fact, drunk.

Basic preparation, as far as I can tell, involves mixing bai jiu (Chinese rice wine, worth a separate post of its own) with various sweeteners and other flavors, and then dropping some live shrimp in. Wait until the shrimp get nice and drunk (stop thrashing about so much), and then fish 'em out and munch away.

Luckily for me, my coworker who took me out for this provided a tamer version: they had "marinated" long enough to be pretty well dead (alcohol poisoning?) so they didn't fight too much on the way down. And, to be honest, they tasted fantastic. I'd have these again, but I'm still not sure I'd do it if they were more "loud drunks" than "quiet drunks".

4. Frog: Sichuanese food (sometimes "Szechuan" in the US) is some of my favorite Chinese food. It tends to be spicy, but a different kind of spicy - sort of numbing, due to the special pepper they use. A coworker took me to our favorite nearby Sichuan restaurant, and she said one of their best dishes was the frog. Sure, I thought, no problem. The dish arrived: a fairly typical looking Sichuan dish, with pieces of meat and vegetable floating in a broth covered in Sichuan peppers and other spices. "Try it." I gamely poke in with my chopsticks and grab a piece of meat. Pulling it out, I quickly realize that the butcher did not spend much time on this. It's a full frog, although the head was (mostly) gone.

Many meats in China are served "bone-in" and without much meat on said bone. Chinese people believe the meat right on the bone is the best (on a side note, this makes chicken breast super cheap). Usually you have to really gnaw at the bone to get much of anything, and it's not worth the effort. The frog was an exception. Although these weren't real well-fed frogs, there was enough meat to taste, and it was super tender, falling right off the bone. And with the Sichuan spices - fantastic! Another winner, as long as you're prepared for the "full frog" visuals.

5. Ikizukuri: One of my favorite restaurants in town is a Japanese dive where you can pay RMB 150 (about $22) for all the food, beer, and sake you want. It's worth spending a long time there and filling up on sushi, sashimi, teppanyaki, tempura, okonomi yaki, and other great stuff. Last night I went with my coworkers, and they told me to try the fish that was already on the table. Fish is often served whole in China, so I no longer bat an eyelash at having the fish staring at me. This particular one had it's head and tail held up, and a covering of radish over the middle; on top of the radish were some leaves, with sashimi on the leaves. Sure, I'll try it. Grab a piece, dip it in my wasabi... not too bad.

"Take a closer look. Watch his fins."

The fish was still alive. I decided I had enough of that one. I won't be doing this one again, for both culinary and ethical reasons.

But I did want to get a peek at the chef's handiwork, to see how he managed to keep the fish alive and (sort of) breathing while I ate his innards. After the females at the table excused themselves, Yan tried to move the radishes/leaves to give us a view. But just as he did it, the fish made a lunge for his hand. We quickly passed the plate back to the wait staff without seeing the surgeon's work.

Tomorrow, I'm taking the girls to O'Malley's for a burger and fries. I need a break.

Messy Independents

Wendy has been our ayi for 6 weeks now, and we enjoy her. She works hard, she listens to our needs, and she offers back suggestions and voices her own needs as a good and confident employee would. She speaks wonderful English and gets along well with both L-- and S--.

She tells me that she enjoys them both, thinking them quite clever. She told her family that both of my children can feed themselves, wash their hands on their own, and even clean up their own messes. They're all impressed that L-- helps her sister, and that S-- uses a fork and spoon all by herself.

How do they teach their children these skills? her family asks her.

Well, she responds, you should see the mess those children make.

Her family responded quickly. Oh, I could never live like that!

** It is worth reminding the reader that Chinese families eat with chopsticks, a skill hard to pick up even as an adult. Most children do not learn chopsticks until around 3 years old, making it quite difficult to feed yourself at a younger age.

Cooking in Shanghai

First they revealed that the baby formula was tainted with melamine. Certainly this is the most appaling - as every producer on the supply chain knew that their choices would have a dangerous and possibly fatal effect on their intended customers.

Next they revealed that any powdered milk may be tainted my melamine.

Soon after, they revealed that liquid fresh milk had significant traces of melamine. This is where the milk crisis hit our home - milk from Shanghai's Bright Dairy was poisoned. Our original pediatrician recommended Bright Dairy over any imported UHT milk (UHT = unpasteurized, and prepared for a long shelf life = stripped of some of the good things milk holds), so that's what our babies have drunk since our arrival over 1 year ago. Don't worry for us, though - no kidney stones have appeared in any guts in our household.

So, we cut out local dairy. We switched to an organic dairy out of Beijing which produces milk and yogurt. We stopped going out for ice-cream.

Now we learn that Chinese eggs have unhealthy levels of melamine as well.

We have now begun purchasing eggs from this same organic supplier, although we had been consuming the cheapest local eggs on our grocery shelf until just weeks ago.

But the whole mess raises a strong suspicion that I should not purchase local products, unless they have been internationally certified as organic. Melamine is suspected to have entered the eggs through chicken feed. Could this be the same feed they give to chickens bred for their juicy breasts meat? Could this problem extend to pork and beef? Of course it could. I had made a similar choice in the states, but once I moved to China I found organic produce and meat too difficult and pricey - we've got no branch of Whole Foods here. Apparently I need to step up my game.

Of course, the other challenge in putting healthy food on the table is being able to afford even basic ingredients. Forget whether they are organic or not, some foods are only available as imports and therefore come at a premium. A bag of flour costs about 60 RMB - that's about $8.75. A block of cheese costs about 50 RMB - that's about $7.30; and a bag of shredded cheese comes at closer to 88 RMB - that's about $12.85. Fixing a Western meal without basic baking ingredients or dairy limits your choices dramatically. So most of us limit to just 1 or 2 expensive items per recipe. And with that limit, I've found a few Western foods which comes at an acceptable cost.

Apple Chicken Chili
1/4 Cup cooking oil
2 pounds chicken breasts, in bite-sized chunks
4 teaspoons chili powder*
2 teaspoons ground cumin*
salt and pepper
2 green apples, in bite-sized chunks
1 diced onion
4 Tablespoons butter
1/4 Cup flour
2 Cups chicken broth
3/4 Cup milk
2 15 ounce cans pinto or white beans, rinsed
1/2 Cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
1 bunch chopped scallions

*The affordability of this recipe relies on a person having imported their own spices.

Heat 2 Tablespoons of oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add chicken, chili powder and cumin. Season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring, for 5 minutes. Transfer to a bowl.

In the same pot, heat 2 Tablespoons of oil. Add apples and onion. Cook, stirring, for 6 minutes. Add to the chicken.

In the same pot, melt the butter over medium heat. Whisk in the flour for 1 minute. Whisk in the broth and milk for 3 minutes. Stir in the chicken, apples and beans. Add the cheese.

Serve with scallions, chili powder and hot sauce.


Cauliflower Soup
Salt
Lemon juice
1 cauliflower, in florets
3 leeks, the whites thinly sliced
1 quart chicken stock
1/4 Cup sliced almonds

Bring a large pot of water to boil. Add 2 Tablespoons salt and the juice of 1 lemon. Add cauliflower and cook uncovered for 15 minutes. Drain.

Meanwhile, in a skillet over medium heat, melt 2 Tablespoons butter. Add leeks and salt to taste. Cook until tender, 8-10 minutes. Do not brown.

Put leeks and cauliflower in food processor with some stock. Blend until smooth.

In small saucepan, melt 4 Tablespoons butter. Add almonds. Stir occasionally. Cook until butter turns brown - 5 minutes.

Drain butter into soup pot. Reserve almonds.

Stir cauliflower into the brown butter. Add remaining stock and simmer 5 minutes. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Garnish with almonds.


Oatmeal Apple Scones
1/2 Cup whole milk
1 Tablespoon whole milk
1 egg
1 1/2 Cup flour
3 Tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoons salt
4 ounces butter (1 stick, in the US) chilled and in small chunks
1 1/2 Cup rolled oats
1 red apple cut into small chunks
optional: 1/2 Cup cooked bacon, to add into the batter

Preheat oven to 450. (this recipe will be out for some in China, as it requires an oven)

In a small bowl, whisk together the milk and egg.

In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Blend in the butter with your fingertips until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add the oats and apples. Stir in liquid until dough forms a ball.

Turn dough onto a floured surface. Pat into a 7 inch round and coat with flour. Cut into 8 wedges. Brush with milk. Bake on a nonstick-sprayed cookie sheet for 20 minutes.

Total Recall

We're catching a flight to Qingdao this afternoon - the site of the Olympic sailing competition this summer. So I've only a moment, but wanted to be sure and post this news update today:

http://www.shanghaidaily.com/article/?id=376916&type=Metro

The Shanghai Daily is the local English language newspaper, entirely condoned by the Chinese government. So the reader must take each word with a grain of salt. According to the article above, the Chinese government followed by the Shanghai local authorities called for a complete recall of milk produced before September 14th.

I have not yet been to the store to see if the recall is actually occuring, but the fact of it raises plenty of questions in my mind. Among them,

If this milk has been tainted, why wait to recall products until a full month after the information was released?

September 14th was the day the press shared the story about melamine in the milk. Who is to say that September 14th is the day that dairies stopped pouring melamine into their milk?

The largest fresh milk supplier in Shanghai is Bright Dairy. They were found to have dangerous levels of melamine in their liquid milk. No recall ever occurred. Further, over the last few weeks I have seen corner stands touting Bright Dairy milk products. I've long suspected that the clothes sold in markets around town are either knock-offs or items of too poor quality to be sold in a foreign market. I hate to think what this implies about the milk sold on the street corner.

And I hate to notice that people continue to purchase it.