Food I Eat!!! aka "Food Journal"

  I was asked, quite a while ago actually, to write a post about the food that I eat in China. I had to wait until I remembered to take enough pictures of the Chinese food that I eat to write this post. Once I came to Changzhou I keep forgetting to take pictures of my Chinese food since that is what I eat all the time and I would just take pictures of the Western food that I found around the city. I will put both into this post. This post is going to kinda be a food journal. You can just look at the pictures if you want. All this food that I have taken pictures of I have found and eaten in China. Sorry about the bits taken out of some of it . . .

  This first one is pizza from Pizza Hut, it tasted the same but was ridiculously expensive. 

  This was from a place that I cannot remember the name of but it had the word 'Seven' in its title. It was okay, a little spicy but fine. When I ate this it was the first time that I had gone into Chinese restaurant in China, it was kinda fun ordering it in that I had no idea what I really was getting but was hoping that the one person in our group that was wonderful enough to translate for the rest of us was getting the orders correct. I also was given a bowl of soup which I have come to understand why and enjoy for I have a small bowl of soup for every meal at school. In China they do not really drink anything with their meals but will have a bowl of warm soup afterwards. It is suppose to be healthier for you.

  This is a famous noodle breakfast. A teacher took me here after I had my Chinese physical completed so I could stay in China as a Resident for the next several months. It was really good but there were soooooooo many noodles, I have never been able to finish a bowl of noodles yet in China.
  The next two pictures are of a meal that I had with another one of the teachers. We had finished school club that day and she took me out to eat. She really like fish so we went to a fish place. So in a sit down restaurant in China ordering food is a little different. In American everyone gets a menu and they order what they want individually and what they order they will consume individually. Everyone gets their own food. In China it is different, the sharing things happens. The groups gets one menu that they look through together selecting different dishes that everyone will share. The menu is usually a piece of paper or they will give you a piece of paper that you will check the box next to the item you want or write the item down on the paper. They waiter/waitress then takes the paper and turns it in for the order. You wait, then they bring out the first dish and over the course of your meal they will bring out all the dishes you ordered. As a group you will consume them as they come out each person having a little of the dish until it is finished and taken away. From what I have seen many Chinese groups order way too many dishes having much left over. Some with take the leftovers home while others will just leave them. For the two of us and our fish dinner we had the main dish of a fish cooked in several different vegetables and five different dishes on top of that. We did not finish it all but the teacher sent the leftovers home with me. I did not eat the left overs because later that night the fish enlightened me on just how much it did not like going through my digestive system.

  I kinda gain a little bit of weight during my first several weeks in China and no I do not look that much fatter. I blame it on the small bakery shops that I diligently searched for around where I live. China's food does not have the same unhealthy sweetness that is present in many American foods, at least the foods that I ate and because of this I was craving sweetness. So, every weekend I would walk around looking for a great bakery that had western tasting sweets, I found at least ten of them and I bought something from every one. The Cherry Cheese Cake below was one of my conquests. Needless to say this was not good for my waistline or my wallet and I have since controlled myself and lost my intense cravings. I still indulge every so often.

  The next three pictures are from a dinner that another teacher took me out to. We had a Ice Cream Sunday (which did not help me lose any weight from the Bakery Searching Fiasco/Or Success Depending On How You Look At It), A 'Meat with Rice and Cheese Thing' and a 'Cheese Thing With Unremembered Items.' You may be thinking 'what is with the cheese' and I will tell you. In China they do not eat very many dairy products so cheese, butter, sour cream, cream cheese, etc. are hard to find and expensive so, that night we decided to cheese it out since I like cheese and she likes cheese. This night I also tried octopus for the first time and the only thing I have to say is it is really chewy.

  I found an American Hamburger and almost died of happiness. The fries were amazing and I mean that word!! I have since gone back to this place four times for food. It is almost two time the cost of a cheap Chinese meal but it is so worth it!! It did feel weird actually having my own plate and not sharing with anyone.

  I do not understand why people eat these things looking like this. I feel so sorry for them and they still have their eyes. They are shrimp and I did eat one, breaking its back, pulling off its skin shell, and crushing it between my pearly whites. I only ate one and it was a traumatic experience. Now I just feel sorry for them when they appear before me, dead, in their bowl.
  I have had the fish below several times. It looks gross and you would think if I could not eat the shrimp from above how can I eat this fish. Well, the simple answer is that this fish tastes amazing and is supper sweet. Those two reasons make that appearance acceptable.

  This is fried shrimp. We (me and two other teachers from my school) had this when several educators from Holland visited the school. They were setting up a program to have several of their students experience school in China for a week or two. They will be back in spring.

  This was the meal I had at Nanjing, it was okay, rice, potatoes with meat, and cucumbers. It was okay as I said, it was also cheap.

  Another one of the desserts that I found on my Bakery Searching Fiasco/Or Success Depending On How You Look At It. It was delicious.

  This is what my school lunch looks like. This was not the best meal that I have had at the school canteen but it was one of the few times I remembered to take my camera with me to lunch. Everyday I get rice then I can choose from the many different dishes and they put some of it on my plate. The other teachers say what they want but I just point at it. The others things are potatoes and beef and a cabbage dish. You can see the soup that I have talked about.
  The next two dishes are from a restaurant near where I live. They were really good. I think they were Thai food. I went out with two teachers and one's husband was there too. I am not going to say very much about it because technically they were not suppose to be serving food to people because the residents near by complained about the smells of the food cooking and were keeping them from actually opening the restaurant. (Shhh no telling).

  I eat lunch and dinner at my school. Lunch is a meal and dinner is more like snack foods. Below in the picture are two items that I bought. The one on the left is a length of fried dough and the other is a 'hotdog' wrapped in a sweet tortilla like thing with sweet sauce and lettuce.

  The picture below is really just a roll, but it was a roll in China that was really good so I took a picture of it for you to admire.

  This was a dinner I had with friends at a Hong Kong restaurant. We order several different dishes, much of which was meat. They ordered chicken feet, which many people like and so I tried one, but never again. To me it looks like someone is eating baby fingers when they eat chicken feet because the feet stick out of your mouth when you eat the rest of it. Also, there is not much meat on the bone so you have to work hard to get your protein and I do not like to work for my food that much.
  The next two picture are of all the different snacks that I can get for dinner at my school, I have tried most of them finally figuring out which ones I really like. It is really cheap and you can get full, at least I can, off of only 4 yuan or 70 cents. I have no idea what the names are so these pictures are just for your enjoyment and wonderment of what they actually are : ).

  One evenings snacks with bits taken out . . . I was hungry and could not wait to eat something before I got back to the office and my camera.

  A bowl of noodles from some place in Changzhou. This is a friends bowl of noodles so I do not know if they were good.

  Egg tart with blueberries on it. Blueberries are rather expensive here in China, kinda like in Indiana during the winter. Egg tarts are rather popular and you can buy them at bakeries and grocery stores. (Once again my hand looks weird but at least it is not as bad as the picture I took in Nanjing).

  This next one was delicious that I still want to go back and eat it again. It is just a chocolate cheese cake that had much chocolate in it. Soooooooo good.

  At the same place I had a bowl of pasta. I was there for five hours straight one day with friends exchanging language knowledge (Chinese for English) so I had two things to eat with dessert first. It was really good, I am waiting for lunch at I write this and have a very strong desire to go back to this place tonight at eat food there . . . I am so hungry!! Never write a food journal right before lunch, a perfectly bad idea.

  Two more dinner snacks from my school. The second one is a kinda wrap with lettuce, a type of meat, some other things, and a dressing. I like it but it can be a little messy.

  Nanjing potatoes that can be found in places besides Nanjing. We stopped for them because they looked good. They tasted good as well.

  These next two pictures are of Finnish food that I tried. I had mashed potatoes and meatballs with a roll. I was a little disappointed by the roll, it was not as sweet as I wanted it to be and it said cinnamon roll. That to me was not a cinnamon roll, it must have icing. Also, the meal was a little over priced however, the owner came in while we were their and played the drums. Not sure if that made up for the price, but it was foreign food. This was during my Nanjing adventure.

  These last three pictures are of food that I lovingly consumed in Nanjing with two friends. We spend the day walking around and this was how we ended our adventure. The first picture is of dumplings (top), a rich cake with stuff stuffed in it (haha) (bottom right), and a bag filled with piece of meat which are hidden in the bag (bottom left). The next is of a bowl of noodles and last is of us eating the food. Look at that chopstick usage!

  I had no idea I ate so much food. That was crazy and took too long to type. If you have any thought on this Chinese food compared to Chinese food that you have eaten outside of China please leave comments about it. I may do another food log if I can remember to take picture of my food. It kinda feels weird to take picture because I have been here so long, do not feel like a tourist any more.