The Food
Maggie asked me about any dietary/cultural/American food restrictions that I might have. I told her that there were none at all and I would like to try all kinds of Chinese food. Maggie took this as a challenge! The picture below is one of our first meals. Starting from the 1:00 position and working clockwise: A salad – not that much different than an American salad. Then at 4:00 there’s Choudoufu. This translates as “Stinky Tofu” but I think a better name would be “cowpie surprise”. Basically it looks and smells like something you could find in a cattle field and it tastes just like it smells. In between the choudoufu and the salad is a dish of hot pepper that you can dip the Choudoufu in to take the edge off. At the 6:00 position is pig lung in hot oil. In the 8:00 position is the internal organs of sparrows. This has a relatively normal kind of taste but with strange shapes and textures. In the 10:00 position is something Maggie described only as “beef”. I had some and said that this and the salad are the only things on the table that most Americans eat. Then I ate one of the vegetables with the beef and made a face and Maggie smiled. The Chinese name for the vegetable translates as “Bitter Vegetable”. Later we found that the American name is Balsam. I told Maggie that as far as I know, Americans only use Balsam in shampoo.
link: The Food
