Chinese Breakfast

Thursday, September 25, 2008
Most people when travelling like to eat a familiar breakfast, but breakfast food everywhere is basic, comforting, and economical.

Brunch for less than a dollar: soymilk, vegetable dumplings, an over-easy egg, and pao cai (pickles).



The mighty you tiao (long doughnut, not sweet). Dip it into your warm soy milk or congee. Twenty cents for you tiao and soy milk at this place.




A plate of yumi dou bing (corn and bean cakes, dipped in egg and fried) to dip into a bowl of congee.



Earlier this week I asked a class of Basic English students how they would save money on food. I got some of the expected replies, like eat vegetables instead of meat and cook at home instead of eating out, but they had several more interesting suggestions:

Go on a diet.
Eat other people's food.
Look at pictures of food instead of eating.
Sleep later in the morning so that you end up eating fewer meals.

2 comments:

leukothea said...

When I taught English in China, I asked my students to split into groups and come up with ways to use up 1,000,000 eggs before they spoiled. One group listed out many different ways to use up the eggs, and then triumphantly finished, "And with the remaining eggs, we will make much cheese!"

Anonymous said...

roflol...love that cheese story. you two remind me so much of my English teachers back in junior high. I still remember the painful expression one of them had when he receive all the answers for the "what do you do for fun?" question. 90% of the answers are "watching tv"... what can i say? there is no much entertainment for a bunch of city living 15 year olds exhausted by exams at that time...

I just found this blog and love how you can vegetables look so good. One thing that's quite commonly used in Chinese salad (if there is such thing) is pignolia nuts (the pine nuts). My mom's way is to lightly stir fry it ((60 seconds) with white corn. I usually let the stir fry cool and put on top of a bowl of baby spinach, a little dried fruit (i used raisin) and sliced jicama (which is quite cheap in china). That's one of my favorite thing.

Robin