rice rice rice

So I was prepared for the worst but I’ve been enjoying the food, as long as I am selective. I am provided with lunch everyday at the museum and eat in a nearby Muslim restaurant with the staff, and eat with Nui Nui and friends on weekends. These meals are eaten family style with shared dishes, but unlike back home where you serve your individual plates you pretty much eat off the platters. Each person has a small bowl of rice and cup of tea (or hot water), with your chopsticks you take one or two mouthfuls at a time to your bowl/or mouth.

Because I don’t eat red meat I’ve kind of lucked out and am pretty much eating as a vegetarian here. The meat usually hangs outside the restaurants (so you have to not breathe as you walk in to avoid the smells) and is cleaved into pieces which usually consist of bone with skin and fat. And don’t forget, you eat these with chopsticks – some people opt for the seemingly easier option of just eating the entire piece, bone and all. Avoidances also excludes the insects, chicken feet, jellied meat and unidentifiable meats. 

Lijiang’s local cuisine is incredibly spicy. The dishes that don’t have fresh chili peppers in them have dried chilies. For example, today with my rice I had baked cauliflower with dried chilies, beans with fresh chilies (and pepper), kale, spinach and chilies, and steamed pear. The local specialties include baba (a pancake like bread made out of rice usually eaten with chilies, but the honey braised is quite good), and chicken bean jelly (a grey jell-o like slab seen frying in oil at street vendors).

Unfortunately my sugar cravings are left totally unsatisfied here. Candy here comes mostly in jellied form, and even nice sugary Canadian jell-o has kind of always freaked me out. So, always unsatisfied I continue the search, and usually end up eating anything that’s slightly familiar. Today I found Lays potato chips! Unfortunately the flavours included lime, cucumber, hot and spicy fish soup and numb and spicy hot pot. Popular popsicle flavours include corn and peas. But popcorn is slightly sweet here and I’ve now found two stores in the city that sell snickers bars.