eating in China

6 months ago we left Shanghai and returned to our lives in the US. While we've settled into our new lives in Boston we still often think about our time in China. We miss friends, food, the unpredictability of living in a different culture (well maybe only Jolene appreciated this) and Blue Frog (the girl's favorite restaurant in China - where Gracie would always order a hamburger and Helen could be counted on to request spaghetti). Mom and dad preferred several Chinese, Indian and Thai restaurants.

Shanghai has a pretty wide range of restaurants although we never found great Mexican food there. We ate out quite a bit but usually in Jinqiao, near our home or Xintiandi, near Tony's office. We also enjoyed the different varieties of fresh fruit that I usually picked up at a small fruit "store" about a 10 minute bike ride from our house. As you can imagine, there were some foods that we encountered that seemed very odd to us. Like the stewed donkey we noticed on a menu board...

We also benefited from having two great Ayis to help with cooking, cleaning, childcare and Carrefour (grocery). Our first ayi, Xin Xiang was a pretty good cook and I enjoyed eating her meals of soup (often chicken broth with a variety of mushrooms, or tofu, green onions, sometimes ground meat etc.) and her stir fried greens, eggplant with lots of garlic, chicken with red and yellow peppers and dumplings.

Our second ayi, Chen Yun Xiao was good at introducing us to more traditional foods that we never would have tried on our own, like bags of spicy pickled vegetables including lotus or nian gao which are glutinous rice cakes used in stir fry, popular in Shanghai during Chinese New Year. Here she is making dumplings during Chinese New Year 2007.