Category: Food

My colleague Will and I hopped into a taxi to Shenzhen to buy some food items tonight.  The first picture shows the mall where we shopped, next is a giant apple from Japan all wrapped up; then fruit juice made from excellent pineapples and you should drink it everyday for your health, Happy Fruit Drink in orange, and pomegranate juice from Korea;  and finally some Dian Hong black tea that I couldn’t resist after I opened the lid and smelled it.  Map and tea picture from Wikipedia.    Check out the last picture with the freeway on-ramp.  That building in the background is the China Customs building I showed on a previous post, the one at the Luo Hu railway station.

Over the hump!  Two work days to go.  The honey is tasty! It’s viscosity* is quite lower compared to what I’m used to at home.  (I always think of the word viscosity when I see honey).   The tins of canned fish I bought in Hong Kong last weekend.   (Confession : I buy the ones with the pretty pictures on the outside, like the Indian guy presenting his curried mackerel).

*Viscosity is a measure of the resistance of a fluid which is being deformed by either shear stress or tensile stress.  In everyday terms (and for fluids only), viscosity is “thickness” or “internal friction”.   Thus, water is “thin”, having a lower viscosity, while honey is “thick”, having a higher viscosity.

 

 

Since I got back after my two-month absence here on the project I have had to catch up on a lot of discussions that happened outside e-mails and teleconferences.    We still live in the real world, and there will always be a need to be physically present and look someone in the eye to understand exactly what is going on.

Ready for today’s treat from work?  Selection of high quality ingredients create fantastic taste and strong feelings of softness and happiness .. : ).

Here’s last night’s dinner .. my stand-by New Orleans style chicken sandwich from KFC with fries and a little custard pie.  Then it was on to the grocery store for a few items.   Check out the ‘unusual’  cereal flavors from Heinz :  Fish and Vegetable, Black Rice & Date.   Yes .. Heinz makes much much more than just tomato ketchup!   (No, I didn’t get any to try!  I brought some Pronutro cereal from South Africa).

This little African picture sewn up with scrap cloth (my mom was the artist) was the cover for my book bag for the first year I went to school.  I’m taking it back to Seattle to frame it or to use as a pillow cover.  And doesn’t the Cape Gooseberry jam look yummy?  The big jar of Marmite might not appeal to everyone.  It’s similar to the Vegimite in the sandwich that Men At Work sing of in their 1982 song Down Under :

Buying bread from a man in Brussels
He was six-foot-four and full of muscles
I said, “Do you speak-a my language?”
He just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich
And he said,
“I come from a land down under
Where beer does flow and men chunder
Can’t you hear, can’t you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover.”

Starbucks now offers their Via Ready Brew coffee (ground coffee bean) with vanilla flavoring, which I thought I’d try.  (It’s not bad, but I think I will stick with their instant coffee sans vanilla).  Vanilla is a flavoring derived from orchids of the genus Vanilla native to Mexico. The majority of the world’s vanilla is the Vanilla planifolia variety, more commonly known as “Madagascar-Bourbon” vanilla, which is produced in a small region of Madagascar and in Indonesia.  The ‘bean’ is part of the stem ending in the flower.  According to Wikipedia vanilla is the second most expensive spice after saffron, due to the extensive labor required to grow the vanilla seed pods.

I stopped at the gas station last night after going to the gym. The Honest Tea iced tea-lemonade drink was the one I picked from the 300+ drinks on offer.  Some time ago on TV there was a business profile of the entrepreneur that started up Honest Tea.  At that point Snapple and Lipton manufactured iced tea with tea ‘dust’ – the inferior left-overs from the leaves.  Hence, Honest Tea that was brewed from tea leaves.  (Snapple and Lipton now offer full leaf iced teas).   And since I mentioned television, at this point there is no escape from all the political ads for the election on Tue Nov 2.  Now that’s I’ve taken the time to brush up on the propositions on the Washington State ballot, all the ads look like half-truths, partial truths or twisted ‘truths’ presented to favor the sponsor’s viewpoint.   Yes, the truth is hard to find – and maybe hardest of all in TV ads and TV commercials.

I read about Greek yogurt being all the rage, so I thought I would try it.  Very nice! Thick and smoooth.  ‘Ridiculously thick’ says the Fage (say ‘fa-yeh’) yogurt brand’s website (www.fageusa.com).  It is basically yogurt that has been strained in a cloth or filter to remove some of the whey.  So the protein content is higher than that of normal yogurt.   In addition this yogurt has no added sugar or the dreaded high-fructose corn syrup that shows up in so many sweet products here in the USA.

Bryan, Gary and I had beers and dinner at the Elysian the way we usually do on Fridays.   There is a pumpkin beer festival on this weekend, but the pumpkin beer was available already. (Yes, it’s real pumpkin that is used to brew the beer.  There are pumpkins everywhere this time of year with Halloween approaching).   I like the beer! .. mine was a beer with a little ginger in as well.

There was an inch or two of rain last night from the typhoon, but nothing the roads and streets couldn’t handle.

Today marks the start of this year’s Mid-Autumn Festival* – also known as the Moon Festival or in Chinese Zhongqiujie (traditional Chinese: 中秋節) or in Vietnamese  “Tết Trung Thu” ,  is a popular harvest festival celebrated by Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese people.  It dates back over 3,000 years to moon worship in China’s Shang Dynasty.  The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the four most important Chinese festivals.

*an odd name given that it’s the start of autumn

Mooncakes (not the same as moon pies) are Chinese bakery products traditionally eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival.  The festival is for lunar worship and moon watching and moon cakes are regarded as an indispensable delicacy on this occasion.   Mooncakes are offered between friends or on family gatherings while celebrating the festival.

Typical mooncakes are round or rectangular pastries, measuring about 10 cm in diameter and 4-5 cm thick. A thick filling usually made from lotus seed paste is surrounded by a relatively thin (2-3 mm) crust and may contain yolks from salted duck eggs.   Mooncakes are usually eaten in small wedges accompanied by Chinese tea.   [Information from Wikipedia].

I am off to Bangkok tonight on a red-eye flight .. one night in Bangkok and the world’s your oyster! says the 1984 song sung by Murray Head.    So I will report back if that’s the case!

Friday night and we went out to a team dinner since most of the team sticks around for the weekend to work on Sunday.   We have been at this restaurant before – its signature dish is young pigeon – of which we had some to start with.  (Makes you feel like a mean carnivore, eating the pigeon! Aww).   The food in the front on the picture is a lotus root-carrot-broccolini-black mushroom stir fry, pork with the same mushroom and a whole eggplant in foil.   Afterward we went to Dameisha beach to stick our feet in the lukewarm water.  The picture is of one of the stalls on the beach selling trinkets and food and sodas.  There is still a lot of people that come out to the beach over the weekend even though the days are getting shorter.

Over the hump of the week, sort of.   We have Saturday off but we are working on Sunday to accommodate some Chinese holidays next week.    We are also working to meet a deadline that has actually come and gone.    I guess the deadline is dead .. or the goal of meeting it is dead ! 

Tonight we ate at one of our regular restaurants, ‘The Spicy One’.  The food may not look spicy but all of the dishes are hott! : the green beans, the shrimp on a stick and the potato slices with a basil-green veggie and meat garnish.    It made me break out in a sweat. 

It has been a long weary day packed with someone stopping by my cubicle every 5 minutes with a question or issue.  And we have a LOT of those.   So I was very tempted to beg out of the monthly team dinner, but then went nonetheless.    We’ve been to this restaurant here in Dameisha before; we simply call it ‘The Restaurant Under The Tree’.  I’ll have to find out the Chinese name.  They bring one dish after the other to the table and the eggplant in garlic butter was one of my favorites tonight.  The second picture was taken on the walk back to my apartment; that’s the King Key Palace Hotel’s light reflected on the water.  The shot came out nice enough on my compact camera after I darkened the picture a little bit to make the water an inky black.

Our client company handed out tin boxes with white tea to us here.    The loose tea buds are packaged into one foil bag.   The second picture is what it looks like in my cup.   (I need a strainer !)   I drink it without sugar (for once) and it actually tastes very good  .. but of course not nearly as strong black tea,  my favorite ‘color’ tea.   I know of green tea and red tea, and there may even be other colors.

It rained overnight and the weather has cooled down nicely.   I am sure both the humidity and the temperature will go back to their normal values, though !

My colleague Will and I arrived in Hong Kong again last night with the Daya Bay shuttle,  and after checking into the Marriott Courtyard, made our way to the Peninsula hotel where the restaurant Felix is.   The restaurant is on the 28th floor.  (The second picture is the view as one approaches the restaurant from the elevators).   I started with a lychee martini to go with the appetizers we ordered –  grilled foie gras and pear,  and scallops.     My main course was Tasmanian salmon with caviar, with some pinot grigio.    The food was very good.   They had some background piano music, and the restaurant offered nice views of the city and the harbor.   But the best view is actually provided in the men’s room while one is doing one’s thing in a free standing urn while you peruse the Kowloon city scenery below through the floor-to-ceiling window!

Wednesday – from the Middle English Wednes dei, before that from Old English Wōdnesdæg, the day of the English god Woden.   To the Germans it’s Mittwoch middle of the week and to the Chinese 星期三  xīng qī​ sān the third day of the planets or 周三   zhōu​ sān Zhou dynasty & the third day.

In any event, it’s downhill to the weekend now, and allow me to show off my chunk of chocolate I got last weekend in Oliver’s grocery store in Hong Kong : extra dark chocolate from New Zealand made from Ghanian cocoa beans.   Bittersweet, the way life is.   Did not Juliet tell Romeo ‘parting is such sweet sorrow‘ ?  meaning saying goodbye, at the same time starts up her anticipation of seeing him again, giving the sad emotion a pleasant tingle.

Here is a can of Lay’s Cool and Refreshing/ Little Tomato flavor chips I spotted on someone’s desk here at work.

My comments – 1.  Two flavors at once?  What’s going on?  2.  Presumably the tomato is little, and not the flavor. Simba chips in South Africa, with a lion character as its mascot-marketer and the tag line chips that roarrr with flavor would have a problem with a ‘little’ flavor.    I have fond memories of Simba chips.  Can someone tell them to change the garish green color on the package shown in the picture I found on-line, though?

Here’s more information from Wikipedia.    Simba is a popular potato chip manufacturer and has been producing its products in South Africa since 1956, when it was established by the Greyvenstein family.  Having successfully marketed Ouma’s Rusks in the 1940s and 1950s, by 1955 the Greyvenstein family were looking for ways to diversify their family business.    In that year, Leon Greyvenstein travelled to a food fair in Germany in search of ideas and met a man called Herman Lay – the co-founder of Frito-Lay, the largest chip company in the world.   The two men struck up a friendship, and Leon travelled on to the USA where he saw a potato chip factory in action.

I had a late night out last night after checking into the Marriott Courtyard Hotel here in Hong Kong.  My colleague Will and I went to the Harbour City Mall on the Kowloon side, billed as the biggest mall in the city.   It’s a very nice place – upscale but not filled with designer Versace and Gucci and Louis Vuitton stores.  So one can actually hang out there and enjoy food at the restaurants and check out the offerings in electronic stores and the like.

The first picture is of a gorgeous dome skylight in the mall.  The next one shows a place where we picked up the specialty dish octopus balls to go.  (Maybe further explanation is in order? Balls of light fried batter with cooked octopus pieces inside!).   After that we went to Dan Ryan’s Chicago Grill, a classic beer and burgers place that offers lots of other American food on the menu.     (We craved some ‘American’ food).

The spider crab offered for US$60 is from a Whole Foods-like (a reference for my American readers) grocery store in the mall – scary, the crab!   And the final picture is from my hotel room on the 26th floor this morning.

It’s warm outside but not unbearably so.  But of course I will report back later about the rest of the weekend.

A few of us went to the King Key* Palace Hotel’s restaurant for dinner tonight, and here is the billboard in the lobby that advertises the Indian cuisine buffet dinner on Fridays.   It’s not cheap at RMB 228 ($US33.65).   And without the benefit of the billboard, one could be forgiven for expecting to find tandoori chicken at the buffet instead of hamburgers and T-bone steak!

*say it slowly :  King. Key. : )

Friday evenings finds me at the Elysian Brewing Co more often than not, with Bryan and Gary, drinking some Zephyrus Pilsner if it is available, or any other of the 16 beers they have on tap.  It is brewed on the property.   Constructed in a 1919-era Packard storage building, the pub embdies the classic American brewpub feel with large exposed timbers, high ceilings, concrete floor and a full wall of brewery tanks.

And where does the name come from?  In Greek mythology, Elysium was a section of the Underworld.  (Hence the Ionic column in the picture, a greek architectural classic).  The Elysian Fields, or the Elysian Plains, were the final resting places of the souls of the heroic and the virtuous.