Kernel Seasons / White Cheddar Seasoning

One of the supermarkets I drive past, has a new shelf full of noxious American crap. Red vines, or whatever those poor excuses for raspberry liquorice the Americans eat, is called. Peanut butter Reeses cups. Rufus McTeague barbeque sauce. And so forth. But they also have popcorn seasoning. This is something we don't really have here. You might just shake the popcorn in icing sugar. Or you might make some caramel and use that in combination with nuts, to make caramel corn. But that's about it.

I remember going to the cinema in the states with Baddi to see Postal, which was awesomely bad, and they'd have help yourself popcorn seasoning. It was disgusting, in the sense that it wasn't in any way hygienic. So I've been buying this.

The bottle.

The generous helping of seasoning, as sold.

They say there's enough there for 100 servings. I think that's true, but out of that 100 servings, there'd be exactly 0 you could taste.

Planting / 2013-2014 / Bloody Butcher Corn

Last year, one of the crops I grew was Bloody Butcher corn. The seed was bought from Koanga. I started it out in trays on the front porch under frost cloth, and eventually planted it out. And finally, I harvested the remaining cobs for seed, which has since dried and been stored away. A few of these earlier pictures may have already been posted, but not the rest.

This was late October 2013, or Spring here. You can see the three sisters bed, with the corn mounds, and the planted out seedlings on each. It looks nice and lush.

A close up of the same bed on the same day, showing the planted out seedlings. Note that I don't know math good, so grew too few seedlings. One of my many mistakes.

Mid to late December 2013. The seedlings have grown. Also the hills without seedlings either had seeds direct sown, and where they didn't germinate, new seedlings grown and transplanted. A variety of "squash" or pumpkin as they are known here, the second of the three sisters, are interplanted. Most of these were germinated in trays and transplanted. Direct sowing didn't work out well in general. The third sister, beans, is in there in some cases, on the corn hills. But again miscounting of numbers required affected them.

Early January 2014. More seedling growth, both of the pumpkin and corn. The shade of the corn seen here, is indicative of the problem with three sisters in a non-desert environment. I simply don't get the heat and sunlight to make the shade beneficial. In a desert environment, the shade would prevent water evaporation. In a summer with lots of mist, fog and plenty of rain.. it meant sodden ground and insufficient sunlight to underlying plants instead. Lesson learned.

February 2014. What a difference 20 days makes. The front right corn shows what happens after strong winds knock down stalks. They pull themselves back up.

March 2014. The corn has passed the sweetcorn stage, but is not showing any signs of drying off. Too many mild days. One of the more developed cobs has been peeled back to encourage it to dry. When dried, the bloody butcher kernels are a deep red colour.

Early April 2014. All the remaining cobs have been peeled back. At this stage it was evident that birds wouldn't touch the existing peeled back cob, so it was safe to do it to the rest. As long as the cobs are past a certain stage, the frosts will not do any real harm. This I learned from some internet research.

Late April 2014. Here you can see that several frosts have happened, killing off the stalks. The cobs are pretty dry, but none are fully dry. All are soft to some lesser degree at this point. Perhaps one has a floury texture to the matter inside it's kernels.

The lesson learned from all my corn growing, is that three sisters does not make sense here. Also, do not plant different varieties of corn side by side, unless you want cross-pollination. Many of my Bloody Butcher cobs sported kernels which had traits of kernels on the Blue Aztec and Black Navajo varieties grown alongside them.

Wonka Nutty Crunchalicious

This is more disappointing candy.  It is just another case of some company churning out some gimmicky product that isn't particularly interesting in it's own right, and is just being bought because it's different from the old gimmicky products already out there.



Generic tasteless crunchy bits embedded in the sugary chocolate.

Griffins Cookies and Cream Shrewsberry

I know from past experience, that the best kind of Oreo, is the Newman-O. And now I know that the worst kind of Oreo, is the Griffins Cookies and Cream Shrewsberry.

I've bought Griffin's flavour combination marketing gimmick nonsense before, and it is always a mistake.

Innards.

At this point, I should know that if it's Griffins, and it's not one of their older biscuits, then it's going to be a bland waste of money. They don't even look appealing! They look like some congealed blackish-grey chemical mixture..

Innards.

Why can't I buy Newman-Os in New Zealand?

Griffins ToffeePop Collisions MallowPuffs

More marketing gimmick rubbish, that isn't worth buying.

Packet.

I should have known better, after the last time I bought this Collisions nonsense.

Innards.

Old Bejing home occasion dishes

I don't know what the name of this place was, but the specials board caught my eye as I was walking randomly around Beijing. The sign at the top says laobeijingjiachangcai, which I vaguely interpret using my declining chinese reading skills, as saying "old beijing home occasion dishes."

Here's a close up of the store front menu, where there was a special on crab for Friday.

The service was nice enough, and there weren't many people there.

The szechuan peppercorn bean dish was not the nicest I had tasted.

The fried crabs with spicy salt were okay, but nothing really special. They'd be a nice bar food I guess, with some beer to wash them down.

Unfortunately, I didn't photograph the receipt for this place.

Griffins ToffeePop Collisions Krispie

This comes under gimmicky rubbish that isn't worth eating. I was looking for some Krispie biscuits, which are an honest combination of sugar and coconut I believe. Unfortunately, the discerning shoppers had already bought all those, so instead I purchased these hoping they'd be similar.

Packet.

I should know better than to buy this rubbish.

Biscuits.

Qin Tang Fu restaurant in Beijing

These are old photographs that have been sitting on my camera for over a year now. My Chinese cardiologist didn't appear concerned about the shooting pains in arm, so on the spot I had decided to quit my job and go on a relaxing vacation before the stress of cleaning out an apartment and flying back to New Zealand.

One of the places I went was Beijing, and this food blog provided me with a good restaurant recommendation, in this post. I pretty much ordered the same things she did.

The restaurant, Qin Tang Fu, was thankfully within walking distance of my hotel. I would note that you should book hotel rooms online, as even though I bartered for a lower hotel room price, Motel 8 (I think that was it) had lower prices through online ordering. It wasn't as cheap as the Xi'an hotel, but then again it also didn't have the midnight call where you were asked if you wanted a hooker sent up to your room.

The menu was basically a book of pictures, and a laminated sheet with a marker. You'd mark the name of the dishes you wanted, and then give it to the waiter or waitress.

The table had this mystery bowl on it. I wasn't sure what it was, whether it was to drink, or to wash my hands in. I waited a while until another table of young lads sat down, and saw one of them drinking, so I guess it is probably tea.  It tasted like floury water anyway.

Here's an inside shot of the restaurant.

It gets tiring looking at food, here's another inside shot.

I ordered the roujiamo (肉夹馍), which looks like a tastier version of a McDonald's McMuffin in retrospect.

Following the McMuffin, was the cold buckwheat noodles. These were also pretty good.

Then having visited Xi'an where I had previously enjoyed it, I bought sticky date pudding. The version I ate in Xi'an was so much nicer. This had obviously been pre-made and reheated.

And given the low quality, it didn't doggy bag well.

Here's the receipt. At 36 RMB, and around 4 RMB to the $1 NZ, that was around $9 NZ. Not bad at all.

Whittakers White Raspberry Chocolate

More unremarkable New Zealand chocolate. I couldn't taste the raspberry, and the white chocolate was innocuous. I'd rather have a bowl of dried raspberries and a Nestles milky bar.

The packet.

The goods.

Cadbury Peanut Toffee Cookie

I'd love to be able to go to the supermarket and buy some chocolate or biscuits. But generally, what is available to buy is mostly made appealing through marketing, rather than actually being an enjoyable eating experience. I ate a couple of mouthfuls of this and threw it in the bin, it just wasn't worth the effort. And I bought another bar of a different flavour in the same range with this as part of a special, and that ended up in the same place.

The packet.

What's inside the packet.

Shing Shang Crispy Wasabi Coated Anchovy

Thank goodness for Asian supermarkets.  Somewhere amongst the mystery products that I either don't trust, or don't identify as edible foodstuffs, there are gems.  I'm not sure this was one of them, but it was definitely more edible than the salty dried fruit.

Wasabi coated anchovy

I suspect food colouring and horse radish were more likely to be present, than actual wasabi.

The real disappointment with this product is the wasted potential.  The potential for this to have been something better than wasabi peas.  The potential for all these anchovies to have been put in oil in tin cans and sold for a much more reasonable price than the anchovies you find in the supermarket.  Unfortunately, Asian supermarkets only seem to ever have dried anchovies.

Shanghai water delivery

I found this in my drafts folder.  Have I already posted a version?  Beats me, but between my cold and my desire to go to bed.. I'm going to assume I haven't and just post it.

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If you're drinking water in Shanghai, you have several options. You can boil the tap water to kill the germs and drink that, but then you still have the heavy metals. You can buy bottles from the supermarket, but then you're killing the environment with all that discarded plastic and it gets old carrying the bottles home. And you can also obtain or buy a water dispenser and have 5 gallon bottles delivered to your home.

I'm at the point where I am buying a water dispenser. The word on Shanghai Expat was that you can get one for around 100 RMB at a store like Gome. So I located my nearest Gome store on Changshou road and went there.

The process of buying something at a store like these, let alone a water dispenser, is long and complicated. You start off buy going to find the good you want on the shelf, then you negotiate in limited Mandarin with all the old ladies standing around. Then one of them goes off and fills in a form, and gives it to you. Then you head up stairs to the payment counter, and pay the girls there. Then they give you two slips, one of which (the white one) is to give to the collections counter and the other (the pink one) is your fa piao / receipt.

So you head over to the collections counter, where someone takes the white slip and goes to fetch whatever you bought.

Then you grab it and leave.

The next step is to get the water bottles to accompany it. On Shanghai Expat people seem to talk about preferring three brands mostly. Nongfu Springs, Watsons and Nestle. Nongfu Springs is a local cheaper brand, but no-one seems to talk about getting it delivered. I normally drink Nestle, so I decided to stick with it and order that. After a bit of Googling, I managed to find a Chinese language Nestle web page. Life must have been so much harder for people living in China before tools like Google Translate were around.

There are three types of water offered. Distilled at 28 RMB, mineral water for 19 RMB and purified water at 17 RMB. It is kind of confusing which to choose, but Shanghai Expat comes to the rescue again. People advise against the distilled water because it lacks the minerals and salts of normal water, which causes problems in the long run. The word is to buy mineral water.

So I called the listed number, pressed 2 for English. Then gave my address, named how many bottles I wanted, agreed to pay a 40 RMB deposit for each, chose which type of water I wanted and they will be delivered tomorrow between 12 PM and 5 PM. It is not exactly ideal to have to stick around home for five hours!

I've since left Shanghai, and didn't bother getting the ~40 RMB refund per bottle.  The Nestle delivery service was consistently helpful, and went out of their way to get me the water.  If they came at the wrong time, or when I popped out, they'd ring and sort out a new time.  I'd recommend anyone living in Shangai use them.  Many of the locals simply boiled the water, maybe that's good enough for you.. but maybe you should think twice.

Xi'an - Xiyangshi - Sticky rice

My favourite street food of my stay in Xi'an was this one.

There was a corner stall with a giant tub of sticky rice, with what seemed to be a bean and date flavouring. The tub was structured in layers of rice and flavouring paste.

You'd order a given serving size, I ordered the 5 RMB one.  Then the lady serving would hock out a chunk of the current rice layer, plunk it in one of these containers and then hand you it and a pair of disposable chopsticks.

I don't eat rice normally, mainly for boring reasons related to it providing no nutrition and just being used to accompany whatever has the flavour. And I am not partial to the Chinese bean flavouring in any way, shape or form. But this was delicious, and I'd treat myself with it if I could find it back in New Zealand.

I had some more photos related to this, of the stall, the lady carving out chunks and more.. but my ipod seems to have swallowed a random selection :-(

Xi'an - Beiyuanmen - Quesadillas

This stall on Beiyuanmen (北院门) always had a queue no matter what time I went past. First thing in the morning, the afternoon or even late at night.

You basically choose a filling, or combination. Beef and lamb are both options, as well as a variety of generic looking rabbit foods. Meat is more expensive, of course. I think it was maybe 7 RMB for the one without meat, and 10 RMB for one with. Lady one takes the money, constructs the uncooked "quesadillas" and also on receiving the cooked ones slices and hands out the finished product to the customer.

Lady two fries them and bungs them over to lady one.

Then you get a bag with four quarters which look something like this.

Extra extra spice was added on request to mine, but I think you'd be better off adding some rabbit food to get more flavour.  This was nicely, and not overly spicy.

Xi'an - Looks like savoury potatoes

I don't remember what this dish was called, but it was common to see out in front of restaurants in a large pan like this.  To me, it looked like a potato dish.  So when it was recommended to me in restaurant, and was 5 RMB, I gave it a shot.

Very little flavour and a gritty texture.

Translating the menu, I seem to remember it being called something related to sand and grass. Having seen a pan of it being prepared from scratch later on, the chunks looked like a clear and opaque solid. Perhaps some kind of gelatine based mixture.

There's a reason this one isn't recommended on the tourism related websites..