The first few months of us being here resulted in me losing 40 pounds. FORTY POUNDS! I felt pretty good not carrying around that extra weight. That's like six or seven newborn babies and I don't even like to hold even one of those.
The reason for this radical weight loss was because of the sudden change of diet we experienced when moving here. Now, I love the food here. I really do. Although, it in no way resembles what we have been told in the States is Chinese food.
Now, however much I may like the food here, sometimes a person wants food from their home country. And for the most part, we can track down the things we crave. But sometimes it's a real challenge…if not totally impossible.
It took a while for us to find a decent pizza and even longer to track down cheese (most Chinese are lactose intolerant). Bread is basically nonexistent here and their interpretations of some of our foods are enough to make you cry.
Pickles is one of the items we have never really seen. It's just not a Chinese thing and in the few few few Western restaurants that serve a sandwich that may have pickles on it, the pickles are very obviously made locally and they only loosely fit that definition. Especially since Chinese cucumbers look more like a zucchini than the vegetable we are familiar with.
Next is the popcorn. We can find popcorn, but they prepare it very differently here. ALL popcorn here is served sweet. It's covered in several varieties of flavored sugar. It's not bad, but sometimes you want salted buttery popcorn and that does not exist here.
We finally tracked down plain popcorn and started making it for ourselves.
Brett,
ReplyDeleteI have to question, why are you in China? Are you a missionary worker? This is my first time to visit your blog, I think. It would be difficult for me to make such a drastic move and I'd go crazy in a country that didn't have pickles! You poor, poor soul!! Dropping 40 pounds is impressive. I couldn't lose that much without being in danger of death but I'd like to lose 10 pounds. Maybe, if I just stop eating pizza on the weekends I can do that because I'm pretty sure pickles aren't the problem. lol It's nice meeting you while traveling the A2Z road this morning. Have a good day!
~Curious as a Cathy
A2Z iPad Art Sketch 'P' is for Prince Charming & His Princess
I have a Master's in TESOL. Teaching English to Speaker of Other Languages.
DeleteSo, as an English teacher, I went to a country where they need English teachers.
I was a missionary years ago in Puerto Rico.
I love my air-popper. And salt. And pizza.
ReplyDeleteThank God I developed a taste for olives, but they're not pickles.
I've come to enjoy your air-popper also.
Delete40 pounds, what a deal. You need to write the Chinese diet and cash in brother.
ReplyDeleteIt does take a bit to adjust to different food. I lived in Canada one year. I lost a bit of weight due to not finding food to eat. I'm from Georgia. So it was a bit of adjustment. But not the adjustment of moving to China from the US. Take care.
They eat many more vegetables here and have almost zero sugar in their diets. It just fell off with virtually no effort.
DeletePlus, I have to walk everywhere, so there was that too.
I guess it sounds like you wouldn't even be able to make your own pickles if a regular cucumber is not available. So interesting to hear what is hard to find!
ReplyDeleteThe cucumbers here are great when used for things here. However, they are very different from ours. They are about two feet long and about as thick as an average carrot. They don't taste at all the same, but they are technically cucumbers. It just doesn't work.
DeleteWe actually found a Hooters and ordered their fried pickles. NOPE. Not again.