Beginning Cooking in Beijing

Spaghetti:
For our first cooked meal in Beijing, we both agree that Spaghetti would be The AWESOME! So, to begin our meal, we needed to visit the "foodz library." Not only would this mean locating one, but it also meant that we would have to navigate through the meatz part of the "foodz library."

Ok, so I saw some ground meat... It was marbled red and white... like beef. We purchased some. Then we went through the vegetables. There was almost every fruit and vegetable you can imagine. No lack of veggies here. So our next quest was to find the spices. Umm.... yeah... no oregano... no basil... no thyme... no anything familiar except salt, pepper and chili powder. oh dear... well... this would have to do..

We went home and started the foodz. I was cooking the meat,and it wasn't "browning" like hamburger... it was staying a bit pale.. more like.... PORK! :O oh dear... I ended up making pork spaghetti... It wasn't bad though... even though it didn't have many of the essential ingredients... It came out really well...

Chicken and Dumplings:
Chicken is a staple of the Chinese diet.

I bought a whole chicken, so we could make chicken and dumplings... They totally cheat you guys in the states... I can't believe it!!! You don't even get the heart, liver, feet or the Head and neck when you buy a whole chicken over there. Man... what a gyp!

Anyway... after hacking off the head, feet, and digging out the heart and liver, I chopped the chicken into 4 pieces. I used the first half for the chicken and dumplings and will use the next half either today or tomorrow to make chicken and rice... woot.

So the broth from the chicken was friggen awesome. It has been quite some time since I have had such good broth. Maybe next time I buy a chicken it will be one of the black ones.... maybe they make better chicken and dumplings!