Chinese Grocery Shopping

127.00 Yuan = around $20.00

Don't worry! I will not be documenting all of my grocery trips.

Many of you have asked what I buy. This was just a daily "run to the store" and only includes a few things. Pictured above are two umbrellas (they are used as much for the sun as the rain here), cherry tomatoes, hand soap, ice cream cones (after school treat), jelly drops, dried peas, Propel-like drink, four bottles of strawberry yogurt drink. These people are fanatic over their yogurt!

Now I will tell you what I DO NOT buy yet...meat. We have bought frozen meat, but fresh meat sits out in the open on ice and you grab it and wrap it yourself. It scares me a bit.

I am having a really hard time remembering how to cook and feed my family. I know it sounds crazy, but this culture is so far removed from what my normal is, sometimes it is hard to do common tasks like cooking. Plus we do not have our shipment yet. I have many, many essential kitchen items there (like cookbooks).

Do you remember this post? Well, that handy dandy item is in our shipment too. I realized right in the middle of making spaghetti that we had no way to open cans. I ran down to Bonjour and bought the only can opener they had (pictured below). It does not work at all! Emma was so desperate for a home cooked meal that she took the challenge of opening our can of beans with a knife! Eventually it worked!

Speaking of Emma, one of her enrichment classes this semester is called "Scratch Cooking". It is set up a little bit like "Next Food Network Star". They each have had to find recipes for 5 appetizers, 5 savory dishes, 5 sweet dishes. The key is, all ingredients have to be from scratch- no pre-packaged anything. Also, equipment is very, very limited. Each week they are divided into groups. There is a team leader who decides which recipes from the group they are going to prepare. The team has to provide the ingredients (great! I can't even shop for my own family, let alone her class!) Then each team prepares all three recipes in front of the class, enough for everyone to taste. It sounds challenging for us, but great for her! Opportunities like this are the reason her Facebook post yesterday was

"how can i stress it enough? IM LOVIN SCHOOL! :D ((besides all the homework))"