Food market - Beijing

neatly layed out strawberries

different coloured corn

(Another in the catching up from China series!)

Here are some pictures of a food market in Bejing, just off Gulouwai Daijie in pretty damn central Beijing.

I hunted this one down. 

I kept seeing people coming from a particular direction with plastic bags of fruit and veg. I decided to track back along their path to see where the food was coming from. 




mini mangoes



 Eventually I found a huge market tucked away through a door or two.

I love food markets anywhere in the world but this was quite a good one! It had poultry, pork,  fruit, veg and dried goods as well as household objects.

What do I like about food markets in other parts of the world? Many many things...





 One of the main things I think is the daily lifeness of a food market. When you are in a strange town working or as a tourist its so nice to touch base with the everydayness of life through a food market.

You see people doing what would do if you were at home, and an added bonus is that because people are just doing their normal things no one notices you... everyone is just getting on hunting and gathering their daily needs and their special treats.

And you get to see what people buy and eat -  the real food that people eat everyday and prepare for themselves. 

Then there is the whole aspect of how it is layed out and sold.  Don't you love how the strawberries are presented, all in neat little rows with a decortative leaf! Better than being stuffed into plastic punnets. More markets another day.



Threshing

(Catching up from blog blocking - China)

Got loads of dried goods to thresh?  A massive crop of dried broad beans?   And a handy road?  A road is a good hard threshing ground right? So take your produce and spread it right across the road.  So what happens when the cars come?  Well, that’s easy, let the car do the threshing!  Just lay the dried broad bean stalks with pods on the road and wait.  Move the stalks around a little so the whole lot gets squashed or should I say threshed and sweep up  the loosened beans.

Dried broad beans are pretty tough so it works. The beans don’t get squashed at all, just released from their pods and the stalks get broken up into a chaff.  I wonder if the chaff gets used too?  And how?  Dug in? Composted?  Given to the pigs? 

In mid May this  method of broad bean threshing was going on all over Dali’s outskirts. I like it! Perhaps I should see what would happen if I did this in suburban Marrickville!

Blocked blogs, subversion and food quality

Saiinbu from Mongolia!  Long time no blog.  Why the silence?

Well, I have basically been firewalled whilst in China.  I am not taking it personally at all, it seems that all blog hosts are blocked lest subversive material  get circulated and locations of protest action communicated. I guess it just easier for them to block the whole lot.

I didn’t really want to start my blog about the food in China this way, but being censored got me thinking…

Talk of our fresh home-grown pesticide-free vegetable and fruit growing could be worthy of censorship. It seems that food quality is becoming more and more of an issue here.  This trip I have noticed more and more discussion, anxiety and reports of problems with the food supply in China.   I guess it is possible that the population have been sensitised to the whole issue via the milk tainting scandal that occurred a few years ago? 

Just on this trip there has been discussion of massive pesticide residues in China’s favourite beverage – tea. This includes in international brands like Lipton as well as their local Chinese brands.  Then there has been discussion about heavy metals in the water and the need to improve the water quality and concerns with the rising prices of fresh food.

So that’s the media, what are ‘the people’ thinking?

The other day at work in China while I was eating a pineapple for lunch, one of my Chinese colleagues said she didn’t know what to eat anymore.  She knew she should eat more fresh fruit but she was afraid of the pesticides.  She also said she was afraid of processed food because she didn’t know what was in it. This sounds overly anxious doesn’t it?  But this came from the mouth of a very sensible and not overly sensitive young woman, such is the anxiety.

I have seen this anxiety in Chinese visiting Australia too.  One delegation from China I was hosting took only a quick look at the scenery in the Blue Mountains and then rushed to a nearby supermarket to buy bags and bags of powdered milk to take back with them.  

A recent report about the recycling of cooking oil from China’s drains to re-use in restaurants also led to the import of huge amounts of olive oil.  Delegations returned to China with tins and tins of the stuff.  

But back to blogging…so I haven’t been able to read anyone’s blogs or enter anything onto mine. I have been able to read the odd blogs that are really websites, but  as so many of you are blogs, I have a lot of reading  to catch up on everyone’s gardens and cooking. I cant wait.

It’s such a shame, there was so many good things to tell you about the food and gardens of China. It’s funny how their censorship has made me think on the bad things ….

To catch up I will be gradually entering China-related content hoping to share some of the good things with you.

Fruit and flowers

cut fruit stall

A more relaxed day today - just half a day of meetings after an early morning of emails perched in bed and then some free time to play after crazy hours.

I arrived early for my first  meeting to find the street a buzz with vendors selling lunch-type fare. Stalls, with cut fruit, other stalls with lurid orange balls made of  a sweet pumpkin mix and glutenous rice, little mini bbq stalls with skewers of marinated chicken in coconut milk, like a chicken dish sold on the streets of north eastern Malaysia I once ate ...yum!

pineapple bubble bag

But when it is hot, the thing I most want to eat is fruit. The choice was wide and colourful -  watermelon, pineapple, chom poo, papaya, greenish-yellow mango...

I decided on a bubble bag of spirally cut pineapple -  deep yellow and fragrantly sticky and dipped it in the accompanying salty - chilli dip. 

Very sweet fruit with salt and chilli is a great combination and a little salt is a good top up after losing so much thru sweat.

mystery fruit

A little more stall stalking and I came across another interesting fruit that I had not had or seen before. Elongated spiky cases all clustered on a small branch. This spiky cover - a little like longan or lychee coverings - can be peeled back to reveal a yellow fruit with a large seed inside. 

Just delicious!  A bit like fruit salad plant  - a bit banana, a bit pineapple. I will find out what it is called and report back!

mystery fruit nibbled already

Over to the Jim Thompson House for lunch.  This is one of my favourite places to visit in Bangkok.  It is because it is an oasis of calm and quiet in  a busy dusty trafficed city. The website can describe it better than I can but the combination of traditional teak houses with superb decor  in a tropical garden is just perfection.







rose and jasmine bracelet

To add to the scene, a young  woman, decked out in Siamese finery who was demonstrating the art of making floral decorations for personal and temple adornment, gave me the a gorgeous cluster of jasmine and rose flowers that she had just made to wear around my wrist.

No sleep and strange fruit

My fruit basket

Hot sticky Bangkok.  A night of not much sleep for many many reasons, take your pick:

A -  Because it was too hot with the air conditioner off
B -  Because it was too cold with the air conditioner on
C - Because the air conditioner was too noisy
D - Because the barking of the geckos kept me up
E -  Because I was jet lagged
F -  Because I am responsible for 7 other individuals

I think the answer is all of the above except the geckos - which I love.

On the plus side food in Thailand is of course one of life's great treats.  And the fruit in Thailand is strange but glorious.

I decided that the fruit bowl provided by the hotel was sufficient for breakfast.  I like fruit for breakfast, and this morning's was very different to my usual fare.

Three tiny fragrant bananas, a sticky darkish yellow below the skin and with a fragrance unattainable in Sydney.

Two mangosteens, a beautiful looking fruit, muddy brown-purple on the outside  with a floret of green around the top.  And the creamiest slightly astringent flavoured loby flesh in side.

And perhaps the strangest fruit of all, the rose apple or chom poo -  my Thai word of the day.

I have had them before and recognised their genus straight away (Syzygium or formerly Eugenia).  They are reminiscent of my days of grazing on bush food along the coast of NSW.  They are related to the lilli pilli common to the yards of east coasters at least. 

Those who have munched on lilli pilli will know that strange rosewater-like flavour and crunchy yet light as air flesh under the shiny thin skin.  But with lilli pilli the pleasure is fleeting as the fruit are so small.  With the rose apple you have more to tackle.

A great way to start a long work day after little sleep.

Garden glut goes global

I have to travel quite a bit for work.  It is a privilege but it is also a burden -  away from kith and kin, hearth and home, cat and caboodle, soil and soul.

I have decided to keep a blog when ever I am away.  It will be similar to my home blog - focusing  on gardens and food.  In the next two months I have the fortune to travel to Thailand, China and Mongolia for work and to China for a vacation. I hope to bring you a little of those places thru their gardens and their food while I am away.

If you have some particular things you'd like me to address, I will try to.  What do you want to hear about Thailand's gardens and food and I will try to include it. Have you had experiences in these places that you recommend?