Bizarre Foods with Julie Johnson



So I wish I could write an epic blog telling you about all the strange and interesting things that I have eaten. I've definitely eaten some pretty weird stuff since I've been here. The problem is that most of the food is unidentifiable.

It's freaking weird. I just don't know what it is.

For example today for lunch I had rice, an unidentifiable green vegetable, a giant mystery meatball, stewed tomatoes and eggs, and a bowl of broth. For dinner I had rice, beef parts in a brown sauce, something that was possibly tofu with spicy chilies, a different unidentifiable green vegetable than from lunch, and more stewed tomatoes and eggs.



Typical School Dinner.



Nothing to drink. There's no big glass of water or unlimited refills of Diet Coke here. Maybe at a nice restaurant you'll get a pot of "tea". Tea is in quotes because I've yet to encounter any actual tea leaves. Tea is code for hot water. At school, you just get soup to drink with your meal.



Chicken Feet.



The Chinese don't waste any part of the animal, so even if you order chicken (ji rou) or beef (niu rou), you still could be getting any part of the animal. 

Chicken neck? Sure, why not? Pig tails? Why, yes please, I'll take two.

All meat has bones and fat on it, so you have to be careful to gnaw around the bones and fat and then gracefully spit them back onto your plate. Also things tend to appear drastically different in person than in the pictures on the menu.

Some bizarre things I've eaten that I can identify:

• Chicken feet
• Spicy frog legs
• Cow's head (I had some cheek I think)
• Fried beef that was strangely sweet. It also happened to be covered with frosting and rainbow sprinkles. The picture did not have the sprinkles. I highly suspect that they saw two Americans sit down for dinner and said to themselves, "American's love rainbow sprinkles. Let's toss some on this beef just to mess with them." That or they thought the dish needed color.
• Baked/steamed quail eggs in brown sauce
• Bone Marrow
• Lotus root (delicious!)
• Kumquats
• Steamed pumpkin
• Sugar Cane

I'm pretty proud of myself because there has only been a few moments when I couldn't choke down the bite of food I just tried.

Mostly I think I just don't want to know what I'm eating. I was at a restaurant the other night that "luckily" happened to have English translations along with the pictures. Unfortunately, some of the food that looked best in the pictures had names of organs next to them. I'm going to try not to think about it.

Yes, Mom. You would starve here.



Crispy Duck and Flatbread.



Now that I have you all thoroughly disgusted, there are a few delicious things here that I'm addicted to. Here are the top 5:



1.    Crispy roast duck with spicy chili sauce. You can buy a whole duck for about $3 USD. It is really, really, really good.

2.    Chinese flatbread with green onions and sesame seeds. For 50 cents you can feed an army. It goes great with the duck.

3.    Street food skewers. Chicken, mushrooms, potatoes, beef, pork, duck, vegetables – all delicious and either fried or grilled.



4.    Milk tea. So many delicious options.

Street Food.



5.    Spicy pork and rice thing from this AMAZING Korean restaurant. Actually spicy (not like when they "warn you" things are spicy in the USA) and it comes out in a sizzling bowl and the rice gets all crispy. So good.