Julie & Julia

I think it is a pretty interesting movie. I remember how funny it was when Julie first dealt with a live lobster. And that just reminds me how my mom usually cook live things at home. It is quite unusual if you go to a food market in China and don't see an area of live things. And in most of the restaurants, you can see live animals too. Depending on where you go, the things that you can see vary from usually fish and seafood to chicken and ducks. There is a street in the city I live in where all the great seafood restaurants are. You can see people stand in front of fish tans and order their food. They want to see it to assure they are fresh, not dead. Even though, I am afraid of anything alive. I remember my mom once bought live shrimp home. She poured them into the sink and literally just wait for them to die. After a while, they were not moving anymore and I assumed they were all dead. So I decided to throw them into the boiling water. The moment I got in touch with one of the shrimps, it jumped, out of the sink, onto the dinner table. OMG! It was so scary that I screamed so loud that all my family came to the kitchen. I mean it is just shrimp, it won't bite me or anything! But still, I consider it to be the most scary live thing.
Another thing that stuck with me is when Julies was frustrated with her cooking! How she sat on the floor and started crying reminded me of my personal experience. I once tried to follow a recipe and make this Chinese stew. I got all I needed and followed all the steps, but it just didn't work and I had no idea what went wrong. A week later, I tried again, still, nothing changed. That feeling was horrible, I absolutely did everything it asked me to but it just wouldn't work.

Babette's Feast

After both reading the short story and watching the movie, I prefer the movie although there are a few things that surprised me in the movie.

First, I was expecting a fancier setting in the movie but it turned out to be very plain. There is hardly any extravagant decorations beside the portrait of the Dean in the house where the two sisters live in. But in fact that demonstrates what is said in the short story. Besides the fact that they are both puritans, the two sisters "had never possessed any article of fashion; they had dressed demurely in gray or black all their lives."

Second, in the short story, the author doesn't say a lot about how the feast was prepared. However, in the movie, there are parts that show the preparation of the meal. And the part Babette cut the bird head into half and how the General ate the bird head really disgusted me.

There is one thing that I like a lot about the movie is that it shows each person's expressions. It's funny to watch the conversation between the general and one of the Brothers about how wonderful the food was. The General knows this meal is one of the best meals he has ever had. He tries to share this with people around, but instead of talking about the food, the Brother responded with something completely irrelevant. 

The movie also flows better. It helps me understand the whole story in a clearer order.

Can chef be artist?

What does artist mean? According to definition, an artist is a person who engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art. It is someone who always tries new things. The person has his or hers own taste of things. A chef, in my opinion, is someone who has the qualities of several kinds of artists. A chef doesn't have to have a lot of experiences or have been to many different places. But he or she must pay attention to subtle things in life, because that's where they get inspirations from. He or she must also has a strong sense of taste so that he or she can tell the little difference among spices and flavors. Like a painter who knows how much and what color to put on the painting, a chef knows what spices and how much of them can bring people joy. Like a designer who creates things with usual stuff, a chef make their dishes from ordinary materials. Like a photographer who knows how to compose the best picture, a chef knows how to lay out everything on a plate.

Chocolate As The Ultimate Comfort Food

People from all over the world  eat chocolate. No matter where you are, how you are feeling, having a bite of that piece of chocolate can always bring you the good mood and luck.

I am a big fan of chocolate and I find it has the magic to calm me down when I am extremely depressed or pressured. Maybe the sweetness that comes to me when I take the very first bite washes away my sorrows. Or the smoothness I taste reminds me the way to smooth things out. However I never have too much chocolate at one time. Not only because of the calories, but also because it makes me sick when I have too much and can ruin my good mood. So even when I am really down and feel like having 2 bars of chocolate, I will take only 2 pieces. Because I know that's how much my body needs, and for the rest, I will just let the magic do it work!

Sticky Rice Cake

Ingredients: (for 7-8 sticky rice cakes)
Sticky Rice Flour    2 Cups
Water                      1 Cup
Red Bean Sauce  
Oil                           Enough to cover the pan

This sticky rice cake is one of my favorite desserts back home. I remember having it every Mid-autumn
festival at my grandma's. My grandma comes from Shanghai and is really good at making things with
sticky rice. It is not something that passed down through our family but something almost everyone
knows how to make. I am not saying it is easy to make (it took me 1.5 hours to make 20 of them). It is
something that gathers my family. I remember we would go to grandma's house 10 o'clock in the
morning and started preparing the dinner for the big family, and this "Nuo Mi Bing" is part of it. I
would always go and "help" her, even though I messed up all the time. She never got mad at me,
instead she always gave me the dough left to play with. As I grew up, I became more curious about the
whole process and asked her to teach me. I still remember the first sticky rice cake I made, it was good
to eat but looked really bad. Grandma's always there, taught me the right and the efficient way to make
it. Of course, we have moon cakes too, but this Sticky Rice Cake is another thing that always reminds
me of the best part of my childhood.

My family's eating habit

Living in Shenzhen (an urban city near Hong Kong) in China, my family shares something in common with the Dong's family in Beijing.
Both my parents cook. My mom tends to cook more often and focus more on everyday food. But whenever my dad cooks, he can always make something different. He is the one who can be sometimes creative about cooking, the one who always tries new things. He can even invent his own dishes and name it Li's Favorite. And here is a look of the kitchen.

One thing you may notice in the kitchen of a typical Chinese family like mine is that there is a range hood. It is because we stir fry a lot and that process usually generates much smoke. And also almost all of the Chinese family have rice cookers in their kitchens. As the starch of Chinese, how can we live without rice!

Below are receipts of my family's spending on food in a week or so. When added together, we spent about $417.04 and that's for a family of five (including some cleaning supplies). But notice that this week is the celebration of Chinese New Year, so we tended to spend more on food. Chinese people aren't big fans of weekly shopping, because a big component of our diet are vegetables. And vegetables can't usually stay fresh  for all the week. So what we do is that we will do a big food shopping once a week and get nonperishable stuff like oil, snacks, drinks, flour, rice etc. We spent about $90 on vegetables in this week (about  20% of all the expenditure), and $120 on meat and seafood (my family is a big fan of seafood, about 29%).  Since it is Chinese New Year, I also notice that there are about $60 spent on ingredients making dumplings (it is kind of like a  tradition to have dumplings on New Year). One thing stands out to me is that we have a relative healthy eating habit, with only $11 spent on snacks such as candy and chocolate and sodas. Another thing surprises me is that we spent about $56.5 on Camellia oil ("the Olive oil of Asia"). The reason why it is so expensive may probably be the great health benefits it has. And just for giggle, although my family's eating habit is relatively healthy, although it is not on the receipts here and although it is in China, my parents had Mc Donalds once in this week and spent about $10.

In a traditional Chinese family, people dine together almost every night. For my family, we would sometimes wait for all the family members to begin our supper. Here are pictures of my dining room. It is relatively small compared to some of the "Long Long Tables" I saw here in the U.S. However, we never feel crowded sitting together. It gives us just enough space and makes us feel more closely related. And maybe, that's how we build up our family connections.

What a Chinese family of four eat in a week?

According to the book, a Chinese family normally spends $155.06 on food per week. Among this, the family spends most of its money on beverages, with Fish, Meat and Eggs come second. They also spend a significant amount of money on dairy like milk, yogurt and ice cream. When observed carefully, you may find that money spent on dairy are not spent on a great variety compared to other categories. This may probably because dairy products cost more money. There is a big proportion of fruits, vegetables, nuts, about 421.5 oz in total, and a lot of different condiments. For example, they use 1.1qt peanut oil in a week, and that is probably because they cook almost every day. They also eat a lot of rice, about 11lb per week, which is typically Chinese. About 35% of the food are fresh, and 35% are proceed food. Eel strips and Knorr Chicken bouillon are the only two food that need to be warmed up. And all the vegetables and meat need to be cooked. Besides that, I also notice that even though it's in China, they can't stay away from the temptation of American fast food. There is a small amount of spending on burgers and fries. From the picture and the breakdown of the food they consume per week,  I estimate that they take in a small amount of fat, an adequate amount of sugar and protein,  and a great amount of fiber and starch.