Food of the Chinese Persuasion

So Spencer always laughs at me because I LOVE Chinese food. Well, I love orange chicken, and Beijing beef, and cream cheese wontons and, you know, other such American Chinese foods. The kind that you would never actually find anywhere near...China. So he laughs because I don't actually like Chinese food. Like, the kind you actually get in China.

But it's growing on me.

Little by little I find myself not only enjoying the local food more, but actually desiring it. There are days where it actually sounds yummy. That may sound ridiculous, but I was very not excited about the food here until recently. Days of eating out for dinner (unless it involved McDonalds) were not my favorite.

We have a growing list of not only acceptable but delicious food items that I enjoy. We have our favorite and most frequented rice/noodle place where we go for our fried pulled noodles. There is roubao, which is usually meat wrapped in a bread/dumpling dough and steamed. I like jipai, which is pounded chicken that has been breaded and fried. Guotie (goo-oh tee-eh), or potstickers, are some of Spencer's favorite, but I only like them from certain places. And I really like tangbao, which are kind of like potstickers but are usually steamed and have a soup inside as well as the meat.

And then we have our favorite of all.

Zhuabing. Yummy, crispy, savory goodness. Basically it is a layered dough that is flattened and fried, cooked with a fried egg, a meat of your choice (usually bacon), and drizzled with a sauce of your choice. Spencer and I generally omit the bacon (1-because it costs more and 2-because the bacon has usually been sitting out all day and they don't cook it very well through) and choose the black pepper sauce. SO.GOOD.

Who knows, at this rate maybe someday I'll even learn to enjoy duck neck and chicken feet. But then again, maybe not.