Pumpkin Bowl and Thanksgiving

Seven Treasures Stir-Fry in Pumpkin Bowl As a newly arrived foreign student from Singapore during my university years in Boston, I had to learn the customs and traditions of American holidays. Although I was already familiar with Christmas and New Year celebrations, Thanksgiving was totally unknown to me. For my first Thanksgiving in America my roommate invited me to spend the holiday with his family in New Hampshire. Unbeknownst to me I was to experience a classic yet quaint practice of American holiday celebration: an enormous turkey dinner and a football game.

Continue ReadingPumpkin Bowl and Thanksgiving

Haw: Sweet and Sour Treats, Food and Medicine

Haw and Pork Ribs Soup One of my favorite activities when traveling is to visit local food markets. Last week, while wandering through the produce section of a wet market in Shanghai, I found something I’d never seen before. A large unmarked basket was full of miniature bright red fruits freckled with light brown dots that resembled crabapples. They had long green stems attached, and visible sepal crowns at the bottom. According to the friendly wrinkled-faced vendor I had stumbled upon haw fruit.

Continue ReadingHaw: Sweet and Sour Treats, Food and Medicine

Uncommonly Delicious Beet Puffs

Beets were introduced into China from Babylonia around the ninth century. However unlike other food items of New World origin such as potatoes, tomatoes, peanuts and chilies, which Portuguese traders brought to China in the seventeenth century, beets have never become a major Chinese cooking ingredient. Given this long history of existence in China why are they not more popular?

Continue ReadingUncommonly Delicious Beet Puffs

End of content

No more pages to load