To China, to China, to buy a fat pig

(by Suzanne)

As many of you know, Tom and I follow a vegan-plus-fish diet, for health reasons. It has done miracles for our cholesterol levels, but make no mistake, we LOVE meat. We consider food to be one of the great joys of traveling, so we decided to go off the diet for the duration of the trip.

Here are some of the things we ate in Beijing:

This is at a restaurant called Xian Lao Man, which I read about on a food blog called Beijing Haochi. You could almost miss the star of the meal, the homely little white blobs at far right. These dumplings filled with lamb and garlic chives were so good, they made me want to get up and dance.

Breakfast at the B&B. Good Chinese home cooking, different every day.

OK, this isn’t something we actually ate, I just had to show this. It’s a menu at the cafeteria in the Forbidden City. So, my Taiwanese friends, what is your Bad Side Meat, and why would we want to eat it?

A fried tofu dish and the World’s Best Bread, at a Uighur restaurant a stone’s throw from the B&B. It is brought to the table hot from the oven (probably a tandoor of some sort). It is pricked all over in the middle with some kind of swirly-patterned implement to keep it flat in the middle like a bialy, and then it's sprinkled with salt, sesame, and cumin seeds. It’s chewy in the middle, and fluffy-puffy around the edges. Aaaah….

A fine Cantonese meal at a restaurant recommended by Angela, our hostess with the mostest.

And a thank you gift for Angela from one of Beijing’s finest traditional pastry shops, Daoxiangcun.

And now on to Tunxi:

Lunch with our tour group on the trip to Hongcun and Xidi.

Possibly our favorite restaurant in China, Meishi Renjia in Tunxi. These are samples of everything available. You get a clipboard with a pad, and you write down the numbers of the things you want.

A meal at Meishi Renjia.

A bowl of wonton soup at a street stall. The wontons were filled right in front of us after we ordered. Cost: 5 kuai, about 73 cents.

The world’s finest xiaolongbao. Our friend Shan told us we had to try the pork-&-crab XLB at Din Tai Fung in Shanghai. She was right.

And on to Japan:

Party food at my sister's rented apartment

Kaiseki-style appetizers at a fancy sukiyaki restaurant.

Typical mid-range bentos from a department store.

Breakfast at the Daimachi Ryokan. Miso soup in the covered bowl and nori sheets in the covered rectangle.

Cooking okonomiyaki at the table in Kamakura.

Lunch made by Tomoko’s mother.

A custard-filled taiyaki, a kind of fish-shaped pancake.

A bento I made for Tom in his brand-new bento box from Tokyu Hands. Let’s just say I was inspired by the great eats we had on our trip.