Another one!
Well, I just may need to be breaking out our new copy of One Morning in Maine, since just like Sal in that book, our Katie-bug has lost another tooth!
![]()
![]()
Well-loved books
We are book lovers here in the McCulloch house, attested by the fact that I think half of the bags we brought over here were filled with books we "couldn't live without."
Some days it's tough being book lovers with small children in a country where there's no giant "English Children's" at the public library (or maybe there is one and I just don't know it). We were super-excited when we recently received a box of some cousins' old books from Adam's mom and an early Christmas present from my mom...a Color Nook! Wowee! Definitely feeling less book-stranded now. THANK YOU!!!
![]()
As I've been perusing the B&N site to see what is available in NookBook form, I've been try to remember some of the girls' favorite books we used to check out from the library. One of the books I recalled was a precious picture book called The Fourteen Bears in Summer and Winter. I was hoping to find it in NookBook form to purchase for the girls as a fun surprise. Well, not only was there no digital version, but to buy even a used copy was over $100! What?! So, for those of you with kids out there who live near a public library that has this book, GO CHECK IT OUT. It is wonderful, and it looks like you won't be finding it anywhere else besides the library these days. I contemplated emailing the Louisville library and asking them that, if they ever decide to "retire" that book from circulation, they need to call me and I would gladly buy it!
Update: We recently discovered that the Chinese version of Amazon.com (and other local sites like Amazon) have a treasure trove of English children's books available! Not only that, but many of the prices are cheaper than US prices, payment is on delivery (did I mention delivery is free?), and the items usually arrive the next day. What a mercy! I heart China! Paperback versions of One Morning in Maine and Make Way for Ducklings just arrived today. I may be saving these for a rainy day, once we've read our other new books for the 200th time. :)
Some days it's tough being book lovers with small children in a country where there's no giant "English Children's" at the public library (or maybe there is one and I just don't know it). We were super-excited when we recently received a box of some cousins' old books from Adam's mom and an early Christmas present from my mom...a Color Nook! Wowee! Definitely feeling less book-stranded now. THANK YOU!!!
Update: We recently discovered that the Chinese version of Amazon.com (and other local sites like Amazon) have a treasure trove of English children's books available! Not only that, but many of the prices are cheaper than US prices, payment is on delivery (did I mention delivery is free?), and the items usually arrive the next day. What a mercy! I heart China! Paperback versions of One Morning in Maine and Make Way for Ducklings just arrived today. I may be saving these for a rainy day, once we've read our other new books for the 200th time. :)
Coffee again!
So for Adam's birthday I purchased a coffeemaker...not an appliance commonly used over here so it took a bit of hunting, but I finally found one that made more than 4 cups. For over two months we enjoyed real coffee, instead of the instant variety. (Although I've figured out that, for me, what makes or breaks a cup of coffee is not the coffee itself but what kind of creamer is available. Powdered Coffeemate has won the day over milk...but that's neither here nor there.) As I was saying, we enjoyed our coffeemaker for about two months...until Caroline smashed the carafe. Great. And apparently there's no such thing as ordering a replacement. So, for a couple weeks we went back to Nescafe...until I remembered a wonderful memory from college. My senior year at Davidson, I broke our apartment's coffeemaker carafe and apparently we were too cheap to order the replacement. So what did we ingenious Davidson students decide to do? For the rest of the year, we "bowled" our coffee (remember that, Hannah, Ann, and Katie?). This memory inspired me to try it with our new, now-carafe-free, coffeemaker...and it worked (after I removed the little stopper that holds the coffee in the top part of the coffeemaker...that was a mess before I figured that out!) Just wanted to share some of the simple pleasures of our life!
Living in town
A while ago, just before we got over here, I came across a poem on my friend Maggie's blog. My heart was gripped when I read it, since, having lived in this city before, I knew what i was getting into and knew that I would need to come back to this poem in the future. So I "favorited" her post, to save "for a rainy smoggy day."
We have many smoggy days here, for weeks now. Days when the only buildings I could barely make out from my window were the ones right across the street. Mercifully, we had a good hard rain the other night and the past two days I've been able to see clear to the mountains that lie west to us! Even Caroline pointed up in amazement yesterday, saying, "Blue sky!"
I'm so thankful for the grace of a blue sky and a clear view, for thick, green trees just outside my window (I had prayed for a view of green, you know). And yet, when I see a post like this one, like I did this morning, my heart aches a bit. For I know the smog will come back. And it hurts that doing nature walks with my children means identifying artificially planted trees and shrubs and that the only wildlife they will see are magpies and bugs. And so, I pulled out my friend Maggie's poem this morning. It helped a little, but I have much more room yet to grow in learning to see the Glory in this city. I know it's here because He is here. It's just hard to see it through the smog of my own heart sometimes. Pray for me?
Obedience, by George MacDonald (1824-1905)
I said: “Let me walk in the fields.”
He said: “No, walk in the town.”
I said: “There are no flowers there.”
He said: “No flowers, but a crown.”
I said: “But the skies are black;
There is nothing but noise and din.”
And He wept as He sent me back –
“There is more,” He said; “there is sin.”
I said: “But the air is thick,
And fogs are veiling the sun.”
He answered: “Yet souls are sick,
And souls in the dark undone!”
I said: “I shall miss the light,
And friends will miss me, they say.”
He answered: “Choose tonight
If I am to miss you or they.”
I pleaded for time to be given.
He said: “Is it hard to decide?
It will not seem so hard in heaven
To have followed the steps of your Guide.”
I cast one look at the fields,
Then set my face to the town;
He said, “My child, do you yield?
Will you leave the flowers for the crown?”
Then into His hand went mine;
And into my heart came He;
And I walk in a light divine,
The path I had feared to see.
We have many smoggy days here, for weeks now. Days when the only buildings I could barely make out from my window were the ones right across the street. Mercifully, we had a good hard rain the other night and the past two days I've been able to see clear to the mountains that lie west to us! Even Caroline pointed up in amazement yesterday, saying, "Blue sky!"
I'm so thankful for the grace of a blue sky and a clear view, for thick, green trees just outside my window (I had prayed for a view of green, you know). And yet, when I see a post like this one, like I did this morning, my heart aches a bit. For I know the smog will come back. And it hurts that doing nature walks with my children means identifying artificially planted trees and shrubs and that the only wildlife they will see are magpies and bugs. And so, I pulled out my friend Maggie's poem this morning. It helped a little, but I have much more room yet to grow in learning to see the Glory in this city. I know it's here because He is here. It's just hard to see it through the smog of my own heart sometimes. Pray for me?
Obedience, by George MacDonald (1824-1905)
I said: “Let me walk in the fields.”
He said: “No, walk in the town.”
I said: “There are no flowers there.”
He said: “No flowers, but a crown.”
I said: “But the skies are black;
There is nothing but noise and din.”
And He wept as He sent me back –
“There is more,” He said; “there is sin.”
I said: “But the air is thick,
And fogs are veiling the sun.”
He answered: “Yet souls are sick,
And souls in the dark undone!”
I said: “I shall miss the light,
And friends will miss me, they say.”
He answered: “Choose tonight
If I am to miss you or they.”
I pleaded for time to be given.
He said: “Is it hard to decide?
It will not seem so hard in heaven
To have followed the steps of your Guide.”
I cast one look at the fields,
Then set my face to the town;
He said, “My child, do you yield?
Will you leave the flowers for the crown?”
Then into His hand went mine;
And into my heart came He;
And I walk in a light divine,
The path I had feared to see.
It's never a good sign...
...when you find pictures like these on your camera. Someone's in trouble......namely, ME for leaving the camera where this monkey could reach it! Please note that these pictures were taken on THREE different days! And the ones I'm posting here are just a sampling of the many.
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
Come on ride the train (choo choo)
What We Eat, Part 2
 |
| In the basement of this building in our complex is the market where we buy all our fruit, vegetables, and meat |
Lunches around our place are pretty simple. If I "cook" it, we usually have pbj and carrot sticks or apple slices or cucumbers for the kids and/or leftovers (a perennial favorite, right?). A lot of times though I'll stop by the "food court" in the basement of the same building as our fruit/veggie market (see picture to the right). The words 'food court' in no way capture the sketchiness of this place...but the food is yummy and cheap! If I buy lunch from there, for less than $1 or $2, I can get one of the following:
(click link to see photos)
da bing- not really sure how to explain this one, except it's a big kind of pancake thing, sometimes with egg and scallions on top. Love. This. Stuff.
jiu cai baozi-a steamed bun filled with Chinese leek and egg
ju rou jiaozi-pork dumplings
or chao mian (fried noodles...where we get our Ameri-version "chow mein")
Once in a while, if we have a bunch of leftover rice, I'll get Wang Jie to make dan chao fan (fried rice). We like our fried rice pretty simple, just with egg and green onion. 
So that's lunch!
What we eat, Part 1
I thought it might be interesting to devote a post or two to the eating habits of the McCullochs. Our eating seems to be a frequent topic of interest--both to you guys back home and to locals around here. At least once a week, one of the grandmas (who is waiting to pick up their grandkid from kindergarten at the same time we pick up Katie ) will ask me if our ayi cooks for us. I tell them, "No, I cook, I like to cook." Then they ask if I cook Chinese or Western food. I'm not sure if they're all that interested in what I cook or what we eat or just in hearing me butcher Chinese language while I try to answer their questions! (maybe it's like that impulse that makes people want to stare at car wrecks?)
This food conversation is inevitable if I have just gone to the market on my way to pick up Katie and have a bag of veggies or meat with me. "Oh, what did you buy? What are you going to cook?" Thankfully, last week I made vegetable soup (at Katie's request!) so there were lots of approving nods and comments like, "Oh, so healthy." Score.
So to answer the question "What do we eat?" it kind of depends on the week, but we eat mostly Western style with a smattering of Chinese throughout.
Breakfast is usually toast, oatmeal, granola with milk or yogurt. (See awesome granola recipes below.) Sometimes breakfast includes scrambled or hard-boiled eggs. Fruit (bananas, cantaloupe, watermelon). And every Saturday is pancake day (recipes also below)! Pretty standard American fare...though I must admit I miss easy access to bagels and cream cheese. I could buy cream cheese at the Wal-mart up the street, but I'd pay for it....maybe $5 for 8oz, or maybe just 4oz? I just can't quite bring myself to spend that much. I've heard of a couple folks making their own cream cheese....I'm hoping to try this recipe at some point. (That website I linked to, by the way, has been my lifeline....I've always struggled with meal planning and I would've been paralyzed over here without that blog to give me ideas about things I can make that don't require cream of mushroom soup...) As for bagels, I've heard of a bakery a couple subway stops up from us that sells them. I need to check it out, but I've also been wanting to try my hand at making them...my sister-in-law does and my friend Maghan has also had success (albeit with a breadmaker, which of course I do not have).
 |
| Photo credit: http://travelerfolio.com/yue-fei-hangzhou/ |
I must say though, that I have a few favorite Chinese breakfast street foods (I'm always a sucker for street food...give me a hot dog or snow cone any day!) My favorite Beijing breakfast goodie is called you tiao, it literally means "oil stick." Which is pretty much what it is. I like to think of it as the Chinese version of Krispy Kreme...if you dip it in sweetened condensed milk, it almost passes. Locals like to eat theirs with hot soy milk--I need to try that one of these days.
Tomorrow's post...lunch! And now the recipes:
Patty's Awesome Granola
(recipe of my boss' wife when we were teachers here before)
Use the word granola lightly when you think of this recipe. It's soft not crunchy and not too healthy, but so, so, so yummy.
2 cups oatmeal
1/2 cup peanuts (optional)
1/2 cup raisins (optional)
1/2 cup dried milk
1/2 cup coconut (optional, but very yummy)
Heat together: 1/4 cup oil, 1/4 cup honey, and 1/4 cup peanut butter
Stir together. Cover and refrigerate (but we love best warm and fresh!)
Decent Granola (from the Wycliffe International Cookbook)
(for when I'm too cheap to make the awesomeness that is the granola recipe above)
Combine in a large bowl 7-8 cups dry ingredients:
3-6 cups oatmeal
1/4-1/2 cup each of any of the following: wheat germ, whole wheat flour, bran, cornmeal, coconut, soy flour, milk powder, chopped nuts, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds
1-1 1/2 tsp spices: cinnamon, nutmeg, or allspice
Combine separately and add to dry ingredients:
1/2-3/4 cup oil, margarine, or melted butter
1/2-3/4 cup honey, corn syrup, or brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla or other flavoring
Bake at 350F (190C) for 30-45 minutes on large baking sheets until golden brown. Stir occasionally. After taking granola from oven, add any of the following if desired: raisins, chopped dates, or any dried chopped fruits
Optional: add any of the following with wet ingredients: 1/4 cup oj, 1/2-1 cup pb, 1/2 tsp maple flavoring
This recipe is very flexible. My version is pretty simple but yummy, especially with yogurt.
I do 6 cups oatmeal, 1/2 cup coconut, 1/4 cup semi-ww flour, 1.5 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 cup oil, 1/2 cup honey, and 1 tsp vanilla. And it definitely doesn't take 30-45 minutes....mine is done much faster. Watch it carefully so it doesn't burn. Stir frequently.
Pancake Mix Recipe from Market2Meal
This is a great recipe, but I miss making my whole wheat waffles with the King Arthur flour recipe. They were great. I know ww flour is out there somewhere!
Make your own syrup recipe also from Market2Meal
(so far we've tried blueberry and strawberry syrup but still enjoy maple the most....thanks Dad and Janet for sending the maple flavoring!)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)