The meat market

In other news, I made spaghetti tonight and on Sunday, I made spaghetti carbonara. I think I have almost cooked more here in china with a hot plate and 1 frying pan than I ever did in my Grandmaw's house on the farm. My excuse for not cooking there was there wasn't enough kitchen space and I didn't have enough time. The time thing--that was probably based on reality--work and MBA school. The lack of counter space though, honestly, have you seen the pics of my "kitchen" here in Beijing? I don't even have a counter.

What makes the spaghetti even more entertaining, however, is trying to buy ground beef in china. I've become more brave since I first arrived--that's for sure. So I know the words for beef, pork, and chicken or at least how to say them, but I am illiterate in china so doing anything especially grocery shopping can be hard. I gathered up the nerve and hoped the grocery people wouldn't pull a fast one on me and went to the meat counter where all of the ground stuff was. I asked if it was beef and they said no and showed me where the beef counter was across the way. So far, so good, except I don't know the word for ground beef, but I ask one of the ladies in Chinese, "do you have any of "that" kind of beef while pointing to the ground meat section on the other side of the store?" Miraculously, she some how understands what I’m talking about and then asks how much. To which I reply with cupped hands, I don't know this much. She starts to cut off a HUGE chunk of this tenderloin sitting in front of her and I say, "whoa whoa, it's just for me" and she cuts off a little less. So I think they have other types of ground stuff, she'll take it and put it in the grinded and I’ll be on my way. WRONG...she sits there for 15 minutes with a giant knife and hand chops, grinds, whatever the beef. So, of course, I also stand there for 15 minutes as the ONLY white person thinking of buying beef period much less ground (or at least that's what it looks like) and actually getting her make it for me. After she is done, she takes my freshly chopped beef and puts it in a plastic bag, loosely ties the top, and slaps a price tag on it. For the bargain price of $2, I got about 3/4 of a pound of freshly ground something.

Needless to say, I was a little nervous when I brought it out to cook it tonight. Fortunately, china, in the cities, believes in food coloring meat...so it's not grey but red like normal. I put it in the pan and brown it. Normally ground beef has some amount of fat. I tell you what not this stuff! It was almost entirely lean and it tasted pretty good too! It would have tasted just like what I and my mom make at home if I had been able to find real oregano and basil. The only kind of oregano they had was ground...not flakes. Weird. Now I’m never going to know, thank goodness, what type of meat I really, really got, but I’m so proud of myself for braving the grocery store's meat sections, cooking it, and eating it!

I might not be roughing it Africa style, but for those of you who know what a picky eater I USED to be, I think I’m doing AWESOME! Although to be fair, I ordered a beef noodle dish yesterday and it ended up having a little bit of beef and a lot of beef tendons (like the tough, fatty, icky stuff) and I didn't eat the tendons.