Chinese food

There's Chinese food in China!
Not what you would expect though if you were judging from Canadian standards. But what else do we Canadians have to draw from? There is no chicken chow mien, egg foo anything, chop seuy... not here.
Now it's true the woman here cooking is Malaysian Chinese, but she assures me the only difference in her cooking, compared to the real Chinese cuisine is that she enjoys mixing more things together than do Chinese cooks. She likes the variety, and colour, and taste for that matter.
So here's how it goes... no easy meals. No 'open a can of soup and make a sandwich' kind of meal here. It's all carefully planned and prepared. And always cooked. No salads, I miss that. I think salads were at least half my diet.
Step one is a trip to the market, (two minutes from the door, and a story for another time) often with no shopping list cause you never know what will be there that's fresh and it leaves you open to 'inspiration'.

The meal preparation takes about an hour with the delegation of a few other hands chopping, washing, peeling, stirring... and the finished product will feed hordes (cause there are always hungry hordes here at meal times)
Often they start with soup, from some large boiled bones that might have been used a few times and in between uses, might have sat on the kitchen table for some time. Scary? Yes. And to that some green onions, maybe sweet radish (a huge white thing) maybe squash that they call pumpkin, a few floating balls made of fish paste but little else.
Next will come rice and lots of it, cooked it the microwave... Lia Kwan mixes in other grains and beans, but the Chinese usually use white rice. One day one of the youth here ate 7 bowls of rice!!! They like rice a lot, like the Persians I think.
But with the rice will be served many more dishes, several of veggies, and normally one or two that have meat, (fish or pork) It starts with a hot wok with oil, add maybe onion but always garlic. if it's a meat dish, the meat may have been marinated in oyster sauce/ soy sauce and other mysterious things. So add the meat after cooking the garlic a minute, brown the meat and push it up the sides of the wok (maybe 5-10 minutes) I feel like I'm writing a cookbook. Add water or some or that soup I mentioned earlier, then comes greens (could be sweet potato tops, baby bok choy, and about a million other choices I have never seen before)
The greens get put to the side and little by little pushed into the hot liquid on the bottom until wilted. It really looks easy but there are secrets I don't know.
Each dish is unique, each time they do it. That's the secret part, no measuring, no recipe... experience. When finished there could be 5 or 6 dishes all set on the middle of the table. Each person is given a small bowl of rice and the chop sticks... I know you are waiting for this part.
So the chop sticks allow you an increased reach if about 6" or more and everyone just reaches in and selects food from each dish to add to their little rice bowl. So civilized, except for me. I'm not real practiced with the sticks. I have been known to be reaching for, say, a fish ball and think I have mastered the grip when, halfway to my bowl the sticks do an unexpected criss-cross behaviour and fling my food headlong into someone else's lap, bowl or hair. Not a pretty sight. People try not to laugh. I turn red. The later in the day, the less coordination I have. Lesson: eat early.
So many more things of interest around food but I must tell you about the Hot Pot. The little restaurants have special tables with a hole in the centre under which there is a gas burner. In the hole goes a bowl (mostly just the broth as I mentioned before) the size and shape of those large silver salad/mixing bowls we all have. Then you go to the "bar" and chose stuff to go in it, like greens, fish, veggies, maybe twenty or more choices, all on little wooden sticks. You then load the stuff, a bit at a time, into the boiling broth, much like a fondu, and let it cook a bit and dig in with your chopsticks!! It's a ton of fun, and when you finish, they count the wee sticks and you pay per stick.
China, you all have to come.