Mouth tateringly good...

Today was a good eating day.  I've been fairly lazy about food lately and am starting to get sick of some of my go-to dishes, so it was a nice change of pace.  Had the Saturday morning (but very close to afternoon) waffle with Beth, did some work and snacked a little midday, then we all went out for dinner with Carol to a restaurant I've been wanting to try since we first arrived here.  It's in our hood and I call it Carol's Mom's place, because when I mentioned it in front of Carol early on, she told us her Mom really likes it.  (I come up with my own names for everything here, since I never know what the real names are.) 

So dinner with Carol was fun as always and we were thrilled to discover that they had an English menu.  The main reason I haven't gone before now was that we thought the menus were all in Cantonese.  And there were a lot of selections!  I turned to the veggie section first, since I never feel like I get enough of those here, and was intrigued by item 72.  Fried orchid?  Really?  So I asked Carol, is that what I think that is?  She wasn't sure, so she asked the waitress.  Turns out, it's cauliflower.  Which makes more sense because I don't think an orchid would survive a trip into the fryer, nor would it probably taste like anything.

I also noticed item 12 and it made me laugh.  I'm guessing that should be a w, but I kind of like tatering better.

We got a lot of good stuff, some of which was a little scary despite it's goodness.  For instance, I requested the hot and sour soup, since I love that in America and haven't had it here yet.  Turns out this place serves it with large blobs of congealed duck blood in it.  Although Carol assured me this was good for my blood, I resisted trying anything larger than a very small bit.  (The Chinese tend to believe that eating something strengthens that part in your body, so eating skin gives you good skin, eating blood helps your blood.  I asked her if I there was anything I could eat for my hair, but honestly I'm probably too chicken to try it even if there is something.  Can't be good.)

We also got some of the best fried rice I've ever had, but it had chunks of sea cucumber in it, which was new for me and not bad.  It also had chunks of stomach, which I left in the discard pile even though I'm sure it would have been good for my - you guessed it.  We also had eel and bean sprouts in a thick sauce; xiaolongbao, which is a kind of dumpling with meat and soup broth inside; creamed cabbage; and drunken chicken, which is the fav of Carol's mom.  It was good, but had the bones and veins and everything inside, and I'm a wuss about that stuff so I struggled a little with it.  Very delicious overall and I'll definitely be back.  Plus Carol used the time to drill me on my Cantonese, so hopefully tomorrow I'll finally manage to order my McDonald's breakfast without using English. 

She even made me ask for boxes in Cantonese.  She's a taskmistress, but I appreciate it.

Even though we were totally full, we got these for dessert.  Dough balls with red bean paste and a little chunk of banana inside and yes, that's a little pile of sugar on the top.  When they set these on our table it was love at first sight.

Beth wanted to get us in the Halloween spirit so she got a few decorations for the house.  She put a glow-in-the-dark design on each of our doors and I got the ghost, which put me in the mood to watch Ghostbusters, so Angie and I did that instead of grading.  :) 

Then we had dessert number 2.  Chris (from work) got a gift certificate to a cake shop and apparently doesn't like cake (WHAT???), so he gave it to Angie to share with us.  She made these fine selections and so I tried a little taste of them all after the movie.  Yum!!!  That bottom right one is chocolate with coconut - it was my fav.  I ended the evening with a nice long talk with my friend Olivia.  She and I were swapping stories about our woes and she mentioned a TED talk she watched recently and recommended I check it out.  I did and it's pretty great, so I'll post it here for anyone who's interested.  It's Brene Brown and she's a researcher/social worker who's been studying vulnerability.  It's like 15 minutes long, but I think she makes some very good points.  Plus when you're a perfectionist you can never really be told enough times that you should let go.  Thanks Brene!