The Food Monologues

My sister came round today and she brought with her 90 duck eggs she got bought from the wholesale market.  My dad is going to steep them in salt water for a month, which preserves them - making their yolks turn deep orange, solidifies them and they ooze this golden oil.  Salted ducks eggs are very good to eat with boiled rice, though their whites can be so salty that it can taste bitter.  Mum puts the yolks into rice parcels that are wrapped in bamboo leaves - traditionally eaten around the time of the Dragon Boat Festival and the yolks also go into Moon Cakes - eaten during the Moon Festival (which is around the time of my birthday - so when I was a kid, I used to get moon cakes instead of birthday cakes). 

There is also another type of preserved eggs that the Chinese like to eat - thousand year old eggs (sometimes called hundred year old eggs) which are preserved using potash (not sure what that is) but it turns the inside of the raw eggs black and the yolks a bluish colour.  Now these eggs are an accquired taste but they go very well with pork congee (a savoury porridge made from rice instead of oats) - one of my favourite dishes that I like to eat when I go back to Hong Kong.

Now in I have recently discovered pickled eggs - apparently prevelant in English fish and chip shops - which is the first time I ate one from.  These eggs are boiled and then steeped in vinegar - which naturally makes them rather sour.  Timmy seems to like these eggs quite a lot - but I am more amblivient towards them - though if you chop them up and add some mayonnaise or salad cream and a handful of chives, they can do as a very quick sandwich filling.

Last night Tim and I ended up talking about what food we were going to make next weekend, and for some weeks we have been intending to make tacos - why?  Because I haven't eaten a 'proper' one before.  Its been on the cards for some time now, but I keep on making pies because I know how to make them now and for some reason I like eating pie.  Timmy was telling me how much he liked Tacobell, a fondness he has for this American fast food joint (having been to the US several times).  The only thing I know about this place is that they advertise it on TV there with a cute chihauha (however you spell it) dog.  But this lunchtime, Timmy decided that he wanted Tacobell food - only problem - there are none in the UK.  We checked and the Tacobell website tells you that there are restaurants in the US, Canada, some South American countries and Europe.  But where in Europe?  I've never seen a Tacobell anywhere in Europe in all the places I have been, and I have asked Juan, my most cosmopolitan friend if he has seen any there and he hasn't either, so I wonder where it could be?  So we settled for something called The Ranch House in the Loft food hall in the Pavillions.  It sells Tex-Mex food and Timmy ate a huge chilli burrito and I ate a chicken fajita.  The food was ok - really filling (though it was served with boil in the bag yellow rice - now don't get me started on the failings of boil in the bag rice - ewgh)  but I am sure that home made tacos with chilli will taste much much nicer.

I like fish - fish is tasty, but sometimes I think that fish can be quite expensive.  Our family probably spend more money on fish a week than we do meat.  Dad likes eating fish so we eat it nearly everyday.  Fish that I like to eat... Salmon, Sea Bass, Dover Sole, Turbot, Halibut, Grey Mullet, Whiting, Cod, Haddock and the list goes on.  But fish is quite expensive, but its good for you and much tastier than a beef steak (but then I have this aversion to eating things that go moo).  Mum has this thing for wanting to make salt fish - maybe because she is remisincing about the old days in China when they had to dry their own fish.  So when we were down in at the local chinese supermarket Mum bought a load of scary looking frozen fish and then in another part of the freezer section were a pile of frozen fish heads - Golden Snapper at £1.50 for a head - they must have been like more than a kilo in weight each  and that to me, I imagine is a pretty big fish and its not particularly attractive either. 

I have just met my boyfriend's friends (Gary and Lee) properly for the first time at lunch time.  Previously I have met them in passing as they were going out for lunch.  Tim works near where I work, so we see quite a bit of each other's colleagues.  Today we went to Pizza Hut for lunch because there was an 'all you can eat' buffet on, but Tim was unable to eat more than 6 slices of pizza (his record is 12, so I have been told) - mind you, the pizza slices are tiny.  They also have two types of pasta - ham and mushroom and spicy tomato.  Then there is barbecue chicken pizza with barbecue sauce instead of tomato sauce - the Domino's pizza version is nice, this one was grim :S  All in all, they are pretty much the same each time you go.  Various pizzas that you normally wouldn't order and over cooked pasta.  But you can also order refills on drinks too - but who can drink a whole litre of coke?  I over stretched myself with three plates of food, each plate being filled with less and less, but there is also that thing of... so what shall I talk to Tim's friends about?  They talked shop, so I carried on eating.