Food.

You will never find better Chinese food than the stuff you get in China. (makes sense i guess) The food here makes Panda Express look like garbage. So healthy and so great.

 However, on that note, man (or woman in this case) cannot live on Chinese alone. Sure its great, but when you have it every lunch and EVERY dinner there comes a point when all you want to do is stand up, chuck your chopsticks in the air, and yell NO MORE RICE!!!!!

Yes I realize its only been 2 weeks since we arrived and we have committed for the long haul...but sometimes a girl needs some good ol' fashioned American food....

Josh and I started this trip with a goal in mind...one McDonald's trip per month....we had every intention of keeping this rule to save money and to save our selves from gaining mass amounts of weight. However there we were 13 days into the trip...had a long, hard, and China frustrated day (China frustrated is the worst kind) and the thought of rice made me want to vomit...so we cracked for the second time in one month. Dang.

I felt pretty guilty about it...until I picked that burger up with my bare hands and took the first massive bite.  It was like the guilt just melted away right along with the cheese that was sandwiched between two greasy meat patties. Heavenly delicious.

I've always liked McDonald's but folks...that was ridiculous good. It was good enough to put me into the 'food zone' where nothing else matters, everything around you goes fuzzy, and the only thing going on in your mind is the battle of deciding whether you should scarf this thing down as fast as possible or try to make it last forever. Now don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about...we've all been there. For some of us its a little more rare than for others but we all know about the 'food zone' so don't act like I'm crazy.


Anyhow, I finished the meal with a tip, a shake, and a tap of the fry box to get every last speck of fry and salt possible (we've all done that too) and I was left staring at an empty box and a wrapper with ketchup remains that I contemplated licking up...don't judge. (I didn't do it) The depressing part of all of this was that I found that no matter how long I tried to make it last, it was all too soon that we were back to the Chinese food menu. 


Something had to change. Since its not a good idea to eat McDonald's for every lunch and dinner for the next year...I decided it was time, time to brave the lack of ingredients and cooking tools and take on the kitchen. So last night, for the first time...I cooked.


It was nothing gourmet, but Josh liked it... I guess that's good enough for me.

It was a little challenging to cook over an open fire stove and I about blew my face off while turning it on, but I think I'll get the hang of it eventually.

Its hard to mash potatoes without a hand beater, but with a large spoon and a little muscle it can be done. Its a good thing I learned how to make gravy before we left, but not having exact ingredients made for an interesting new variety...but the rest was pretty simple.  Dessert was great though...we had ALL the ingredients we needed to make no bake cookie bars. They were delicious. They will probably be made often...just saying.

I know that the longer we live here the easier it will get to figure out how to cook things and where to find ingredients that are close to what we are used to... If any of you readers know any VERY simple recipes (and by simple I mean very simple ingredients and not requiring many kitchen tools) feel free to send them my way. :) Even though its a little intimidating, I won't lie, I'm pretty excited to learn how to cook everything from scratch...I'll get to be like those girls in the prairie days with the old fashioned dresses that cooked everything over a fire with raw, unprocessed, unprepared food. I used to read about those girls when I was little and had a small part of me wish that I could be like them. Now I can...just no cool dress...

Leslie the Chinese prarie girl...I like the way that sounds.