Interactive Map of Regional Foods: Where is Goetta?

by Jamie Rhein on

Almost every time I head to northern Kentucky to visit my aunts I swing by Kroger for oatmeal sausage. It’s one of my childhood favorite foods that my grandparents served. The quest for oatmeal sausage, also called goetta, has been a lifelong venture. When we used to live further away, I would freeze it and wrap it in newspaper to bring it home. When I lived in overseas, I’d bring packets of Skyline Cincinnati-style chili mix with me. To my delight, White Castle cheese burgers were sold at the American Club grocery store in New Delhi. We rarely bought them, maybe twice, but they were like an old friend to call on if need be. Then there’s Hatch green chile that is roasting in various spots of New Mexico this time of year. I used to buy a bunch and freeze it to use throughout the winter.

When going to Vietnam, one reason to head to Hoi An is the Cau Lau noodles. This particular style is only made here. In Taiwan, the town of Beipu has a tea that you grind up with seeds and nuts in a mortar and pestle. It’s the town’s signature beverage. No matter where you live there are regional dishes that you often can’t get elsewhere, and when you can, it feels as if home has followed you.

This month’s National Geographic magazine has an interactive map of the United States that you can click on to find out about regional favorites. In Ohio, it’s Buckeyes, a candy made with chocolate and peanut butter made to look like the state nut. Here’s a past post I wrote about them for Blogging Ohio. Sometimes the state’s entries have a story that goes with it. Click on New Mexico and you’ll find Elaine Thatcher’s chile verde story. Restaurants in New Mexico that sell Mexican and New Mexican food (there is a difference) have green chile and red chile options. Go for the green–or get both.

I’m sure you all are brighter than me, but to get the interactive map, you need to click on continue at the bottom of the page. Not all states have entries, but there is a new blog, Pop Omnivore at the bottom where people are adding stories about their regional favorites. Thanks, dear friend, Marilyn Terrell at Intelligent Traveler who sends us lovely tidbits to blog about. She sent this one our way.

Don’t Poo-poo Pu-er Tea

by Iva Skoch on

Who cares about the price of tea in China? More and more people globally. A recent article in the WSJ says that there’s been a run on China’s most popular tea, pu-er (aka pu-erh, or pu’er, or Bolay tea). A recent sale netted the seller almost $40,000 . . . for a single 3.5oz cake that was 60 years old.

Like all true teas (as opposed to fruit “tea” or herbal “tea”), it’s made from the Camellia sinensis plant. Pu-er tea is only slightly oxidized, like green teas, has a smoky taste, and is sold generally in bricks or cakes, which are usually round, discus-like objects, looking like large cow-patties. It comes in “raw” or “cooked” form.

Unlike most teas, it’s meant to be aged, even for many years, and, supposedly, it gets better with age. 150-year old cakes go for over $13,000 sometimes. And collectors are drinking this tea up.

According to people we met in China, this was the most prized and most typically drank tea (not the oolong tea you usually get in Chinese restaurants in the West). Further, the black tea we typically drink in the West is fairly rare there. And you sure won’t see a tea bag.

In fact, while sampling and discussing the relative tastes and benefits of various teas, the owner of a small tea shop laughed off the fact that we enjoyed black teas, told us that the caffeine would surely kill us . . . and then offered us a cigarette.

A Canadian in Beijing: Lost in the Market and Laughing

by Ember Swift on

With a rickety gate marking one of the main entrances, the market spills out on both sides. There are stalls of all shapes and sizes featuring all kinds of items whose colours cascade down tiered bins and flowing displays. All of the visual action splashes into my senses. The different smells from each stall curl into each other in comfort as we pass through and into the heart of the market.

I am taking it all in.

We are caught in the current of the Sunday shopping crowd and we move slowly through the stalls examining the wide variety of items for sale. I have a moment of feeling like we blend in well (despite the fact that I’m obviously a “waiguoren” or foreigner.) Well, perhaps we don’t exactly blend in considering I look so different and we’re speaking English together, but shopping with David, my Chinese-Canadian friend, makes it a little easier than shopping with a bunch of other non-Chinese folks. People are curious about us but kind and open. Before long, we are having lots of conversations about where we’re from and why we’re here. I don’t see any other foreigners in this market except for us.

Perfect.

Maybe it’s because the market is tucked away in a western Haidian area where tourists rarely go. This is the kind of market that I love the most. It’s slightly dirty with rinds and pits and lychee skins all over the sidewalks from snacking shoppers. There are stalls that look like hovels and/or temporary residences. Kids with dirty faces, bare bottoms and round open eyes are playing with dried nuts from a dried food stand. Vendors are taking naps everywhere in the thirty-two degree heat. (In fact, is there something about garlic that makes people sleepy?!)

Strung everywhere are tarps for shade. Because they are strung up by the individual stalls, they are all different colours as though we’re at a summer campsite where space is extremely limited forcing all the tents to intertwine. Some of these tarps hang a bit low and graze the tops of our heads as we pass. Sometimes we even need to duck.

David complained about the dangling ropes from the tarps reminding him of dangling spiders and I stopped to consider such an image before photographing the offending twine. These ties sometimes catch your head as you pass and if you haven’t noticed them, then it is a slightly creepy feeling, I agreed. Although I’m not arachnophobic, I probably wouldn’t appreciate a bunch of spiders in my hair! We steered around them after that, laughing each time.

Dave and I first discovered this market on the way to The Summer Palace a few weeks ago. At that time, we glanced in at the entrance but couldn’t tell what kind of market it was but agreed to return and investigate. Besides, we were headed for history. Today, we were on a market mission.

Mission successful. This is my favourite marketplace so far.

In this market (whose name I still don’t know), there are fruits and vegetables, breads, steamed buns, oils and nut butters, meat, fish, household supplies, clothing, tea, dried foods of all kinds, antiques, you name it. In fact, I couldn’t quite identify this market as anything but a “general market” if I tried. I could buy lingerie, hoses, brooms, tea, jewelry, fruit and fresh bread while also stocking up on my plumbing supplies if I so desired! It’s amazing.

Row after row of stalls kept making our bags heavier as we purchased dried foods to send home, mangosteens, lychees, and this nut butter that is sort of a combination between peanut butter and tahini. The one cloth shopping bag I brought wasn’t enough for our spontaneous purchases that were now spilling out of additional plastic bags.

Then, we found ourselves at a teashop.

I have been into tea this week, as you know, and I had already bought some chrysanthemum flowers for tea at a different stall – a flavour I truly love here and haven’t seen back home in its raw state. But, the woman at this tea stall was extremely warm and gracious. She spoke Chinese clearly and slowly and we soon found ourselves seated on stools inside the shop and accepting her offer to let us sample various kinds of teas.

She started with a type of tea that looks like a ball. When put into the water, it opened up into the flower that it is and is extremely beautiful. She said that one cup of this tea in a local downtown restaurant or tea house (like the one I went to this week) is about 160 kuai (very expensive by Chinese standards) and Dave confirmed her story. She made one cup of this tea for us and it was a beautiful flavour to top off the beautiful presentation. I watched it opening like a little kid staring into an aquarium. After tasting it too, I knew I had to have a few of these incredible bulbs to bring home for a special (tea) occasion! 40 kuai got me about 8 of them… and that’s pricey but sure beats the cost of tea in the tourist districts.

Of course, that was not all. She began to make us another pot of tea and each time heated the water perfectly, warmed the cups, measured the tea with precision and handled all of the tea tools like the pro that she was. A cup of “pu-er” tea was next on the list and we sipped and exclaimed as she described the properties and why this tea was good for you and when to drink it, etc.

An hour later, we were still in this little tea stall and we had sampled about ten different flavours of tea and had become quite chummy with the shopkeeper and several other customers. She would have kept pouring, too, had I not felt suddenly that we should buy our many items and get heading back home. In fact, I’m not sure the tea would have stopped flowing had we not stood up to leave, protesting yet another flavour she was pulling from the shelf. I laughed out loud at the feeling like I was going to float away!

We all laughed.

Dave bought a lot. In fact, he is the perfect guy to shop with because he is easily convinced to buy more when it’s cheaper to do so and vendors love him! He came away with several different flavours of tea as well as some “feng mi” or honey. (The honey here has a different flavour – it’s sweeter!) I also bought two metal travel mugs for a mere twenty-five kuai each (around $3 Canadian) that come with a built-in infuser. Those will be a welcome addition to our travelling supplies.

We left the stall in great spirits and with bellies sloshing, filled with tea of all kinds. I wondered if all of those medicinal properties combined together would cancel each other out, but if our moods were any indication of tea’s effects then I’d say that it’s all positive!

Losing oneself in a tea stall nestled deep in an authentic Chinese market in an outer district of Beijing feels like a luxurious weekend pastime. I smiled at my life. “Look at me!” I thought, “I’ve tucked myself into this corner of Beijing and it is just my size.”

Then, I popped a lychee into my mouth and let the sweetness roll around in my smile.

A Canadian in Beijing: Laoshe Cha Guan (Laoshe Teahouse)

by Ember Swift on

Tea is important in China. It has been part of China’s cultural legacy for centuries. Even the word “tea” originally comes from the word “te” in Fuzhou Hua (the Chinese dialect in Fuzhou Province). In Mandarin, the word for tea is “cha” ??? (same character) and many other languages also use this pronunciation.

Tea has so much significance here and is used for so much, not just to fill a cup so that one can sip warm liquid. For example, various teas are used in Chinese medicine, tea is used in cooking to flavour foods, tea is used in washing and bathing, tea is used to help with skin abrasions or to help your puffy eyes when you’re underslept or hungover, i.e. steeped green tea leaves pressed onto the black circles under your eyes and then wait awhile. Dried used tea leaves have also traditionally been used to fill children’s pillows and is believed to be good for their developing minds. This is only some of what I learned about tea this week. (Yes, school can be helpful!)

So, it was perfect timing for an invitation from my new friend Rain to go out for a cup of tea together (??????????????????? “Do you want to go out for tea?” is more regularly asked here than “Do you want to have a coffee?”). I figured we were going to a local (random) café and I was simply looking forward to getting to know a new friend and scanning the menu for the various kinds of tea that I learned about in my lessons.

What I didn’t realize was that she had tickets to the most famous and historically significant teahouse in Beijing: Lao She Cha Guan ???????????.

Lao She was a famous Chinese author who was born in Beijing (then called Peking). He wrote many plays and novels throughout the course of his life, one of which was called “Teahouse” or “Chaguan 茶馆” in 1956. It was about the ups and downs of the people’s lives in China throughout the turbulent changes between 1898 and 1945 and has been dramatized many times by the Beijing People’s Theatre.

What truly interests me about Lao She is his political affiliation. He was a radical, it seems, and wrote work that was critical of decadence and political corruption and championed national resistance. At the time of Communist control, he was safely stowed in the United States but was forced to return in 1949.

I learned that between 1949 and 1966, Lao She wrote several plays and was “put to use” by the hierarchy but that his work during this period was never critically acclaimed. He “gave every indication of being a loyal support of the Peking government, but his egregious form of flattery, so exaggerated in its denunciation of the state’s enemies, may have been a form of oblique satire.” (source)

(Well, of course it was.)

When the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, people like Lao She – public figures with loud, politically critical and/or influential voices with any history of dissent – were doomed.

He committed suicide in September of 1966.

(Hello again, Shannon.)

So, when I walked up to this building and saw all the connections to my life, I had to pause a moment to take it all in once again. There are simply no coincidences are there? No, I don’t think so.

The place was packed and Rain had already reserved tickets for the tearoom which included a full performance in traditional Chinese style. As she was negotiating for a table and settling the tickets, I watched tourist after tourist pose beside the bust of Lao She for a photo. We were then ushered into the tearoom and seated at a large table that was already occupied by two other women. Historically, teahouses were the places that people would come and sip their various teas, make new friends and take in the arts.

This current building, while newly constructed as the first teahouse in Beijing after the reform period (I believe it was built in 1989), has a full performance room with large round tables at which people sit with strangers eating sweet “xiao chi” (snacks) and sipping bottomless cups of traditional Chinese tea.

The stage is at one end and the performances were fantastic. The show began with a tribute to the upcoming Olympics and how the five Olympic Ring colours can be equated to the five traditional kinds of tea in China. Furthermore, there was a short Chinese opera (Beijing style), a magician, the traditional “xiang sheng” performance which is a Chinese comedic conversational exchange also known as “cross-talk comedy” (Da Shan is a famous Canadian performer here in China as his Chinese is impeccable and he is an expert in this performance style), some martial arts dances by various energetic young boys, etc. I can’t identify all of the traditional performance styles but it was all very enjoyable.

My favourite performance was called kouji 口技. It was a performance that featured two elderly men who used their mouths to make sound effects. The main part of their show was a full conversation in bird calls filled with emphatic gesturing and miming. The audience loved it. They finished their performance doing impressions of various forms of transportation like airplanes, trains and automobiles. They were a brilliant team.

(Hey, quick aside: what was that American movie from the 80’s called that was all about cops – maybe Police Academy? — where there was an actor who could make all of these amazing sounds with his mouth and he would often just speak in sounds rather than words? This is what that performance made me think of.)

I laughed and applauded even when I didn’t fully understand the meaning of these performances. The facial expressions on the faces of the performers were enough to make me laugh. This style and variety of performance is totally conducive to having no Chinese language skills. Many of the performances were wordless and easily entertained the many non-Chinese speakers in attendance.

After the concert, we took a stroll through the reconstructed traditional Chinese tea house which has been built inside the building – sort of like a building within a building. There was a false courtyard and a woman playing the guzheng and several little nooks and crannies in which to sip tea and take it all in as if we were back in time by a hundred years. I was not permitted to take photos inside this teahouse replica, however, and so I cannot show you what it looked like. All I can tell you is that it was peaceful and lovely and felt a bit like a living museum.

When we left, we zigzagged around the vendors outside wanting us to buy souvenirs and/or ride in their rickshaws and emerged quietly onto the sidewalk into the cool summer air. It had been raining slightly while we were inside and the damp freshness in the city cooled the skin my face and inspired me to breathe deeply.

This has been a reflective week filled with fortuitous timing and fated experiences.

Everything happens for a reason.

In Chinese, there is a beautiful word that sums up my recent time here: yuanfen 缘分. This compound (as it consists of two characters) means “destiny, fate, purpose, predestined lot” all rolled into two lyrical syllables.

Yes, China, I believe in yuanfen 缘分.

You make it impossible not to!

The “Sweet Tea” Mason-Dixon Line

by Willy Volk on

If you’ve spent any time in the southern US, you know about “sweet tea.” Pre-sweetened — sometimes mouth-puckeringly so — sweet tea is a staple throughout the south. But what do we mean when we say “the south”?

Historically, the line of separation between the north and the south has been the Mason-Dixon line. This line, set by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon on October 9, 1767, settled a border dispute and defined Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland. During the civil war, the line stood as a separation between free and slave states.

Today, Virginia seems to have an internal conflict — a split personality, if you will — in which the northern area of the state does not generally offer sweet tea; in the southern part of the state, sweet tea is far more common. Perhaps the line of of change in sweet tea availability — a Sweet Tea Mason-Dixon line — may be the most realistic line of demarcation separating the North from the South today.

[Via Neatorama]