Bacon Tweet

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Love Bacon?: http://bacon.alltop.com

A bacon toplist. Awesome.

La de

When I first went to Yantai, I imagined I’d come home and slip effortlessly into fluent Mandarin to quote ancient Chinese wisdom. Fortunately for people who have to put up with me, that didn’t happen.

A few characters have somehow made it into my notetaking, which is completely mindblowing to me. I tried to train myself to write any characters I did know at every opportunity as practice, and some of those words stuck. Which now makes my handwriting extra illegible!

I don’t have any complete phrases, or ancient Chinese sayings, but one Chinese word has made it into our everyday vocabulary. Stick and I both use la de to talk about food, instead of saying spicy-hot-not-hot-hot.

Via Simpson’s Paradox » Blog Archive » Everyday Expressions

Win a Trip To China

Crossposted from my main blog, just wanted to share this:

It’s actually painful for me to pass this on, since I want to win so badly. But it’s still an awesome contest:

Mashable and VisualCV have teamed up to send a Mashable reader to China in November with Robert Scoble, Shel Israel, Sam Lawrence, Christine Lu, Elliot Ng and more. Travel with this group of high-level tech entrepreneurs and leading social media influencers on a multi-city tour of China’s tech sector. Blog about your trip to China with a chance to post on the official China 2.0 Blog and maybe even have a guest post on Mashable. Don’t miss the opportunity of a lifetime. Create and share your VisualCV today to have a chance to be selected as a blogger on the China 2.0 Tour in November.

Sign up here (FOR FREE), create your VisualCV and use it to tell us why you think you should be selected to go on The China Business Network’s upcoming China 2.0 Tour. Share your VisualCV with us at china2.0@visualcv.com so we can select a winner. Good luck!

I entered yesterday, because how could I pass up the chance to go back to China and blog, without all that tedious lesson prep and going to work? I think there’s still another day left to enter, though. Good luck, and if you win, bring me back some hawthorn leather.

Via Visual CV - You Need a Better Resume (seen all over the China blogs but I believe this is the source page)

Pork Chops with Tomatoes, Caramelized Onions and Feta Cheese (And MUSHROOMS!)

I'm going to make these Pork Chops with Tomatoes, Caramelized Onions and Feta Cheese to use up the food I have leftover from making all these.

For the love of cooking says this about her recipe:

I love the combination of flavors and textures in this dish... the tomatoes and caramelized onions are sweet while the feta is a bit salty. Topping the whole dish off with a bit of balsamic vinegar just completes it perfectly. My kids and husband all love these chops and so do I. It's really delicious and healthy too.

Sounds good to me! Although I plan to add mushrooms. Mushrooms make everything better.

Via For the love of cooking: Pork Chops with Tomatoes, Caramelized Onions and Feta Cheese

Durian Romance

I wrote this for my personal blog but thought it would be funny here with my other comments on food and cooking and taste.

The awesome Mental Floss Blog has a new post on 5 Innovative Ways to Encourage Safer Sex. All 5 are funny - condom ringtones, anyone? — but I just had to share this one.

Ethiopians claim they hate condoms because the smell of latex sickens them. To combat the odor, DKT International, a United Sates nonprofit, created coffee condoms. These dark brown condoms allegedly (I’m not testing the products) taste and smell like the favorite coffee of Ethiopia—the macchiato, an espresso with cream and sugar. … These condoms bolster national identity because Ethiopians claim to have invented coffee. DKT International also created flavored and scented condoms for Indonesia (durian fruit) and China (sweet corn).

Yes, that’s right. Durian fruit flavored condoms.

Durian is a strange Asian fruit, which is either considered a delicacy or one of the most revolting smells on the planet. I fall into the second category… I still regret once putting my nose near a durian just to see if that funny spikey fruit could really be making that sickening rotting smell. (It was!) Even in countries where durian is eaten, durian are not allowed in public places, like on subways, or on planes, or into hotels or hospitals because of the smell.

I find that retching and gagging discourages romance, but to each his own, I guess.

Via mental_floss Blog » 5 Innovative Ways to Encourage Safer Sex

Via Simpson’s Paradox

Gyro - Kebab and Rice

So once I had awesome Tzatziki sauce, I thought I'd make the rest of the meal Stick likes.

I'm still playing with the proportions, so this is more of a note to myself than a recipe.

ground turkey (I am not a fan of red meat, but I suppose it would be more authentic to use ground beef or lamb)
coriander
cumin
garlic
lemon juice
finely minced onion

I mixed everything up and let it sit in the fridge for an hour or so. Then I rolled the meat into sausages and fried then in a little oil. Next time I would make patties as sausage don't fit very well into pita pockets.

Next, I added some butter to the pan where I'd just fried the meat, and quickly stir-fried some rice in it.

Rice cooked in chicken broth
garlic powder
butter

I served everything with a tomato-feta-cucumber salad and grilled mushrooms (because mushroom go with EVERYTHING)

Grace's Pumpkin Bars

Today's awesome fall recipe is from †Faith In Love†, a homeschooling blog. (I was surprised to find this recipe in with my teaching links, but so glad I came across this recipe) I like the smell of baking pumpkin and cinnamon, plus cream cheese icing is always good. I can't wait to try these!

These are the yummiest pumpkin bars. A co-worker brings these every fall. If I make them I'll post a picture. Trust me, they are delicious.

Pumpkin Bars

4 eggs 2 tsp baking powder

2 cups sugar 1 tsp. baking soda

1 cup canola oil 3/4 tsp. salt

1-15 ounce can pumpkin 2 tsp cinnamon

2 cup flour

Heat oven to 350 degree. Grease 15 x 10 inch jelly roll pan. In large bowl, beat eggs until foamy. Add sugar, oil and pumpkin; beat 2 minutes at medium speed. Add flour, baking powder, soda, salt and cinnamon; beat 1 minute at low speed. Pour into pan. Bake at 350 degree for 25 to 30 minutes or till toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, ---when cool spread with Cream Cheese Frosting.

Via †Faith In Love†

This Just In.

The spice that makes Xinjiang barbecue taste like Xinjiang food and not generic Chinese food in cumin. Just thought I'd share.

Giddytab's Pumpkin Seeds

Today on Twitter @giddytab mentioned a recipe for pumpkin seeds that sounds amazing!

Eating the best pumpkin seeds I ever tasted! 2 c seeds, 2 T butter, 1 tsp garlic salt! Mix in pot for 3 min & bake on 250 on cookie sheet

Sounds so good. Must remember to try this when we make jack-o-lanterns.

Tzatziki Sauce

Stick's favorite restaurant in NC is either Greek Fiesta, or La Shish, and his favorite in Beijing was Biteapita. I guess you know what he likes to eat!

Tzatziki Sauce

1 1/2 cups plain yogurt (all the recipes I found asked for special think yogurt, but I used regular. It came out fine)
1/2 cup grated cucumber (it's hard to measure because it's so squishy, grate a couple inches of cucumber)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
garlic salt
mint

(Most recipes I found called for 1 -2 tablespoons of olive oil but I skipped that because it seemed like needless fat. The sauce was very smooth anyway. Maybe it's because I used the wrong yogurt!)

I was a bit worried about this one as yogurt + lemon juice could easily make a curdled mess. I got around that by grating the cuke into a tupperware container, and coating it in lemon juice, then garlic salt. Then I added the yogurt + mint.

I sealed the tupperware and stuck in the fridge for about an hour to let everything combine. I was so pleased to find perfect dipping sauce, instead of curdled disaster! YAY!

Random Guacamole

Stick and I need to be banned from buying avocados. We can never manage to eat them all in the 5 seconds after the avocados ripen and before they go bad. Seriously. I have wasted so many avocados (even in Beijing where buying avocados means a crosstown trip to Jenny Lu's and a lot of money) by missing the window.

Anyway, the other night I saw that we had 2 perfectly ripe avocados and tortilla chip but no guac mix.

2 perfecly ripe avocados
1 lime (yes, I had a lime kicking around)
1/4 white onion, finely minced
garlic salt to taste
a dash of paprika

I juiced the lime, and mixed everything up in a bowl. The end.

Stick said it was the best guacamole ever, and I was worried that I couldn't replicate my tasty experiment. But I have, so now here is the What I Have In The Fridge Guac for you to try, too.