Cooking with Erich(ka)





First, the funnies:

1. Language problems. I don't know how much you would notice from looking at a Chinese character ... sometimes it is just one character, but sometimes one character can be made up of several characters put together. When you take an individual character to combine with another one, it's called a radical.

 

Radicals can actually make learning characters SO much easier. There is a radical that means water, and it appears in all the characters for river, lake, ocean, etc. There is a radical that means animal, and it appears in the characters for cat and dog. So it seems like an excellent way to memorize the meanings of seemingly meaningless shapes and lines. But the next lesson in my book introduced the radical for "stone" which was supposed to be associated with sturdy vocabulary. The first character taught? "Broken". Sometimes Chinese makes SO much sense. And sometimes, it just doesn't! Arrggg!!!

 

 

2. An enlightening conversations with Chen. Chen is one of the owners of Cup of Joe. She sat down and told me she felt terrible. She had taken 12 shots of wine the night before. Yes, shots of wine. It is one of the more frustrating things between foreigners and the Chinese at a business dinner. The Chinese always want to shoot the wine, and think it's super weird that the foreigners sip it. Cue conversation -

Chen: Chinese are bad people. Drink shots. Foreigners are good people. Only drink a little wine.

Me: Well, it's not about good or bad. I think foreigners really like to enjoy the wine. So we sip it *I mime sipping*

Chen: *Uncontrollable laughter* (apparently sipping is so ridiculous she couldn't breathe from laughter)

Me: I like to enjoy it. Drink it slow. If I drink so fast, then there is no more.

Chen: No problem! Here! *Chen mimes pouring another shot of wine and then insists that I shoot it* There is always more!

Me: *Bangs head on table*. So not the point!!!

 

3. Alrighty, Cooking with Erich(ka). I have to say Erich(ka) because all the Chinese staff can't pronounce English words that have a consonent at the end, so they always add a vowel.

 

Erich does a BBQ every Sunday nght, and I've decided that I need to learn how to prepare food. The first thing was making shrimp ... 

 

 

 

EEEWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!  I have to do what? Take their heads off???!!!! AND their legs???????!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

But Erich was super proud because I clearly got over it. Although my hands smelled like shrimp for 3 days.


 

Next came drinking beer. I thought Erich was kidding, but we had to get rid of a little beer before we put this handsome chicken on the can.



 

Next came prepping for the fajitas!!!



 

Look at all this beautiful food! It took us about 6 hours. But I learned to deep fry shrimp, and spice and cook a chicken! Woot!!