Chinese food After all the fun food in China, I've decided to embrace a new food style, so I forayed into the recently opened China Grocery near us. All of the food on our China trip was fabulous, fresh and beautifully presented. The produce was new, crisp and glossy with recent washing. ("don't drink the water...don't eat the salad: it's been washed with that water.) 10 days without veggies and fruits is not an option for the Diva, especially when we're talking the best watermelon EVER, for breakfast, crunchy little cucumbers, brand-spanking new, never refrigerated tomatoes, and the ultimate dessert: perfect, plump, sweet kumquats the size of your thumb. I've never had such perfect fresh food, even when I was the gardener! So I ate the washed stuff and was just fine. Mr. Diva, who eschews anything green and steamed, even ate the baby bok choy and looked around for more. We've had it at home 3 times since the trip, and he's eaten that, too. Chalk one up for learning while traveling.We also had savory noodles with a variety of sauces, perfect sticky rice, small bits of meat, fish, plentiful shrimp. All lovely, tasty, beautiful, presented on pristine white plates or in steamer baskets fresh from the kitchen...with the exception of a particularly loathesome looking something brought out in a brown, grievously chipped bowl at one of our meals. It appeared to be stewed, chopped eel or maybe saddle. It was a ghastly color of grey, contained in a greasy sauce, with dark pieces of hide stuck to lighter colored pieces of surely-not-food. A chopstick couldn't penetrate it. Our traveling companions were nothing if not brave; these are the same ones who paid $2 USD for the privilege of drinking "medicine wine" from a large glass jug full of yellow liquid and a large dead snake. At least I presume it was dead. It was huge, coiled around and around, nearly filling a 5 gallon bottle similar to the watercooler bottles we have here. At any rate, one of our fellow gourmands took a bit of the 'surely-not-food,' pronounced it "pretty good, some kind of vegetable MAYBE. All righty then. After a little girding of the diva's loins, I took a bite. The taste was sublime, the texture--ack--. Turns out it was eggplant! Hahahahahaha...yeesh. Cleansing breath--whhhhhewwwww. So, back to the culinary experiments back in the desert:The Diva served home-cooked calamari strips last night. I had the chef deep fry them outside on the grill burner so as not to stink up Chez Diva. They were lightly coated with panko. Yummy. I found whole squid tubes at the China grocery near us, sliced them and Voila! Calamari. Admittedly, it's not new veggies and lightly steamed noodles, but with a major carnivore in the house, I'll be taking baby steps toward the new cuisine. Happily, I also found at the Chinese Grocery, all sorts of frozen dumplings, dim sum and buns, so this new cuisine may be EASY PEASY. Don't tell Mr. diva. He thinks I'm martha stewart. Hahahahahaha