Attempt #1

I cooked for the first time the other day! I was pretty proud of myself... which is sad, since making dinner isn't something I considered a big deal in America, but when I am cooking here everything is just twice as hard, at least.

I made 'tudou si' (Silk Potatoes) and 'si ji dou' with 'ji rou' (four season beans with chicken). I think it was pretty good for my first try.

I think I will give you instructions on how to cook your own, and since I want you to have an authentic Chinese experience, I will tell you exactly how I made it.

1. Ask Mr. Beard how to say 'green beans' to purchase them at the store. 

2. Wait forty minutes until he is finished giving you other instructions. 

3. Walk to the supermarket.

4. Proceed to the produce isle, fight off the store ladies who will try to tell you what to purchase (even though they have no idea)

5. Locate garlic, Chinese onions, peppers, green beans and potatoes. Then have the helper ladies measure and price them. Whatever you do, DO NOT walk away from the produce section without having your vegetables priced and labeled. You will have about twenty Chinese women yelling after you. 

6. Wander around until you locate where they have the salt, MSG and chicken bouillon 'pellets'. Since you can't read the labels, make the best guess you can towards which bag is salt, and which is some other white powdery substance. Then grab some MSG (it will be kinda like salt, but longer crystals) and the bag with the cartoon chicken head on it. 

7. When you go to the checkout line, stand as close to the person in front of you as you can. Otherwise, you will be there forever while Chinese people dart in front of you.

8. Go home and make sure that all of the dishes you plan on using have been either washed in boiled water, or are completely dry, since the tap water isn't safe to consume.

9. Heat up some oil (previously purchased, luckily) and throw in your potatoes (mine where previously sliced, lucky me). Then, use a ladle to stir them around every once in awhile.

10. While they are cooking, open your bags of salt, msg and chicken stuff. If you forgot to purchase scissors, cut them open with a can opener, or a butcher knife, whichever you prefer. Both are equally as ill suited for the job.

11. Cut up some peppers (no use washing them first, that just adds more germs) and mince some garlic. 

12. Add to your potatoes a little bit of peppers, two cloves of garlic, some salt, some MSG and some chicken powder. Don't ask me how much, because they do not even sell measuring devices in this country. 

13. Pour potatoes onto previously sterilized plate.

14. Repeat all steps for green beans with chicken, except put the chicken in first, then the green beans later... if you didn't already know that. Make sure to not put too much salt in this mixture due to the hideous hole you have in your salt bag (that was my pit fall).

15. Eat with chopsticks. 

Now, for those of you that judged me for not trying to cook until now, just know that you can do all this, or you can pay a dollar to have someone else do it for you a little ways down the street (plus, free rice and the ambiance of a Chinese hole in the wall)