Cooking

Two weeks ago, if you would have asked me if I cooked in China, I would have said not much. Its not that I didn't like to cook-its one of my favorite things to do at the end of a day. In fact, I learned to love cooking by living in China the first time. But I haven't cooked much this time because food here is so easy and simple and fast and cheap and good. I can walk outside my building and go in any direction and 20 minutes later I will be full and probably paid about a dollar, if even that. Plus, I have not had a lot of cooking supplies in my kitchen.

Moreover, I am here to study food, so I should eat the local food, right? A few times, I have gone into some kitchens of nicer restaurants to watch the cooks. I tell them who I am and what I am doing here and why I want to watch and take pictures. They don't necessarily have much to offer about quality rice, but I still think its fun to see how Chinese kitchens operate, as I have worked in my fair share of US restaurant kitchens.

Over the past week and a half, however, cooking has kept me busy every night. I've been slowly accumulating more cooking supplies and shopping for new ingredients, and constantly coming up with new ideas of things to cook. I just got a little toaster oven that can bake and roast things. It pretty exciting. Ovens are rare here. Having a double burner gas stove is about as high class as it gets. Now I have to look for baking supplies to do some real baking....

I think I attribute my new excitement for cooking to a number of reasons.

1. Its getting dark really early these day and venturing outside after 4 pm when its dark is kind of depressing. Along with the dark, it is cold and windy and snowy and icy (they do not use salt here and the sidewalks are already covered in ice).
2. I've had my share of oily, salty Chinese food. I feel bad saying this because its what I miss most about China when I am in the US, but its been 5 months straight of Chinese food and I am ready for a break.
3. My friend in Harbin, Melissa, helps me. She does not have a kitchen herself so she comes over and we cook and listen to music and drink wine and watch episodes of Sex and the City. Then we drink coffee and do work on our respective MacBooks and talk about things that geography grad students talk about.
   
4. I just read a memoir by Julia Child about time she spent in France learning to cook (thanks, Abby H!). Reading it reminded me how fun cooking can be. Last week I asked the group of agriculture graduate students I give small lectures to once a week what they want me to talk about next week and they told me they want to hear more about American food. I thought of Julia Child's cooking demonstrations. How fun it would be to do a demonstration! But it would be a lot of work, too so I may have to hold off on that idea.
   

Cooking here is creative because ingredients are not always easy to find. So sometimes I have to substitute things. Its fun and the results are always good. Maybe this is a phase but I think that creative cooking will get me through the winter here. I'm ready for hibernation. Today the official sunset time was 4 pm, which means by 3 the sky is starting to get dark. And it keeps getting earlier. Today the high was 21, low was 0. And its supposed to get colder this week.

But its OK because I have fun research which keeps me going. Seriously, I've had a few people tell me recently that my mood changes when I start talking about my research. Its true! I get excited when I talk about my research. But that might be a problem because it means I am not excited when I'm not talking about my research? I might have to work on that...