Shandang Ass Bacon, from Changzhi, Shanxi Province, China. It is preserved donkey meat. 山西世龙食品有限公司 Scan by Don Tai
Returned, she did, and with it some gifts. Bought in Changzhi, Shanxi Province, China, we received 3 packages of Shangdang ass bacon. And no, I am not being crude, as it clearly states, in English, on the package. I believe there is something lost in translation. Ass bacon is the Chinese to English translation, obviously made by a Chinese person in need of further translation experience, of donkey corned meat. Salty, but otherwise tasty.
Not possible, I thought, to royally screw up sardines. There is really not much to them. Remove the head and tail, put into container, add oil, seal, right? Wrong. You also need to remove the scales. These S&F Food Importer sardines are simply terrible. They were so bad that I went back to the grocery store here in Toronto, Canada, and asked for a refund, which I rarely do, and they refused.
Old it is, but made of metal and therefore still serviceable. Our Presto 6 quart pressure cooker model 126002 is over 20 years old and works well for cutting cooking time down for tough cuts of meat. We needed a new gasket, or what they call a “sealing ring”. Tried as I might, no stores in Toronto, Canada carry it that I could find, so I had to order online at…Home Hardware, a store I rarely even consider.
Presto pressure cooker, model 126002, still good after 20+ years. Photo by Don Tai
The local Chinese grocery store had a sale on pork chops. Since we have never been big meat eaters, it was with some trepidation that I bought some to try, then went home to research the best way to cook it. Little did I know that there are different types of pork chop, and not all are equal. We also did not have them cut it into slices, so I brought home a somewhat square cut of meat. The result was pretty delicious but way too much meat for our family.
Slightly more expensive, is pork butt, but it looks pretty similar to pork picnic roast. Shopping at Chinese stores does not make the topic clearer. What is the difference? After some research the pork butt is pork front shoulder at the top of the leg, while the pork picnic roast is the rest of the leg, below the butt.
Yes, I am not a butcher, not even close, but you need to know about meat in order to cook and feed your family properly. Butt, is an old German word for the widest part of an animal. In the case of a pig, the widest part is the front shoulders, and such the front shoulders are called pork butt. How picnic became the name for all the meat further down I don’t know.
Replacing fan and light switches on a San Yang Pai CY-760 range hood. Toronto, Canada, photo1 by Don Tai
My San Yang Pai model CY-760-A range hood came with our house. Overall it is a good range hood suitable for Chinese stir fry cooking. We did not buy it new, so I do not know exactly how old it is, but I estimate it to be about 20 years old. The on/off switches were giving trouble, and the left fan stopped turning on. These switches are in constant use.
Could we be poisoning ourselves with the supposedly benign substance we consume, that we call sugar? There are a lot of mysteries that plague our society: rampant obesity, the prevalence of diabetes, and many new heath scares. I saw The Men Who Made us Fat on tv yesterday, and it was shocking. You can watch the ,a href=”https://vimeo.com/search?q=The+men+who+made+us+fat”>3 part series in Vimeo.
Obesity is rampant. It is even seen in elementary school kids. This is shocking. Kids run all day and play like, well, kids. How can they become overweight? While I continue to struggle to loose a little more, and to not put more on, I am puzzled by what I see around me. Is it inevitable for us to become obese when past generations did not have this problem? Is this a first-world problem?
The way we choose to live goes a long way to determining how long and how well we will eventually live. More troubling is that our choices are observed and learned by our kids, who then take on very similar choices and lifestyle. While kids theoretically have a choice, in reality they follow their parents, for better or for worse. This study from Active Healthy Kids Canada is really troubling, in that it points to what I call “Rich Country” disease, where here in Canada we have lots of organized sport activities, lots of proper environment and equipment, but not a lot of actual physical exercise. It would be more appropriate to have the best of organized sport, with great facilities, that results in the fittest, most healthy kids on the planet. This is certainly not the case.
Panasonic SR-TEG10 5 cup Rice Cooker is simple to use, works well and cooks really delicious rice.
We do not like small appliances on our kitchen counter, so it took a lot of convincing for us to want to buy a rice cooker. Rice cookers are large and take up a lot of counter space. This 5 cup rice cooker, the Panasonic SR-TEG10, however, is really easy to use, convenient and cooks excellent rice every time. In a nutshell, this rice cooker is great.
