Happy Sunday! This week, Beth from Wandering Dawgs is hosting Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #422 and the challenge is all about food and drink.
First of all, I would like to point out that this year has been the oddest year for me as a gardener. It feels like it’s been the longest gardening season ever. As we are heading toward Thanksgiving, I still have raspberries producing in the garden. I walked out two days ago and saw new blooms on the plant. I found it very odd as not much is supposed to be growing at this time of the year and yet, I’m still picking strawberries and raspberries every few days. It’s truly crazy.
It’s been fun documenting the growth of the brussel sprouts. The two photos were taken about a month apart and check out the growth on those sprouts! I only wish the aphids would leave it alone.
Since I don’t usually take pictures of my food or drinks, I don’t have many photos to share. So I will close out the post with one of the breakfasts I had during my trip to China in September.
The first was one of the breakfast I had in China. It’s rice noodle with an egg. It was one of my favorite things to eat when I was young (minus the egg). This kind of shop was very popular back then in the late 90’s. There would be one at almost every corner. Rice noodle and Chinese congee is the quintessential breakfast in Zhonshan. The noodles was something that constantly made me want to go back for seconds.
When I visited my hometown this time, this kind of shop was so hard to find that it took a long and difficult search on the Chinese map app to locate this shop, which was just over 1 kilometer from the hotel.
Walking in a 90-degree-Fahrenheit 70% humidity weather proved to be challenging, even at 8 AM. At least, now I understand why some of the gardeners I follow on YouTube must get up at 5 AM to work in the garden to avoid the humidity.
Fifteen minutes later, I arrived at the shop and found myself standing in line. There were at least a dozen people standing in line looking at their phones. The queue wasn’t too bad. The guy making the noodles wore a mask and was dripping in sweat as he constantly swapping the 2 trays because the noodles cooked that fast. Before I knew it, it was my turn. “Egg, no green onion.”
In a few moments, the noodle was off the griddle and onto a plate. I chose a seat at the fan and sat down with a cup of fresh soy milk. I wanted to get a bowl of congee but it was already sold out. Apparently, one must arrive very early to get congee. In the end, the noodle left me partially satisfied but wasn’t enough to make me want seconds. Maybe it’s just been too long since I’ve eaten something like this or maybe, it’s just the texture, which somehow felt different from what I remembered. Or maybe I just need to move on from trying to find the taste of my childhood.
