Reasons I Now Look Like a Dumpling...

Since I am living in a dorm room, I do not have regular access to a kitchen. Luckily, Nanjing is full of restaurants, and as Sophie says the cheaper the place the better the food. We have been pretty good about staying away from Western food, at least for the time being.

Tiny awesome dumplings. That plate came with hot coals, you can kind of see the orangey coals burning in the bottom left of the plate. The restaurant I got these from looked so unassuming, but the food was extraordinarily good!

Across from our dorm there is a great restaurant called "Old Friend's Place." They have tasty vegetable dishes and this really cool meal where they take these sort of rice cakes and pour hot broth all over them so that they snap crackle pop like rice krispies. There is a little alleyway near our dorm that looks kind of sketchy, but it has a ton of restaurants and we're often the only Westerners there. The best place  in that alleyway is a wonton restaurant, where a giant bowl of soup with noodles and wontons is only 12 kuai ($2). We stumbled onto a tiny dumpling place about five minutes away from our dorm, where you can watch them make the dumplings in front of your eyes. They have these little pre-made dough balls that they roll out, then fill with meat or vegetables. Their hands work so fast it's mezmorizing. The entire menu is in Chinese, so Sophie and I have just been guessing at dumpling fillings, but we've never been disappointed. Nearby is Wu's Noodle Box, where they sell something called soup dumplings. A line of 10-15 people forms outside the restaurant at mealtime because these soup dumplings are amazing. They are large dumplings filled with meat, and a soupy sticky liquid. The first time I ate one I not only burned my mouth because of the boiling soup, but I also burned my face because the soup part splashed out as soon as I bit it!

The devil in dumpling form. Fried, boiling,
and you can't eat just one.

Yeah no kidding... I also just don't like the word "squirt" to describe my food. Sorry.

Across the street there is a corner outdoor bakery where they sell amazing Chinese baked goods. Lots of sesame, lots of red bean paste. I am really obsessed with this sesame pastry filled with what I believe is cornmeal. Not really sure what it is, but especially when it's warm out of the oven it tastes great.

Sesame cornmeal goodness

mmmmmmm

Speaking of which, red bean paste is a lot tastier than I thought it would be. They use it in basically all their desserts, plus my favorite breakfast meal: baozi (pronounced BOW-zuh.)

My morning baozi

Sophie and I usually eat baozi for breakfast, or an orange. It should actually be called a green though, because they are green on the outside! They're sweeter than regular oranges, and they're seedless too.

We have succumbed to Western food a few times. In China, the food is almost always really hot temperature-wise and often hot spice-wise as well. That will be fine and dandy in the wintertime, but when it's sweltering out I simply don't feel like eating spicy soup. Some of the food is so spicy my lips tingle and I've choked a few times. Delicious! There is a bakery a few stores away from our dorm that sells American-esque pastries (cheesecake, apple pie), bread, and pretty decent sandwiches. It's almost always filled with expats and it has a nice environment. I also had Sunday brunch (bacon, french toast, salad, mashed potatoes, sausage, scrambled eggs, and unlimited coffee for only 35 RMB, AKA a little under $6!) which was not bad. I tried the pizza at an Italian restaurant, but so far, not so tasty. I mostly just want to eat Chinese food right now anyway so Western food is still uncharted territory.

Chinese Chinese food and American Chinese food are pretty different, but it's hard to explain how. The food is saltier and spicier, and there is no Sesame chicken (sorry Liam.) Many desserts have taro, which is very sweet and purple. Pretty much all the noodle soups have a similar broth that's really spicy and dark colored, I'm not sure what the stock is made of though.

Yummy beef noodles

These spices are at every restaurant: spicy something and vinegar. In China, you eat dumplings with vinegar not soy sauce, and you can add the spicy stuff too (in the first picture, you can see my tiny bowl of vinegar.)
Also, the vinegar and spicy stuff can go in your soup, like the one above, if you have noodles or wontons.

The spices are totally different, but the food is really awesome. China doll is about to look less like a doll and more like a steamed dumpling with all this amazing food around!