Food, Food, Food

This is our fourth day in Beijing and the first we decided to brave the supermarket and actually buy groceries. We've been mainly buying snacks from vendors off the streets or going to restaurants (and since most meals come to a grand total of $5 for the both of us, it's not hard on our wallets). Our favorites so far have been fruit kabobs glazed with a kind of hard sugary syrup, like this:
They have a variety of them, but we liked the ones on the right, called Bing Tang Hu Lu, which is made of Hawthorne berries (had no clue what they were until we saw the English name for it in the store today). Apparently they're only in season in winter, so we better eat them up quick!

The food we've tried at restaurants have been kind of hit and miss. I don't know if it's because of our bodies still adjusting from the jet lag or what, but everything tastes really strong to us.

So we decided to finally buy stuff to do some homecooking. For most of the things in the grocery store, if it's not a clearly identifiable vegetable or meat, we have no clue what it is since everything will be marked in Mandarin. We ended up scouring the place for American food, and luckily found Lays potato chips and orange Fanta. The potato chips come in flavors like Finger Licking Braised Pork and Tomato Ketchup- no luck for our favorite Salt and Vinegar flavor. :( Other than that we got some big boxes of ramen (not sure of the flavors for those either), yogurt which looks like it has beat up cherries on the front, a large bottle of kiwi juice, potatoes, onion, sausage, and my new favorite: Bimbo chocolate filled croissant:

No, I'm not sure why the company's name is called Bimbo. Yes, it doesn't matter because it's delicious.

Oh and while we were there, an old man very happily tried to talk to us. Had no idea at all what he said but he seemed quite content to talk. We were at least able to introduce ourselves in Mandarin, though how well we did that, I'm not sure....

Dave was highly tempted to get the barbecued chicken feet we saw there as well, but by the time we had all our stuff we just wanted to go home. Once there, our fellow housemate discovered google's translation services and kindly asked us through her computer if we wanted help cooking. She helped us get the stove on and showed us where the salt and spices were, but other than that, Dave was mainly doing the cooking since he was making his family's standby of fried potatoes, onions, and sausage (although probably made for this first time in a wok). I saw the confused look on our housemate's face and am wondering if now she thinks that all American men do the cooking in the relationship. :/ Well, at least I did the dishes!

So now I am thinking I need to look up recipes for Chinese cooking. I know I'll want American food around the house too, but there's no way I'm going to live here for a year without expanding my tastes. I at least need to learn how to make sweet pork buns and sizzling rice soup!