Someone Made Me Eat This: Weekly Roundup

If you've missed my previous Someone Made Me Eat This posts, please click here to catch up on the barfy things I've been served for dinner by MIL.

This week, I decided to roll everything into one post because I've been hellabusy with my last week of work before maternity leave and just because I'm too pregnant to figure out which photos went with which day. I'll do my best to guess.

So let's see what MIL shat up in my kitchen, shall we?

Here we have an egg and leek dish. It's very ugly but it actually tastes good. Not the kind of thing I crave or decide, "Hey, you know what I really want to eat? That egg and leek thing. THAT is EXACTLY what I want for my birthday dinner." Yeah, not!

This scared me. Seriously. I did not want to go anywhere near it. Would you? I think I see some shrimp in there with those potatoes, and some weird, boney meat thing. I couldn't even bring myself to snag some potatoes out of there. It just needs to go away. Ugh. 

Fairly typical, for this province at least, a dish of cucumbers with crushed garlic, sesame oil and vinegar. It's not at all bad, but if you are served this at just about every meal as I am, it gets tiring. You might recall already seeing this in a previous post for the Someone Made Me Eat This category.

 This dish has potatoes, carrots, shrimp and cucumbers. I must declare right now that I absolutely fucking hate it when people cook cucumbers. They taste like wet farts. Not that I regularly dine on wet farts, mind you (unless all this food is considered into the wet fart category, then sure) but the smell and taste of cooked cucumbers makes me gag. Not like we don't have a bowl of cucumbers swimming in cloves of crushed garlic just adjacent to this. Why even put the cucumbers in here? It's annoying. And not delicious.

Here's something pleasant: steamed clams. Yay!

 And chicken wings. I can dig it. Of course, mine are better than hers, but she still does a good job making them.

Ok, this one was definitely on another night. It's a potato dish with clams in it. Oh and scary bits of meat. What bugs me about the clams being in there is that she served up a plate of steamed clams. So why put random clams in there? Leave the clams alone!

 See? Steamed clams. Perfect as-is. Stop throwing them into random dishes, MIL!

 Gah! What is this mess? Oversalted, over-soy-sauced meat and beans. Retchy-retch.

Oh egg and leek thing! Thank God you're back tonight! You saved me from having to eat that freakish mystery meat and beans dish!

 Oh look! It's cucumbers in garlic again. Yes, AGAIN. I hate being served the same things daily. It's not like it's leftovers that need to be used up. She makes this fresh each time. Can't you think of another way to serve the cucumbers? Oh, that's right...the only other way you can think up is to cook them with potatoes, shrimp and carrots. Of course!

 Roasted chicken from the market. This is always good. But you know what's not? The scary feet and head which you can't see from this angle. I didn't know until MIL flipped the bird over to pull apart some meat and there I saw its' cadaverous face gazing up at me. As I screamed in terror - not because I'd never been subjected to this gruesomeness in all my time in China but because I thought it had already been removed - I was also treated to the freaky feet which were tucked neatly into the bird. I totally needed to find my happy place after that.

 Xifan. My new trick to avoiding eating this tasteless mush is to claim I'm full.

These are called lu bao. I like them but as you can see, they are fried. So I try not to eat many of them. Fried things give my pregnant ass heartburn like you wouldn't believe. Inside, there's vegetables and ground pork. It's really quite tasty. Probably one of the tastiest things MIL makes. Problem is she likes to serve this a lot too which makes me less happy to see them. Oh and note the small bowl of xifan off to the right. Eat this and it's good for your stomach, MIL tells me. Oh, sorry MIL! Wo chi bo le (I am full).

Steamed clams. Again. Still delicious but I want some variety. She buys these fresh so why can't she buy something else fresh? Oh well. At least she can't fuck these up.

OMFG. Please STOP with the cucumbers and garlic. JUST STOP. She actually told me tonight that this will make me strong. Is that why she keeps serving it? Augh. Please, MIL, I totally appreciate the help. Really, I do. Thank you for cooking so that I can take a nap after work. But please, in the name of all that is holy, make some other dishes. PLEASE. I cannot eat the same things over and over and over. It is not in MY culture. I like lots of different things and while I don't expect you to suddenly turn out award-winning pizza or rack of lamb, I would really really REALLY love it if you could put more dishes into your rotation of crap you cook for us. Thanks!