MIL Meme Of The Day

I'm busy prepping for Thanksgiving tomorrow since I have to work all day. That leaves me with precious little time to whip up stuff when I get home. Jeremy will pick up a roast duck on his way home from work and I will throw together some sides. To save time, I've made our favorite chocolate lava cake in the rice cooker again. If you haven't made that, you need to, like, NOW. Seriously. You need it in your life. You'll thank me later. And I went ahead and hard-boiled the eggs that will become my deviled eggs. Mom sent me Stove Top stuffing and I'll make homemade mashed potatoes and creamed spinach. Easy peasy.

But as soon as I needed to wash something, I made a grisly discovery. And thus, a meme was born.

Seriously, can I just ask how hard is it to keep from getting the gloves filled with water? This is almost a daily occurrence with this nimrod. And it's not just a little bit of water...it's like water-balloon-fight full. Idiot.

She's also competing with Patrick's awful in-laws for the grossest MIL award because I found this...

On top of the vacuum (that she NEVER uses) and a garbage bin, she has a giant head of cabbage, a peeled squash, a bag of spinach and under that bag of spinach, a bag of cucumbers that you can't see because of the big yellow bag of spinach. WHY IS IT SO FUCKING HARD TO PUT THIS SHIT IN THE REFRIGERATOR?!?

This shit too. A half of a luo bo, an apple (a pretty busted one at that), a tomato and a quarter of a white onion. An interesting assembly indeed. Did she leave it out so I could chuck it at her head? She's lucky she left while I was busy with the baby or I just might have.

Even Crazier Chinese Road Construction

In July, I posted about some nutsy road construction they were doing on our street. You've seriously got to check it out. Go here for that. Well now, just a few months later, we have more insane road construction happening on our street. Check it out...

 If our building were in this photo, it would be to the left. I think I see a sliver of it behind that tree on the left side. Look at this busted-up road! It adds to the dumpy ambiance of this crappy neighborhood, the one my friend Andrea had dubbed "the part of Qingdao that time forgot." Seriously. When I look up and down our street, I KNOW I am in a third world country.

Anyway, to the right, in orange, you can see a worker laying bricks. Because they also tore up the whole sidewalk. Just because. Photos of that in a moment, but first...

 Here's more of the view down the street to the right of our building.

 Now I'm turning back toward our building. I'll just let these next few photos speak for themselves...

 They poked these holes into the asphalt. I am soooooooo happy our windows don't face this way. I shudder to think how noisy that would have been.

 The sidewalk as we're walking to our building. Or rather what was the sidewalk. Now it just looks like a war zone. They are laying the bricks you see from the giant stacks down right now. I think they are working around the clock on this. No kidding...they were at it when I woke up and looked out the window at 5:45am.

 Taken right in front of our building while my back is to our building.

A close-up of the rubble.

I shit you not, this is about the 10th time they've destroyed our street like this since I've been living here. I moved here in November of 2010. So yeah. They are ALWAYS doing this. Just when you think it's peaceful again, they start demolishing something else. And through traffic can just forget about it. The honking is enough to drive any person over the edge.

They also have these big piles of sand that they're using with the bricks and they have thoughtfully lined the side with the smashed up road bits with it so that it is nearly impossible for 2 cars to pass each other, making a drive down our street a total nightmare.

People that like living here don't live in our neighborhood. Maybe I'd like Qingdao if I didn't live in this neighborhood too. Or have in-laws like mine. Then again, maybe I should look at it positively...perhaps the construction crews were simply digging me a hole from China to the US. Oh how I wish. If only it were that simple!

I Am Not Alone

Have you ever read my blog and wondered if my Chinese in-laws are the only mess-making slobs or if other Chinese people behave similarly?

Well, wonder no more, because today's post revolves around a photo my friend/Western boss, Patrick, gave to me. See, we are both official members of the unofficial Chinese Spouse Club. Sometimes during our breaks, we wind up trading horror stories about our in-laws. I'm not sure who has worse in-laws...Patrick or me. I'll let you decide. One thing is crystal clear though as I scan our apartment for more dough in random places...I am not alone in my suffering of incompetent boob-brained Chinese in-laws reeking havoc on my personal habitat.

Let's take a look at this photo of Patrick's kitchen. He explained that he has given up on cleaning the kitchen because moments after he cleans it, it resembles Chernobyl once more, as shown below.

There is SO much to discuss about this! Where to start? The green onions and other assorted vegetables on the floor. And is that a cigarette I see?!? Random green pepper on the window sill. Oh look! They have a luo bo on the counter too! Garbage on the floor. Every dish in the cabinet out on the counter, probably with food in it and even more probably left out for days. Geez! Patrick, I feel your pain, bro.

Apparently, this is what his in-laws consider to be clean. Only in China! Also, Patrick's MIL has some foot condition and when he gets angry with her about something, his wife gets upset and worries that his telling her to clean up after herself will make her die. Just like MY husband worries about his mom breaking into pieces should I happen to ask her to not treat our home like a pigpen.

Even though Patrick has the aggravating task of hiring a replacement for me when we get approved for Jeremy's visa, I think he's secretly rooting for me to escape the hell that I must endure with my husband's parents. Meanwhile, Patrick is surely counting down the days until he and his family go to the US for winter vacation, aren't you? Thanks again for sharing your kitchen katastrophe with us!

Long Time, No Yuck

I've been up since 4:30am so I'm going to get right to the point.

May was the last time I found a yuck in our home. Not counting MIL's cooking. Yucks are generally hidden somewhere. Today's yuck was hidden in a cabinet, much like the first yuck.

Unfortunately, I have no photos of this. I was reaching into the cabinet, which, as it turns out, was the same cabinet I'd found the first yuck in, groping for a large Tupperware container to hold crab shells. See, MIL made crab for dinner, which was mighty kind of her, so we needed something we could toss the shells into as we ate. I grasp a rectangular one and yank it out and suddenly, SPLASH! My feet and the floor are bathed in some sort of liquid. It's opaque and slightly resembles chicken broth. There's no smell that I can detect and I'm surely not going to put my face close enough to check it out. I scream. Jeremy runs in and sees it. He just shakes his head and tosses me a rag. Shouldn't he be the one cleaning up after his troll mother? Yeesh. What the hell was that in there anyway? Someone help me.

But wait...there's more! After dinner, I have Raelynn clean up. I'm helping her and that's when I discover THIS on my sofa:

What. The. Fuck. Do you know what this is?

It's d'oh! I mean DOUGH! Yes, dough. Stupid cow left a blob of dough on my sofa when she was making her baozi (those retched steamed stuffed bun things).

Dough.

How does one leave shit like this on someone's sofa? I'm not upset about the sofa as it's pleather and coming apart. I'm just upset that I seriously almost sat in it and that she makes messes like this and couldn't be bothered to clean it up. No, no. Really, that's ok. I'll just work all day after getting up at 4:30 in the fucking morning to feed a baby and put her back down to sleep and have her wake up 30 minutes later wanting to eat her little hands and roll over and laugh and play and all kinds of cute shit while I feel like I might drop dead from the exhaustion AND THEN I'll clean up after you because Lord knows you can't possibly put the baby down in the crib for 1 minute to clean that up. Or do that while she sleeps. Oh no. It's so hard FOR YOU to watch a baby AND cook food.

And you know what sucks? She left one of her ugly scarfs on the sofa because heaven forbid she would use the fucking coat rack by the door and I was thisclose to using it to wipe up the dough. I should have just done it but me and my big mouth had to tell Jeremy what I was plotting to do and although he laughed, he turned to me quite seriously and told me not to do that. Ruin my fucking fun why don't you? Gah!!!!

The Good Stuff

I always liked Chinese food growing up. When we went to our favorite Chinese restaurant, which was a place right around the corner called Jade Garden, I was always delighted. I loved the shrimp with lobster sauce. If you ask my brother and my dad, they'll have slightly less found memories because I didn't want to share my shrimp with anyone. If they tried to take a shrimp from my plate, I cried. Sounds like Raelynn, huh? Anyway, I still get teased about this. Except when they come visit me IN China because at least here in Qingdao, there is no shrimp with lobster sauce.

Yes, Chinese food in America is quite Americanized. But that doesn't mean that all of it is made up to pander to our American palates.

You might think based on my Someone Made Me Eat This posts that I dislike authentic Chinese food. True that I grow weary of it if I have to eat it daily, I truly like Chinese food. When it's prepared properly. And we've seen how MIL prepares it. Jeremy laughs every time I tell him his mother makes me hate Chinese food. And he also smiles big when I tell him he makes me fall back in love with it.

My husband knows a thing or two about flavors. Plus he's lived abroad in Korea before and he's eaten food from other countries. So when he cooks, he really makes things taste good. I wish he'd show his mom how to cook.

Sure, she makes some things good. Her dumplings are pretty good, especially the ones she makes with leeks and pork. But I hate that she uses the flour that she uses. It makes everything taste very gummy and glutenousy. Jeremy once didn't understand my complaint about the flour. Why couldn't I use it to make pie crust or bread or all the other stuff I wanted to make with it? Why did he need to buy more flour when we had a giant sack of it? Now he knows better. But she still doesn't. She insists the flour she buys is the best. Of course she does.

On weekends, we like to go out for a meal. We're mostly saving our money for America, but we can afford to eat out somewhere at least once a week. Places that serve Western food are usually much more expensive so unless it's a special occasion or I'm dying for something I can't make at home, we usually go out for Chinese food.

Even though MIL cooks for us 4 days a week, I really don't mind going out for Chinese on a Sunday afternoon. Because we always go somewhere good. Like the Sichuan place.

That's what I call it. There are tons of Sichuan restaurants here. This one is close to Minjiang Road. It's always got gobs of people in it. My friend Jon and his wife introduced it to us and we keep going back because it's really quite good. They've got lots of spicy things, which is why we're thinking of taking my parents there when they visit in February, if it's still open during the Chinese New Year that is. If I want to eat there, I just tell my husband "The Sichuan Place" and he knows what I want.

Sometimes, I simply request barbecue. Chinese barbecue is so popular in Qingdao. There are lots of good places. I just let Jeremy use his expertise as most of them can be dirty. And by that, I don't mean the floors (most places in China have dirty floors) but the food. My husband says that many barbecue places will use rotting meat or lie about where the meat came from. He looks for places where you can see the kitchen and where it's very crowded. We're currently trying to decide which place will be open during the Chinese New Year because squid on a stick and beer will make my dad the happiest daddy ever.

But my favorite of the casual Chinese places in Qingdao is without a doubt the one I call "Ugly But Delicious." This place rules.

Excuse the craptacular photo. I was sitting in the car with the children while my husband ran in to get an order of dumplings on our way home from church the other day. I'll get to those in a moment.

This place is called Jiaozi Guan, which Jeremy says basically means "House of Dumplings." It has other stuff too. It's a hole in the wall, as my folks would call it, but if we have a chance, we'd love to take them here. The decor is blah and the floors are often scary but the food is served up by a chef that's quite famous in Qingdao. I admit, the first time my husband took us here, I was very skeptical. Then I took a bite of the food. Since then, I often request we eat at this place.

They have pepper steak, which you'll find in Chinese restaurants in America and it is SO good. The Sichuan Place I mentioned before also has that dish but this place does it much better, much cheaper and gives you a larger portion too.

Because of MIL, I feel kind of blah about dumplings now. Unless we get them from here. Especially if they are filled with cucumber and egg. I know, I know. That sounds barfy but let me just tell you how fanfreakingtastic those are. I am entirely serious when I say they are the best dumplings I've ever had.

Unlike MIL, they use a good flour and they focus on the filling, not the wrapping. When Jeremy told his mother how wonderful these dumplings are and how we like that the casing is so light and not too thick she told him that they were being cheap for not using enough flour. I'm not joking. I laughed so hard I cried. Even Jeremy laughed. God, she's hilarious, right? Yes, that's it. Because flour is so expensive. NOT! MIL flies through flour and oil like the world is coming to an end and she needs to use it all in one night.

Anyway, if you're in Qingdao and reading this, Jiaozi Guan is on Jiangxi Road. Take a Chinese person with you if you cannot read or speak Chinese as the menu is completely in Chinese with no photos. It's worth it though, I promise. Amazing food, and great prices too.

Oh, there is one more thing I've found to love about food here in China. And that's these little snack sandwiches. We had them at a barbecue place not too long ago and I fell in love with them. While out shopping in Taidong the other day, Jeremy saw a place selling them and picked us up some to try. He watched as they were prepared, mentally taking notes so he could try to make them for us at home. The ones he bought us were really delicious. That night, Jeremy made us some more.

 Here's Jeremy's Chinese sandwich after a few bites. Very tasty!

 My husband, the sandwich model.

Mmm...mmm...mmm! That's one tasty sandwich! It's slow-cooked pork chopped up with onions and peppers. Only we didn't have onions and peppers so he left that out this time. It was still good though, but I am looking forward to his next batch. Thanks for helping me enjoy Chinese food again, Honey! I love you!

Busted!

Wanted for uncivilized behavior: this stupid woman...

My husband snapped these photos while we were out in Taidong on Saturday. What you are looking at is a woman holding her child over a sewage grate so the little girl can pee. IN FRONT OF A RESTAURANT. Which likely has a bathroom.

Yes, this is not in some remote place, far from any buildings. This is on a busy street lined with eateries. And they have bathrooms within.

Here is a better angle so you can see what this lazy woman is up to. Why do people still do this here?!? Totally nasty. As a mom, I'd absolutely have sympathy if there was no place containing a bathroom around but as you can see in these photos, that is simply not the case.

It boggles my mind that people STILL do this here. WHY?!? Please stop! Gah!!!

Someone Made Me Eat This: S.O.S. Help Me

I haven't done a S.M.M.E.T. post in a while. I've just been too lazy to keep track of all the crappy food MIL makes for us. Thankfully, none of it has been as THIS meal. Lately, she's made things I like but the problem is she makes those same things over and over. Like every day. To the point where I just want to cry. If I wasn't breastfeeding, I was just starve myself, but Seoul needs me to eat, and thus, my torture begins.

Today I decided that no matter what, I'd be sure to photograph our meal. So here you go...

 Augh! What is that? Vomit soup? No, it's just MIL's cabbage and egg soup. It looks far more disgusting than it tastes, which I guess is a positive. Still, it's not anything I seek out to eat and I resent being told it's delicious and I have to eat it. Tell me it's delicious and I have to eat it one more time and watch how quickly you will be wearing it.

 Um...what? Are those random picked-clean bones in there? It's scary, isn't it? It kind of reminds me of the owl barf pellets that we had to pick through in middle school science class.

What's extra funny about this is that last Sunday, I'd made roasted chicken with vegetables using the poultry seasoning my mom sent. It was perfect and Jeremy and Raelynn devoured it. Jeremy told me 5 times while he was still in the process of eating it that I should make it again as soon as possible. So I did yesterday but with pork because MIL has been overdoing it with the chicken lately. And again, it was heavenly. I guess my husband relayed this information to his mother who did her best to duplicate my special Sunday dinner.

Can't blame her for trying, can I? The good news is that it only looks disgusting. It tasted great (though nowhere near as wonderful as mine did). The bones you see are from the chicken she cooked in there, which she cut up into pieces and scattered throughout the dish. Why leave the bones then? So weird, but then again, so is she.

 Close-up of chicken bone. Mmmm...not!

And here we have fried and greasy fish with lots of bones in it. I hate how people eat these tiny fish here. I'd use this to catch a big fish. The worse part is my husband makes me eat it because "fish is good for you." Yes, that's true, when it's not fried in gallons of oil. At least he picks out the bones for me. But I resent having to eat this. I like cooking and it makes me happy when I get to cook and eat things that I like. Instead, 4 days a week I am forced to eat Chinese food, which I used to like until I had to eat her substandard retchtacular puke on a plate. When Jeremy cooks or we go out to a good Chinese place, it's amazing how much happier I am to eat the cuisine from this country. I promise I'll blog about that very soon but for now, Mommy duties are calling.