Chinese Food Recipes

I'm thinking of Chinese food recipes again after being out of China for so long now. I lived in China for eight years. Who would think that one would have trouble with the food in China. We all love it! Right? Well, the food in China is quite different than the Chinese food here in the states. Did you know that fortune cookies don't exist in China? They were conceived in San Francisco some years ago.

Browsing around on some of the other hubs I've found that many hubbers enjoy hubbing on food and recipes. Following their lead, I plan on making a series of hubs on Chinese food recipes and some of my favorite dishes. As I post hubs on various recipes, I'll keep an index of them here.

Since most of you may not be aware of Chinese food as the Chinese know it, let me share some of what I learned when I lived there. First of all, the Chinese were starving for most of the 70's. My mother-in-law told me she was hungry for eight years straight and that she had eaten bark of the trees. Couldn't even nurse my now wife because she couldn't produce milk. Perhaps as a result of these years of starvation, Chinese now greet each other by say "Have you eaten?" Or, chi fan le me? I remember the first time my neighbor said that to me I thought he was inviting me to dinner. It took me a while to realize that's just how people greeted each other.

Food is really important to the Chinese. If a Chinese invites you to their house for dinner, be prepared to be impressed. Or on the other hand, if you invite a Chinese dinner, don't feed them macaroni and cheese. You had better produce something delicious.

Chinese hardly eat any processed foods. Though that is changing now that fast-food restaurants are popping up everywhere. They eat a lot of what we would think is bad for us, but they seem to make up for it by eating more fresh foods. Look in the cupboards in a Chinese kitchen and you won't see any food in boxes or cans.

Keep an eye on this page as I start to add Chinese food recipes. I'm not sure which one I'll put up here first. Do you have any ideas to help get us cooking?