ROAST MEAT, TEA DINING HALLS, AND GARBAGE NOODLES

A conversation yesterday with a nutritionist may have left her hungry, and me slightly depressed. Largely because I had very good ammunition. We were speaking about ways I should eat better. No, we didn't even touch on the helpful advice of various self-acknowledged experts that apple cider vinegar and turmeric would solve all my problems and cleanse the world, or the recommendation that I should cut gluten and doing so would make me radiantly healthy. Damned well saintly, glowing aura and sh*t.
Or that Vegans are spiritually superior.
We settled on cookies.

Baby steps.

The cookies are between my apartment mate's laptop on mine on the table in the television room. At present there are three different delicious kinds there. Sometimes there's up to ten different kinds of cookie, just sitting there in their containers, whispering "liberate me, big boy, you know you want to", and shaking a chocolate chip suggestively.

Cookies.


甜餅乾
['tim beng gon']

We Dutch invented cookies. Both my apartment mate and the nutritionist are Chinese. They invented Cantonese Roast Duck, which is delicious and tender and juicy and has both a sweetness and a savoury quality and is wonderful by itself or over rice.

Cookies, sweet or savoury dry biscuits, flaky stuff, and crunchy snack things, are a presence in every Cantonese home. Because, you know.
You might be peckish. The grandkids could visit. Someone returned from a long journey. Angst.




香港飲食
['Heung Kong yam-sik']

My conversational input included all the ways things could go somewhat astray. Tea Dining Halls and Garbage Noodles, plus bakeries, coffee shops, snackiepoos, and what have you. Seeing as it was close to lunch time, and not having had breakfast all of this was at the top on my mind.


茶餐廳
['chaa chaan teng']

What I'm calling a 'Tea Dining Hall' is the chachanteng, a typical Hong Kong institution, where the emphasis is on a cup of strong black tea with sweet condensed milk, and a menu rich in easy to make high calorie foods that may send your cholesterol through the roof. Stuff with cheese and butter and white sauce. Fried noodles, casseroles, pork chops.

Or "French Toast". Thick, battered, fried. With sweet drizzles over.


垃圾麵
['laap saap min']

Garbage Noodles are pasta plus whatevers. Which may include fish balls, curry, various vegetables, soup stock, roast or preserved meats, and maybe a fried egg on top. And other fried things.

Garbage Noodles used to be what people threw together late at night while watching a sixty part soap opera with lots of weeping, lots of relatives of the main characters experiencing all kinds of drama and hardship, and lots of tender moments involving people who would never get to marry each other or achieve happiness. They were done commercially by street side culinary experts who often did not have the necessary permits for food preparation.

Over the past few decades those cooks have been forced indoors, and the number of optional things you can add has increased enormously. Various cuts of already cooked meat or offal. Sausage. Pork balls. Fish balls.
Several different vegetables. Hot sauce, curry sauce, oyster sauce.

Garbage Noodles are, of course, an affectionate nickname.



營養學
['ying yeung hok']

The nutritionist (營養師 'ying yeung si') works at Chinese Hospital (東華醫院 'tung waa yi yuen'), my doctor suggested that I talk to her. She has her work cut out for her. Most of her clientele may very well be elderly and stubborn, and within several blocks of her office the opportunities for backsliding or lapsing are legion, flamboyantly tempting!
Bakeries, chachanteng, lunch counters, Chinese bakeries, and shops with a huge variety of cookies and biscuits imported from Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Shanghai.


燒味
['siu mei']

Even within a mere two blocks, there are four places where delicious Cantonese roast duck (燒鴨 'siu ngaap'), barbecue pork (叉燒 'chaa siu'), and roast meat (燒肉 'siu yiuk') may be had. Plus soy sauce chicken (豉油雞 'si yau gai') or poached chicken perhaps lightly flavoured with sesame oil and ginger (白切雞 'paak chit gai'). Four blocks, and you also have roast goose (燒鵝 'siu ngoh'') and marinated "stuff" (滷味 'lo mei').



身體保健
['san tai bou gin']

Osteoporosis (骨質疏鬆症 'gwat jat so sung jing'; "bone substance loss and loosened ailment"), high cholesterol (高膽固醇 'gou daam go seun'), and sugar pee disease (糖尿病 'tong niu beng'; diabetes) are of course major concerns of old folks eating unwisely.

And, in America, young people living on fastfood, chips, and soda.



It is getting towards lunch time. Chinatown is only a few blocks away.
Two of the places where I like to eat are closed on Wednesday, but at least a dozen others are open for business, and I can think of at least ten places which have Hong Kong Milk Tea.




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