Response to food journals

Many students like drinking soda, and tea but also some milk and coffee. Some of them eat a lot of French files and males prefer meat meals. A glass of water is beneficial after waking up so some people always do it. Time of meals is always depending to their schedule. They often eat a simple meal for breakfast or even lunch but have a better and magnificent meal like Chinese food for dinner.

Food Journal

On Thursday, May 10^th, I woke up at 11.50 am and I had a class from 12 to 3 so I didn't eating anything but drink a cup of water after waking up. In the afternoon about 5 pm, I went to Jason’s Thai with my friends and ate the mutton pot, spicy chicken and pork ribs with a glass of Thai tea.  At night about 10 pm I went to the shop and got a Pepsi and an ice tea.

On Friday, May 11^th, I woke up at 11.20 am and went to the dining hall for lunch. I ate a chicken sandwich and some French files with a glass of apple juice. After the class on Friday, I went back to my room and made myself a cup of green tea about 3 pm. At 6 pm on Friday, I went to the dining hall and get a chicken sandwich, a piece of pizza and some broccoli with a glass of Sprite as my drink. At night at about 11 pm, I went to the vending machine and bought a Pepsi because the shop was closed.

On Saturday, May 12^th, I made myself a cup of coffee at 3 am and then drank some water at 5 am before I went to bed. I woke up very late at 7 pm so that I just ordered some food from the East Asia Garden for braised chicken and some chili and sour potato as the dishes. And also I ate some rice at the same time. Later on, at about 10 pm, I went downstairs and bought a bottle of Crush which is the orange favor.

Sheep and mutton: most ancient provider with culture in different nations

Sheep and mutton: most ancient provider with culture in different nations

Food is something that people need every day but now people only can see the food not the ingredient. American people pay a lot of attentions to the energy and the convenience to the food but I pay more attentions to the taste. Sometimes, I chose to go to Jason’s Thai, the nearest Chinese restaurant which is almost located beside the DU campus so my friends and I often go or order something for meals. There is also some American food or Japanese food like Sushi, but we just go for the traditional Chinese food there. One of my favorite dishes is the mutton pot. There is delicious Chinese vermicelli inside and also the mutton in small pieces. A mutton pot with some rice can always make me satisfied after the work whole day but it reminds me of my hometown as well.

As we know, mutton is the meat come from the sheep. It is one of the most common meats in people’s daily lives. Mostly, this meat is from the sheep older that one year but nowadays over two years. The sheep are its most ancient provider of meat to human beings. In the United States, most sheep are eaten as lamb which means the small sheep which are younger than one year old. “In the United States, most lamb is grain fed, which gives it a milder flavor.” Because the requirement of the meat market is really large today and the wild lambs cannot satisfy people’s requirement: if hunting too much wild animals, it will lead the species to become extinguished which may destroy the balance of species and food chain. We don’t want any species go die out so the price of wild animals is getting higher and most people eat the grain-fed animals just like the sheep. There lambs are always between 70 and 100 pounds. “Mutton, the meat of mature sheep, is more popular in Britain and Europe than in the United States.”  I found that mutton is also popular in China and there are several kinds of famous mutton soup and mutton shashlik in China. Just like the one in my hometown, Suzhou. There is a small town called Cangshu which is famous for the mutton. We have mutton festival in that town in winter and attract a lot of people’s attention and taste.

About 11,000 years ago or even earlier, the sheep were tamed by the nomadic people in the Middle East and Asia people. As people in different parts of the world got to know each other, people bring sheep to the countries all over the world, just like moving to the Europe and then were brought to the American. Sheep also appeared in the early European religious and mythological writing and history. “In Ancient Egypt, the ram was the symbol of several gods. In Greek mythology Jason pursued the Golden Fleece. The Abraham of the Bible and Torah sacrificed a ram instead of his son.” This is like an evidence of the culture and history of sheep in Europe which is relative to the religious and mythological and can stand for the special meaning in people in mind in the ancient years. This is a symbol of the early understanding and relationship of human beings and sheep. Furthermore, there is also some culture in early history in China. People know that they are twelve animals in Chinese culture means the Chinese zodiac. Moreover, there were some ancient Chinese bronze ware are designed with the shape of Sheep’s head before more than 3,000 years ago. These examples can both mean the sheep has significant meanings and influences to the Chinese people.

The sheep and lambs production is all over the United States and seasonal. “This is mostly due to the fact that lambs exhibit seasonal estrus, meaning that most breeds only breed during one time of the year, which is usually in the fall during the long days.” The older sheep can breed in the fall so they are only a period of time that comes up a lot of sheep babies. However, this characteristic will lead to be only one kind of sheep in a year. As to get a good breed of sheep, they need to select the good breed from a several kinds and take some experiment to get the advantages or disadvantages to get the best one which can produce the most meat with high efficiency. Usually, sheep are in the farmlands and have the machine with technology to produce meat in a long process, they have long steps and every machine has its own job like cutting the wools and bleeding.

Mutton is very healthy and has a lot of nutrition which can help people feel warm in the cold days. It is beneficial to people’s Spleen and kidney and can help the lying-in woman. However, there is a strange smell and state of the mutton which stops a lot of people from eating or even trying then. Overall, mutton is a good source of meat eater which is better and healthier than pork and beef I think, especially in the winter days.

P7:Response to Pollan’s “An Animal’s Place,” the introduction to Estabrook’s Tomatoland, and the infographic by Cook.

In the three articles this time, all of them are about the food resources and materials. In "An Animal's Place", which is written by Michael Pollan, the author pointed out the relationship between human beings and animals. As people eating a lot of meat every day, they hunt animal for food. Even if some vegetarians stop eating meat from animals there are still a large number of meat requirements every day. However, animals are easy to die in the wild world, people can provide them a better place to live and feed them food. Animals also provide productions for people and it helps both of people and animal. And it seems no too bad. The second article, introduction of “On the Tomato Trail”, is about the conditions and environment of food just like tomatoes. The author shows the difference on the taste and appearance between the tomatoes in different years. Moreover, the tomatoes in the same years which are grown in different places are also different in taste and appearance and all the characteristics of the tomatoes can show the environment of the place that grows the tomatoes. In the last article, “Fowl Trouble”, Cook talked about the harm and problems of the broiler chicken in recent society. The chicken is getting bigger than those in the past. The requirement of the market leads the production of chicken into a new one, which is dangerous for the workers in the process of production and checking. Some of the workers even became disabled because of the infection. I found the most noteworthy thing is the danger of the workers because that is the problem I have never thought about and I already known the other point just like the different environment of food leads the different characteristics and the new production of food due to the market requirement in some common senses, researches and news.

Response to "Our National Eating Disorder"

In the article “Our National Eating Disorder” which is written by Michael Pollan, the author pointed out the unhealthy diet and wrong eating habits in American people’s daily lives. These habits make their daily diet in a mess with disorder which means the people follow the wrong things that they should follow like the energy. The reason of having the disordered diet is that they listen to all kinds of reports and articles with believing these theories there. Every time there comes a new report or article; people may change and listen to it without their own thinking. As a big country without a long history, the United States do not have enough culture of food. Because all the food there is brought by the immigration, there are too many kinds of food for people to choice but none of the food is their own food. They listened to people in other places and follow the theories that they used in the past but obsolete now. Actually, a large number of food is not tasty at all and they don’t have high energy just like the vegetables. Because of the rule of convenience, a lot of Americans just hurry up to save time for their work and only pay attention to the food which can provide energy. The lack of other nutrition is serious and leads their bodies to get over weight. For me, I really pay attention to the taste of food and enjoy the food I like such as pork and chocolate. However, I still insist on eating some vegetables to keep my body healthy. 

Food and culture: food in different places with different table manners

Food and culture: food in different places with different table manners

Food and culture are always relative in our society. Food in every country is usually different from any other ones with the different ways of eating food and the tools for eating standing for the history and the culture of the country. People in different countries have different traditional food so they prefer different favors and tastes of food, so is China. China is one of the countries in the world which has the longest history of more than 5,000 years so the food history and culture are plentiful enough to get Chinese special characteristics.

As we know, China is a big country with large land area and huge population. People divided the country into several provinces and all the provinces have their own special taste of dishes. The food in different two provinces taste like two opposite favors even sometimes they are close to each other. However, we can get the food from other provinces without travelling: there are a large number of restaurant which provide the food from other cities in China. Because of the huge population, we can see Chinese and Chinese restaurant almost everywhere. In Denver, there are so many Chinese restaurants there that remind people of the delicious Chinese food with the food culture. But most of the American people just think all of the Chinese restaurants are the same. Actually, food in different restaurants which were set up by different people from different provinces in China is in different styles. For example, Golden Shanghai, my favorite Chinese restaurant in Denver, has the Shanghai favor and style of food. Because of the location of my hometown, Suzhou, a modern city with the newest technology of development which is really close to Shanghai, so the food there can always remind me of the food in my hometown.

Food and taste can always represent the culture of an area just like the location, history and the development of it. As an economy center of China, the culture of Shanghai is getting from the traditional old Shanghai into a new Shanghai with the combination of the characteristics all round the world. This can be expressed perfectly on the food: Shanghai food is changed into the style of a combination of the food across the whole China. I think Shanghai food is like the traditional Jiangnan food which is like the one in my hometown, Suzhou with the food such as the steamed fish without the heavy taste. In the traditional way of cooking, people cook the whole fish after some cleaning and only add some salt and wine to keep the natural favor and taste of the fish. This is kind of the original cooking method which lasts for a long period of time. In my memory, I was told that Suzhou has a long history of over 2,500 years so the people just keep using this method of cooking fish even now. However, after eating it, you can get the taste in your mouth and get the feeling clearly, that could be a reason why people insist using this method of cooking. Fish is always popular in Shanghai because Shanghai lies near the Huangpu River, people can get fresh fish and shrimps easily that eating fish becomes a habit on table that Shanghai people always prepare some fish for big meals. However, people in other parts of China cooking other kinds of fish with the same material, for example, the people in Sichuan province enjoy hot and spicy favor so they put a lot of chili while cooking the fish. They cut the fish into several middle-sized pieces instead of steam the whole fish. And then, they boiled these pieces of fish in a big pot with the spicy soup and the chili in it. Not only fish, but also other dishes like the chicken potatoes and the meat are also spicy and hot there. The reasons of eating spicy food are probably two causes. Firstly, I think this place is always humid and cool, so eating hot and spicy can keep people warm in cold days. The second reason may be about the traditional habit and some story of the ancient people makes the local people enjoy hot and spicy food. In Shanghai, all these spicy Sichuan food is easy to find in the city but there is still some difference between the Sichuan restaurant in Shanghai and the real Sichuan food. I believe the food in local families and restaurants is the best and the food from a long distance, for example, the Chinese food in the US is like the fake one compared the real Chinese food. Since the development of technology and economy of Shanghai, a large number of immigrants from other parts of China become new citizens in Shanghai. These people are mostly looking for jobs or going to work in Shanghai but some of them are like the chance catcher for making money such as running a restaurant. These people just want to make money so they may cook for tasks: they don’t really take care of their food and don’t have enough passion and patient while cooking which makes the quality of food is not good as the traditional food. Also, by staying in another city for a long time, they won’t remember everything about the food in their memory; this becomes a big problem which leads the taste of these restaurants getting worse. That means the quality of the same type of food can also represent the emotion and the effort of the cook.

Not only the food itself can represent the culture but also the ways of eating is a symbol of the culture. For example, table manners. In western countries, people use knives and forks to cut the meat into small pieces and eat. They think eating a big piece of food which is even bigger that the mouth is a kind of impoliteness on the table. In China, people all use chopsticks to eat instead of knives and forks and they can get the food easily even some small round pieces like the peanuts. In my memory, I can use chopsticks easily when I was a young child and I cannot even remember that I have ever got a hard training of using chopsticks. The Chinese name for chopsticks has changed over time. It is believed the first chopsticks were developed over 5000 years ago in China. Early Asian man would retrieve his food from the fire using sticks or branches broken from trees. Later, as the population grew and resources became scarce, people would cut food into smaller pieces to save fuel because the smaller portions cooked faster. This eliminated the need for knives, and chopsticks became the utensil of choice. It is also showed that a pair of chopsticks is a symbol of Chinese history and culture because of its position in China: “Originally known as jia (to hold), the utensil assumed the name zhu around the Qin–Han period (221 BCE–220 CE). Zhu, however, is homophonous (having the same pronunciation) as stop or bore (by insects). The Chinese, especially those who boated in the south, considered the word unlucky and replaced it with a word sounding like kuai, a homophone of quick, sometime during the Qing Dynasty” in the Chinese long history. Moreover, my families told me that while eating but not using the chopstick, for example, while drinking the soup, we cannot insert the chopsticks into the bowl of rice but we have to put the chopsticks beside the bowl or lying on the bowl.

However, only a pair of chopsticks is not enough to get all the food. Sometimes people have to get the liquid soups or the very soft food like Tofu, they still use spoons. However, we never use forks and knives and even plates in the traditional Chinese meal. We can get the food by chopsticks on the table easily instead of forks and it is fine to hold a big piece of food with your hand while eating especially for the big piece of meat with bones. We have bowls full of rice and people put the food on the bowl instead of a plate. While drinks a bowl of soup, we just use a big spoon to get some soup from the big pot into our own bowl and start enjoying the soup. People have two ways of drinks soup: with a spoon or just hold the bowl and drink it. Both of them are fine in China and Chinese always think that males should eat a lot. If males eat too smoothly, they will be thought about being womanish and this really a bad impression of a man in China. Chinese like sharing food, and parents always ask their children to eat with their families. Family meal is a significant part of Chinese people’s life. Usually, the seats are in ordered so people should sit in order with their ages and positions in the family. On the table, People sit around a round desk and they eat the same food. When sometimes, more than ten people eat together on the table, they may use a big table with a piece of moveable glasses on it so people do not have to worry about the distance between his body and the dishes. Furthermore, Chinese food is always in order. Because of not having the mode of fast food, not only the food is complicated but also the eating steps are complex. People have cold dishes at the very beginning and then have some meat and vegetables. At last, they may have a big pot of soup and eating the rice.

To sum up, as can be seen from the article, food is relative to the culture because it can kind of represent the culture. In China, the tastes of the food made from the same materials are usually different because people there use different method of cooking. The different favor they prefer shows the Geographical Conditions of the cities. The location of some city leads the cold climate so they may eat hot and spicy food, on the other hand, like Shanghai, as being the center of the economy with the development of technology, more and more people move to this place and bring their culture there. A lot of culture from different place mix together which shows that you can get almost any styles of food in Shanghai. Eating ways and steps are also an importance part of food culture. People in China eat with chopsticks instead of forks and knives. They always sit around a big round table in their traditional meals and share the food from large pot or plate. People eating with complicated that is really opposite to the American fast food style and they prefer the males eat a lot. All the characteristics about eating just like the chopsticks are symbols of Chinese culture and can remind people of Chinese long history. Also, it makes me miss my hometown so much.

Work Cited:

"Chopsticks." Berkshire Encyclopedia of China: Modern and Historic Views of the World's Newest and Oldest Global Power. Great Barrington: Berkshire Publishing Group, 2009. Credo Reference. Web. 01 May 2012.

                                                                              

Food and culture: Table manners and the difference between the same food

Food and culture are always relative in our society. Food in every country is usually different from any other ones and can stand for the history and the culture of the country. People in different countries have different traditional food so they prefer different favors and tastes of food, so is China. China is one of the countries in the world which has the longest history for more than 5,000 years so the food history and culture are plentiful enough to get Chinese special characteristics.

As we know, China is a big country with large land area and huge population. People divided the country into several provinces and all the provinces have their own special taste of dishes. The food in different two provinces taste like two opposite favors even sometimes they are close to each other. However, we can get the food from other provinces without travelling: there are a large number of restaurant which provide the food from other cities in China. Because of the huge population, we can see Chinese and Chinese restaurant almost everywhere. In Denver, there are so many Chinese restaurants there that remind people of the delicious Chinese food and the food culture. But most of the American people just think all of the Chinese restaurants are the same. Actually, food in different restaurants which were set up by different people from different provinces in China is in different styles. For example, Golden Shanghai, my favorite Chinese restaurant in Denver, has the Shanghai favor and style of food. Because of the location of my hometown, Suzhou, a modern city with the newest technology of development which is really close to Shanghai, so the food there can always remind me of the food in my hometown.

Food and taste can always represent the culture of an area just like the location, history and the development of it. As an economy center of China, the culture of Shanghai is getting from the traditional old Shanghai into a new Shanghai with the combination of the characteristics all round the world. This can be expressed perfectly on the food: Shanghai food is changed into the style of a combination of the food across the whole China. I think Shanghai food is like the traditional Jiangnan food which is like the one in my hometown, Suzhou such as the steamed fish without the heavy taste. In the traditional way of cooking, people cook the whole fish after some cleaning and only add some salt and wine to keep the natural favor and taste of the fish. This is kind of the original cooking method which lasts for a long period of time. In my memory, I was told that Suzhou has a long history of over 2,500 years so the people just keep using this method of cooking fish even now. However, after eating it, you can get the taste in your mouth and get the feeling clearly, that could be a reason why people insist using this method of cooking. Fish is always popular in Shanghai because Shanghai lies near the Huangpu River, people can get fresh fish and shrimps easily that eating fish becomes a habit on table that Shanghai people always prepare some fish for big meals. However, people in other parts of China cooking other kinds of fish with the same material, for example, the people in Sichuan province enjoy hot and spicy favor so they put a lot of chili while cooking the fish. They cut the fish into several middle-sized pieces instead of steam the whole fish. And then, they boiled these pieces of fish in a big pot with the spicy soup and the chili in it. Not only fish, but also other dishes like the chicken potatoes and the meat are also spicy and hot there. The reasons of eating spicy food are probably two causes. Firstly, I think this place is always humid and cool, so eating hot and spicy can keep people warm in cold days. The second reason may be about the traditional habit and some story of the ancient people makes the local people enjoy hot and spicy food. In Shanghai, all these spicy Sichuan food is easy to find in the city but there is still some difference between the Sichuan restaurant in Shanghai and the real Sichuan food. I believe the food in local families and restaurants is the best and the food from a long distance, for example, the Chinese food in the US is like the fake one compared the real Chinese food. Since the development of technology and economy of Shanghai, a large number of immigrants from other parts of China become new citizens in Shanghai. These people are mostly looking for jobs or going to work in Shanghai but some of them are like the chance catcher for making money such as running a restaurant. These people just want to make money so they may cook for tasks: they don’t really take care of their food and don’t have enough passion and patient while cooking which makes the quality of food is not good as the traditional food. Also, by staying in another city for a long time, they won’t remember everything about the food in their memory; this becomes a big problem which leads the taste of these restaurants getting worse. That means the quality of the same type of food can also represent the emotion and the effort of the cook.

Not only the food itself can represent the culture but also the ways of eating is a symbol of the culture. For example, table manners. In western countries, people use knives and forks to cut the meat into small pieces and eat. They think eating a big piece of food which is even bigger that the mouth is a kind of impoliteness on the table. In China, people all use chopsticks to eat and they can get the food easily even some small round pieces like the peanuts. In my memory, I can use chopsticks easily when I was a young child because I cannot even remember that I have ever got a hard training of using chopsticks. However, a pair of chopsticks is not enough to get all the food. Sometimes people have to get the liquid soups or the very soft food like Tofu, they still use spoons. However, we don’t use forks and knives and even plates. We can get the food by chopsticks instead of forks and it is fine to hold a big piece of food with your hand while eating especially for the meat with bones. We have bowls full of rice and people put the food on the bowl instead of a plate. While drinks a bowl of soup, we just use a big spoon to get some soup from the big pot into our own bowl and start enjoying the soup. People have two ways of drinks soup: with a spoon or just hold the bowl and drink it. Both of them are fine in China and Chinese always think that males should eat a lot. If males eat too smoothly, they will be thought about being womanish and this really a bad impression of a man in China. Chinese like sharing food, and parents always ask their children to eat with their families. Family meal is a significant part of Chinese people’s life. Usually, the seats are in ordered so people should sit in order with their ages and positions in the family. On the table, People sit around a round desk and they eat the same food. When sometimes, more than ten people eat together on the table, they may use a big table with a piece of moveable glasses on it so people do not have to worry about the distance between his body and the dishes. Furthermore, Chinese food is always in order. Because of not having the mode of fast food, not only the food is complicated but also the eating steps are complex. People have cold dishes at the very beginning and then have some meat and vegetables. At last, they may have a big pot of soup and eating the rice.

To sum up, as can be seen from the article, food is relative to the culture because it can kind of represent the culture. In China, the tastes of the food made from the same materials are usually different because people there use different method of cooking. The different favor they prefer shows the Geographical Conditions of the cities. The location of some city leads the cold climate so they may eat hot and spicy food, on the other hand, like Shanghai, as being the center of the economy with the development of technology, more and more people move to this place and bring their culture there. A lot of culture from different place mix together which shows that you can get almost any styles of food in Shanghai. Eating ways and steps are also an importance part of food culture. People in China eat with chopsticks instead of forks and knives. They always sit around a big round table in their traditional meals and share the food from large pot or plate. People eating with complicated that is really opposite to the American fast food style and they prefer the males eat a lot. All the characteristics about eating are symbols of Chinese culture and can remind people of Chinese long history. Also, I miss my hometown so much.