Ridgey Didge Chinese tucker.

For un-Australia readers, tucker is food, and ridgey didge is true blue, all right, fair dinkum, true, the real thing, the real McCoy etc.

Alex’s mother died about 7 years ago, so his retired father takes care of him, doing all the cleaning, cooking, etc. His father is a good cook, and while I am here I am getting some good food.

The Chinese seem to pack away an enormous amount of food at each sitting. I think, for my visit, there is some extra food being prepared, this is one of their ways of showing that their guest is welcome, by supplying copious amounts of food.

At most meals there are about 6 or 7 dishes on top of the obligatory rice. At each meal there are about 3 fresh dishes, and a big bowl of vegetable soup with some sort of meaty bones in it. The problem is, that what you don’t eat at this meal comes back to haunt you for the next one. And the next one, and sometimes the next one. So there will be 3 or 4 fresh dishes and several cold ones. With my stomach being what it is, I rarely eat the left over stuff.

Here are some pictures of last night’s dinner. 

At the back you can see two small bowls. These are some left overs from previous meals. Then there is the white carrot soup, which tastes like a sweet swede, pork and mu’er, the black mushrooms, and on the right of that a fish and tofu dish. I don’t usually eat their fish, it is full of little bones.

Pic 2. You can see how much rice they eat each meal, I would have about half to three quarters of a cup, they put away the rest.

Pic 3. The pork and mu’er dish. Not a very clear pic unfortunately, and I can’t take another one, it has all been eaten. Mu’er stands for wood ear, it is a type of mushroom that grows round wood. It is black, slipper, you buy it dried and soak it and boil it for a few minutes, but it is surprisingly tasty.