Toffee coated sweet potatoes have been a favorite “sweet treat” of mine since we came to south China :-) I’ve also had bananas and apples. This picture shows a plateful of toffee coated sweet potato, taro, Chinese yam and red dates that Jim and I shared after dinner tonight. When served, the sweet caramelized syrup is very stringy, so you dip a piece in cold water to break the strings and cool it slightly. I learned the hard way a long time ago that you MUST cool it or you WILL burn your mouth :-/ Once it all cools, if you haven’t eaten quickly, you have a mound all stuck together! Then separating it with chopsticks is nearly impossible! I was surprised that the waiter tonight brought us a fork and knife when he saw us struggling.
Snack Food
Snacks in China can be quite different, some I wouldn’t touch, but some sound OK, just different. Purple sweet potatoes are big here, as well as peanuts, so how about some purple sweet potato coated peanuts? I even found a recipe on a Chinese cooking site to make your own. Basically mashed sweet potatoes, flour, sugar, oil …..wrap a bit of dough around your peanut (without the skin) and then fry. I can’t eat peanuts, or I would have tried these :-) I wonder if they would work with regular sweet potatoes and pecans …that sounds yummy!
Sweet Potato Leaves
Life in China: A Picture a Day 2016, January 14 - Flexibility is a necessity when living somewhere that you can’t speak or read the language! Tonight, I went to our little store nearby to get some things for dinner: we had decided on having beef slices, onions, mushrooms and spinach. Easy?… sure, I’ve done this lots of times! Well, when I got home and started washing the spinach, I realized that it wasn’t spinach, so I called to Leah that I wasn’t sure what I had bought for our dinner! She came and looked at the label and announced it was sweet potato leaves, and simply added “I’ve been wondering what they’re like”….. so, we had beef, onions, mushrooms and sweet potato leaves for dinner! I wasn’t crazy about them, think I’ll be more careful to choose spinach next time! Here are my sweet potato leaves :-) That’s one way to try new food!
Sweet Potatoes
Life in China: A Picture a day 2016, January 2 - Street food is very popular in China. I don't eat it often, partly because of my food allergy issues and partly because of food safety reasons. However....baked sweet potatoes are the exception, they are delicious! I'm not sure about other parts of China, but in our area, where there are people, there are sweet potato vendors :-)