Chinese food in Merida

I be you all think that I haven't been doing any cooking lately. Not so, I just haven't been blogging about it. We've been having some crazy weather, one day hot and muggy and then a long spell of cooler weather,just when I thought the heat was here for good, it rained yesterday!

As you might know, Husband and I have put on a bit of weight, so we've been revising our eating, and (boo hiss) exercising, actually, the exercise has been walking, we've been getting up early and walking in our neighborhood.

While we don't eat a lot of junk nor do we drink much soda, it the quantity of food that has been our down fall.

Eggplant seems to be the vegetable that I have been concentrating on. Recently, I had a craving for Chinese food so I made Szechuan Eggplant with pork. Try it out, even if you don't like eggplant you might find that you like this one.

Speaking of Chinese food, we recently had dinner with another expat couple,while she was born in Hong Kong, he is the one who stir fries. One of the dishes he prepares was a simple bell pepper stir fry. It was perfectly done,crunchy and tasty. Unfortunately, they have headed north already, but when they get back, I am eager to have him fine tune my stir frying technique. There is nothing like getting instruction from someone who knows what they are doing.

I have never had what I would consider good Chinese food in a restaurant here in Merida, and coming from the San Francisco Bay Area, I realize that I have high standards. My oldest daughter spent a summer in Missouri when she was 13, she went with her best friend. She came back and announced that one evening they went to the next state for Chinese food. While they were choosing the food, my daughter made comments like "My mom makes that" or "My mom taught our 4-H cooking group how to make that". They would look at her in amazement and ask her "Your mama cooks Chinese food? You know how to cook Chinese food?".

Seriously, I think stir frying may be a really good technique for me to start using more of,now that the weather is getting hot again. Or should be getting hot again.