Philadelphia's Chinatown

This weekend my cousin and his wife and their two children came to visit Philadelphia. I got to hang out with them a good bit. Because my cousin's wife is from China, we spent a good bit of time in Chinatown, where I got to learn a lot more about China.


It was the mid-autumn festival, so there was lots going on. Plus, we explored the markets and grocery stores. I've been eating Chinese sweets since then.


Since everyone I know is going gluten-free, it amused me that there was fried gluten for sale.


This is a clever way to kill two birds with one stone.


There were live frogs for sale! And turtles! And eels! And all sorts of fish, obviously.



There were more different kinds of sea shells to eat than I'd ever seen. For lunch, we went to a place that sells delicious hand made noodles--some about the size of spaghetti that were hand stretched! And mine, which I thought would comport better with my inability to use chopsticks, were hand-shaved off of a big block of dough.

Since I had a less than thrilling experience with scary food in Seattle, I passed up the various kinds of animal feet and ox tail that were offered with the noodles. Instead, I thought I'd go with something simple--roast duck. What I didn't realize is that the roast duck was simply chopped up, bones and all, and tossed into the soup. I don't love animal skin, and I definitely ate a bunch of it. My cousin-in-law's beef soup, which I tasted, was really good, but even that was different from the beef I normally eat--she pointed out that the tendons were left in the beef.

Some other Philly pictures, while I'm at it:


Plus, I forgot to tell you: I found fermented black beans, something that Laurie Colwin swears by!