terracotta dog toy soldiers

I was window shopping on the Upper East Side last week when I came across these on display at the Pylones store-- rubber dog toy terracotta soldiers in pink, teal, orange, and green! Emperor Qin, the first emperor of China, is probably rolling over in his grave right about now. Over 2,200 years ago he ordered 7,000 life-size terracotta soldiers, horses, and chariots be made and buried with him in his tomb in Xi'an, China. And now those soldiers have been made into bright pink dog toys and are sold for $20 a pop. You can buy them online here. I didn't buy one for my dog because he'd tear it up in a matter of minutes. Dog toys are so expensive these days I wonder if other people's dogs destroy toys as quickly? Of course $20 is a lot cheaper than fixing my patio that Nelson ate.

When I saw the real soldiers in Xi'an I was surprised by the openness of the whole exhibition. I'm not sure it's the same but when we went a few years ago, we were able to walk all around the Tomb of Qinshihuang and walk up near to the soldiers and horses. They appeared to be in the same condition that they were when they were dug up out of the ground. In fact, they're still in the ground. I felt like I was walking around a recent archaeological discovery-- and seeing a sight similar to that of what the local farmers saw when they accidentally stumbled upon the 14,000 square feet tomb while digging a well in the 1970s. It was really an amazing experience. If an ancient treasure like this was found in the U.S., we would put the soldiers behind glass in a temperature regulated room and it would feel more like a museum and less like an ancient tomb.

-mary kate

pumpkin, nan gua, kabocha

The farmer said white pumpkins are good for baking

Halloween is my favorite holiday and I’m a purist when it comes to pumpkin carving. Pumpkins should be hand selected and picked from a pumpkin patch not bought at a grocery store or worse, the drugstore where I bought a bruised and mushy $25 pumpkin last year in New York. I’m in luck this year because Mary Kate and I are in Ohio this week visiting our parents and there are several pumpkin patches nearby. 

Ohio is a great place to be right now. The leaves on the trees are bright oranges, yellows, magentas, and reds and the weather is cold but not too cold to hike around outside. Yesterday I dragged Mary Kate (she’s less enthusiastic about pumpkin carving) and our mom to Katie’s Pumpkin Patch. The patch is a fully functioning farm, but the corn and wheat fields surrounding the barn have been harvested so right now they sell apples, apple cider, and pumpkins. 

Looking around at all different varieties of pumpkins available— some huge, others miniature— I was reminded of the Chinese pumpkin called nan gua (kabocha in Japanese). Nan gua pumpkins have a dark green-ridged skin and bright yellow flesh that tastes sweet. In the US it seem like we only cook with pumpkins in deserts but in China pumpkins are added to savory dishes. I’ve seen pumpkin strips stir-fried with salty black beans, cubed and slow-cooked with pork in broth, and also chopped into little bits and fried with rice and onions. I decided to not only get a pumpkin for carving my awesome jack-o-lantern but also a pumpkin for cooking. I asked a girl working at the patch for advice on which ones are best for cooking. I was surprised to learn that all pumpkins can be cooked but the larger they are, the more watery and fibrous the flesh tastes. I found a squat little pumpkin for $2! and loaded it into the little wagon shopping cart along with our other big jack-o-lantern pumpkins.  I’m not sure what I’m going to make with it tonight. I’m leaning towards a Chinese stew. Check back in tomorrow to see how it turned out. 

My mom hauling the pumpkins to the car.

 

The barn at Katie's Pumpkin Patch

filmmaking in china: Zhao Dayong

(Film director Zhao Dayong; Photo Credit: Shiho Fukada for The New York Times)

I'm lucky. I get to do really creative work at my design agency and with our Chinese cookbook. I really don't have time for a lot else. One project I hope I get to someday is filming a documentary about entrepreneurs in China. I've met some amazing business owners in China that are working under the communist government system and are still innovating and driving China's economic boom. I worked for a South African guy in Beijing who started a a successful advertising agency. I met a girl in her early 20's who navigated the miles of red tape and started her own bar in Beijing. I visited a tofu factory in Sichuan province that has been a family business for four generations. I think it's fascinating to see how the worlds of communism and capitalism are colliding and how these entrepreneurs are making their own rules.

However, filming in China is a big problem. The government has tight controls on what can be filmed and they only like documentaries that show them in a positive light. Several years ago I was questioned at an airport about why my camera was so big and what I was planning on photographing. I can only image what they would say if I had a huge HD film camera and light kit with me. I just read an interesting article in the New York Times (read it here) about the Chinese film director Zhao Dayong and his new film Ghost Town. It's a documentary about the residents of Zhiziluo, a small village in the inhospitable mountains near the Myanmar border. Zhao Dayong knew that he would never get the permits to film his movie so he took a risk and shot the whole thing illegally. The film has gotten a lot of press and was the only Chinese film to be included in the recent New York Film Festival. The trailer for the film is below. 

There's the no official rules on filmmaking and art in general in China so the only way to find out where the line is drawn is to test the limits and see what happens. There can be serious repercussions for people who piss off the government. Has anyone filmed in a foreign country before? I'd love to hear what the hoops are like and how difficult it is.

-Nate

dragon fruit drinks

You know when you learn about something and then you start seeing it everywhere? Well, since I bought dragon fruit last week in Chinatown, I've seen them for sale at Dean and Deluca and I took a drink out of Nate's fridge at random (shhh... it was his roommate's!) and it happened to be dragon fruit flavored: Glaceau Vitamin Energy. It tasted sweet like the fruit, but carbonated with 2000mg of Taurine which if you don't know, is very good stuff. I don't really know what it is, or does, but it's in all my favorite energy drinks (red bull, tab energy, bawls) that keep me wide awake on days like today when my office desk starts to look soft, fluffy, kind of like a pillow.

I think dragon fruit could catch on as flavoring in drinks and things here in the U.S. It wouldn't even need the extreme PR treatment that the south american acai berries got a few years back because dragon fruit actually tastes good. IMHO acai berries are overrated and over marketed (and I'm a marketing person who likes marketing). See here where acai berries can cure you of ugliness and obesity and here's a CNN article about their hype and the rumor that they can cure cancer. 

Maybe dragon fruit prices will come down too. The dragon fruit I saw at Dean and Deluca cost $10 each and they were too ripe. I paid about $2 each in Chinatown. See our video on dragon fruit here.

Does anyone know of any other dragon fruit flavored drinks... candies... food?

-mary kate

ingredient stalker: what are chinese black mushrooms (shiitake mushrooms)?

Chinese Black Mushrooms or 香菇 (xiāng gū), are medium-size brown mushrooms that have a strong, meaty flavor. They taste good in soups, stir-fried in vegetables (I stir-fried them with snow peas and chicken broth in the video above), or sliced-up and thrown into a lettuce salad. If you've never heard of them, you've probably heard of Shiitake Mushrooms which is their Japanese name. Contrary to what you might think, you should buy the mushrooms dried rather than fresh. The drying process intensifies the flavor and makes them taste better. Fresh ones can taste a little ho-hum. In the video above, I show you how to prepare Chinese Black Mushrooms, talk about some of their health benefits, and we have a blind taste test to see, once and for all, if re-hydrated mushrooms taste better than fresh.

Chinese Black Mushrooms or Shiitake Mushrooms can be found at most grocery stores these days. Oddly, fresh mushrooms are what I find the most but if you go to an asian grocery you can find the dried version.