Making a soup

What is it like to make a favorite US soup here?

Last night I went to bed thinking how I could write a blog post about a day in our life. Living here takes so much more time and energy than at home. What is it like to have friends over for dinner? Daniel and his parents came for dinner last night so I had in mind to make Chicken Tortilla Soup, a favorite recipe. I looked over the ingredients to decide what I needed to buy.

·         Chicken breasts √, easily available

·         tortillas √,

·         cumin √,

·         cilantro √ easily available,

·         chili powder – brought with me,

·         chicken broth – I can use chicken essence seasoning granules to make broth.

·         garlic √ easily available, 
·         frozen corn – sometimes available 
·         sour cream - not available; maybe I can use plain yogurt instead 
·         cheddar cheese - not easily available; I could order online

·         can of diced tomatoes – hmmm…  I can cut up tomatoes or see what the store has. I buy a can and discover that it contains whole cherry tomatoes. Easy enough – I can cut those up.

·         Enchilada sauce – hmmm… Stores don’t carry canned sauce. The foreign import store across town sells packaged enchilada powder mix. Do I want to travel on the subway one hour then walk 10 minutes (one way) to buy a package? Maybe not. So I research online for a homemade recipe. They require tomato sauce. Hmmm…. My experience has been that Chinese equate tomato sauce with ketchup so the Chinese characters for tomato sauce are often the same as for ketchup. I have done this before and bought ketchup in error. So we went to the store and looked in the section of ketchup. Nearby are two other packages. One labeled tomato sauce; the other labeled tomato paste. The characters on these packages are different from each other and from ketchup. Do I dare hope they really are what they say they are? I gamble and buy the tomato paste. When I get home, I make the enchilada sauce to go into the soup. Indeed, it is tomato paste!

So all in all, we had a great dinner and time of fellowship together. Daniel said after dinner that I could make it for the guys; they would like it. I guess that’s a vote of success. 

Cooking here is not a simple as opening a can of this and adding a can of that.  I have found canned vegetables, spaghetti sauces, pastas, and the like but in the foreign food section of the store and they cost more than Chinese foods. I have found very few frozen vegetables – only corn but lots of frozen jaozi. So we learn to get creative.