"Zhong guo ren bu xi huan zhe ge"

On Wednesday's I don't have my AYI cook dinner for us because I like to occasionally have some good ole' Mexican or American food. This also allows me to teach her some new dishes. She always is interested in what I'm making. The problem is that I'm not always home in time to show her before she leaves at 5:00. Well, yesterday I made the point of being there.

I was trying a new recipe that I found online. It was a called "Mexican Sour Cream Rice". Basically it is a version of my Green Enchilada recipe but using rice instead of corn tortillas. I thought this would be a good substitute since rice is so easily found here and corn tortillas are unheard of. It has chopped green chilies, a can of Cream of Chicken soup, sour cream, cilantro, chopped chicken, cheese, seasonings, and rice.

She was so interested and taking notes the whole time. As we were mixing all the ingredients together, she had this semi-disgusted look on her face and said to me "Zhong guo ren bu xi huan zhe ge" meaning Chinese people don't like this...referring to the dish. It was so funny because she was really serious. To us the dish was heaven...everything we love in it but to her it was the most disgusting thing in the world. It was amazing to think that people could actually not like Mexican food. Funny how we all have such different tastes and why? Only because of the environment we live in. There have been many times when we have said the same about their food but I never thought that they wouldn't like my food.

A side story to all this was that when I was grating the cheese, Vika came in and wanted a piece. She loves cheese, as we all do in my family. My AYI then told me that "Vika chi cheesie (that's how she says cheese) pang" meaning Vika eats cheese...Vika will be fat. That just through me for a loop coming from someone who just a few weeks ago allowed Vika to eat 18 chocolate chip cookies in one sitting. So the cookies won't make her fat but the cheese will? hmmmm Cheese or Cookies? What is the better choice? Again, different culture....different thinking.