May 2, 2016

Brown Bag Lunch: HK Style

Hong Kong is one of the greatest food cities in the world. It's also one of the most humid cities. Together, those two factors have ganged up against me in my pursuit for packed lunches. And I haven't yet cracked the code.

Back in Seattle, I was a lunch-packing queen, making large quinoa and veggie salads or big pots of soup on Sunday nights that would last the whole week through. In Hong Kong, I haven't quite averaged one homemade lunch per week just yet. I'm trying to change that so I have healthier lunches.

In the US, packed lunches also equated to saving money. Here? Not so much since I'm not cooking for a family and am not quite as savvy with the wet market as fierce Cantonese mamas. 

This week, I decided to just go for it. Aside from grains that I bought at a small organics store, all of my groceries for the week came from produce stalls in the market. Beets, snap peas, passion fruit, baby Filipino mangoes, sweet potatoes, pomegranate, and strange green things that look like scallions but smell like sour oniony-feet all made it into my fridge. 

Determined to pull off a week-long salad worthy of a high-five from the farmers market crowd in Seattle, I started prepping ingredients. The beets went into my oven, yes the amazing gas oven that I'm fortunate to have, and I chopped up cucumbers and the strange scallion thing. My kitchen smelled awful, sour and pungent, but I opted to toss the green bits into the salad bowl.

Then I went to grab a potato to bake for dinner while the beets and quinoa were cooking. 
Stored in an closed yet breathable tin in my cupboard was a beautiful sweet potato that I bought three weeks ago. I kept it in a dark, cool spot, yet when I opened the tin I was met with a horrible metallic soil smell. The potato had blown up like a wrinkly balloon. 

Now my kitchen was really smelly.

Alright, one potato to waste, not ideal but I'll cut my losses, I thought.

The beets were done roasting soon enough and I added them in with the stinky scallions and cucumbers then stirred in quinoa and pomegranate seeds. The scallion things were overpowering, so I took my very Seattle salad and made it a little more Asia by adding citrus, fish oil, soy sauce and maggi seasoning. 

To finish it off, I went to the fridge for the feta cheese I picked up the same day that I purchased the potato. Cheese is like gold in Hong Kong. Until I strike it rich with a two-income life here, cheese is just not something that fits into my grocery budget. But a couple of weeks ago, I splurged and bought a small brick of feta that cost ~$10. 

I had the privilege of enjoying said cheese just once, as this evening when I pulled it out of its fine glass storage container, the damn thing had grown fur.

My relationship with feeding myself in Hong Kong is an analogy for me building my life here. Many things work quite well--like my job, apartment, hobbies and my mother's homemade brownie recipe. But most everything has an unexpected consequence, like a crowded pedestrian commute on my way to work, relentless swollen, itchy gnat bites I get from hiking or yoga outside, and failed root veggie storage.

This dichotomy is both the charm and misery of life abroad. Nine times out of 10 one can't help but to laugh at the situation. But that one time--those 10% of incidents where laughs just cannot be generated-- is absolutely devastating. 

One day soon, hopefully in the coming month or two, I will crack  the code on food in Hong Kong and find a happier balance of all of absurd moments.