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Total entries in this blog:
Total entries in this category: 51
Published On: Mar 07, 2006 03:02 PM
Total entries in this category: 51
Published On: Mar 07, 2006 03:02 PM
Enough
In China, saying that you are dying of hunger is
not always a figure of speech. Anyone middle aged has lived through a famine
that killed over 30 million people. So now, when food is plentiful, people don't
scrimp.
When you eat out in a restaurant, your host (who
orders food for the whole table) will generally order about twice as much food
as anyone could be expected to eat. If, by some chance, the guests actually
finish one of the plates of food, the host is likely to order another plateful;
if the food was finished, there must not have been
enough.
We were in Myanmar recently, and they do things a little differently. They don't have the luxury of being able to waste food as the middle class do now in China, but they still make an effort to provide enough, especially for guests.
We noticed that when we were being served by a family, they brought everyone an individual serving of each dish, a lot like we do in the US. But they also brought one extra of each dish to the table: if four people were eating, they'd bring five bowls of soup, and five bowls of rice, and five plates of vegetables. At first we thought someone was having trouble counting, but it happened too often.
Finally, I realized that the extra serving was just that - extra. If you wanted more of anything, you took it from the extra plate. If the diners emptied the extra plate, the host refilled it.
I came to like this system. Unlike the US, nobody was putting you on the spot asking you if you wanted seconds. Unlike China, the host wasn't going overboard and providing a second serving of food for the whole table. If you wanted the food, it was there. If you didn't, there was only one serving leftover. (And in a big family, you could be sure someone was going to eat that food.) It was enough.
We were in Myanmar recently, and they do things a little differently. They don't have the luxury of being able to waste food as the middle class do now in China, but they still make an effort to provide enough, especially for guests.
We noticed that when we were being served by a family, they brought everyone an individual serving of each dish, a lot like we do in the US. But they also brought one extra of each dish to the table: if four people were eating, they'd bring five bowls of soup, and five bowls of rice, and five plates of vegetables. At first we thought someone was having trouble counting, but it happened too often.
Finally, I realized that the extra serving was just that - extra. If you wanted more of anything, you took it from the extra plate. If the diners emptied the extra plate, the host refilled it.
I came to like this system. Unlike the US, nobody was putting you on the spot asking you if you wanted seconds. Unlike China, the host wasn't going overboard and providing a second serving of food for the whole table. If you wanted the food, it was there. If you didn't, there was only one serving leftover. (And in a big family, you could be sure someone was going to eat that food.) It was enough.
Posted: Tue - February 24, 2004 at 08:10 AM