This Global Kitchen | Day 12: China
Hi Friends! My name is Katie, and my family and I live in northwest China where my husband runs a business in our small city. I am a physical therapist by degree but am currently spending most of my time working as a homeschooling mom. I have four kids—Avery (6), Charlotte (4), and two years old twins, Julia and Jackson.
We’ve been in China for five years now, and in that time, we’ve lived in four cities and five apartments. Our current apartment was newly finished this summer by our landlord, so while we didn’t have any say in the renovation process, it is clean, new, and functional for our family.
I spend a large part of my day in the kitchen either cooking meals, fixing snacks, or prepping food for storage. Our family eats a Whole Food Plant-Based (WFPB) diet, which essentially means that we generally avoid eating meat, dairy products, and eggs and minimize intake of oil, salt, and processed sugar. Now, the next obvious question—but what DO you eat? Every fruit, vegetable, bean, seed, nut and whole grain that we can get our hands on! We live in a culture that douses every meal with salt, oil, and MSG, so we clearly can’t avoid these things and still be in close community with those around us. I would also be lying if I said I haven’t been bribing my twins with M&Ms and Oreos as we attempt potty training. In reality, we do the best we can inside our home and seek to love those outside our home well, even if my husband has to take one for the team and eat a plate full of mutton ribs.
My kitchen is immediately to the right after entering our home. It is long and narrow, so having more than one person in the kitchen calls for lots of side shuffling and moving around to make space. When we moved in, this left wall was bare. And as excited as I was for upper and lower cabinets on the opposite side, I knew it wasn’t going to be enough storage. By the grace of the Father alone, we bought this cabinet from another family moving back to the States. It, along with our wooden table, fits into the available space with literally not even an inch to spare on either side.
Our first “big” purchase once we moved into an unfurnished apartment was a refrigerator. Chinese do not usually have large needs for refrigeration, so if they have one, it’s pretty small. However, we thrive on leftovers, and as our family grew, with more mouths to be feeding all the time, we had to size up. The only thing I don’t love about my fridge is that the front is not magnetic. Small potatoes, I know. However, the handles are clearly a good size to hold Duplos that little hands have dropped in!
With every new apartment, we have also upgraded the size of my oven. My first oven was the typical expat toaster-oven size and style, but thankfully, I now have a much bigger cooking space to work with! Also, this is the first place I’ve ever had upper cabinets! They make me so happy, but they are also exactly the wrong height for my husband’s head. I have to be diligent about closing them, especially if he’s in the kitchen with me, lest he turn around and slice his forehead open.
Here are the infamous water jugs. Also, you can see my pressure cookers on each side. I use them both every day, multiple times per day. At this point, I’m not sure I could cook a meal without them! Also, our sink is a double, which I am so thankful for, but there is no good space for a dish rack. Currently, we’ve got one fully in the adjacent window and a second one halfway in the window, halfway balancing on a brick beside the sink. And let’s be honest, there are always dishes in my sink in need of washing and dishes in the racks in need of being put up. The big white box on the wall is our hot water heater for the kitchen. In the winter, our home is heated via water pipes in the floor, so this heats the water that will flow through those pipes and keep us from freezing!
I think appliances always tend to be a big question for expats—which ones are worth the luggage space? For us, we have an American waffle iron and KitchenAid mixer that I run using a voltage regulator. Other than that, we use a locally purchased toaster, soy milk machine, and our pressure cookers. Back in 2014, I lugged over a Ninja blender and was never really satisfied with it. I went through multiple local blenders before being offered a secondhand Vitamix that runs on local voltage. Y’all. I have seen the light and will never go back! It looks like it walked out of 1999, but it works like a dream.
We’ve been in our apartment for 2.5 months, and the entire building still does not have gas connected yet. Since I rarely use my stove anyway but always need more counter space, we ordered these metal covers to place over it.
Feeding a WFPB diet daily to six mouths means we go through a lot of food. We buy about 90% of our perishables from the local wholesale market, which means we buy our fruits and veggies by the crate, wheat berries in 70lb. bags, and peanut butter in 25lb. tubs! As much as I love my kitchen cabinets, they don’t hold that much food, so we have this pantry directly across from our kitchen door that holds everything well. Thankfully, our freezer fits perfectly underneath too. Currently, it’s holding apples, bananas, plums, broccoli, cauliflower, red peppers, sweet potatoes, wheat, and a bucket of tahini.
This is what my kitchen really looks like while I’m cooking dinner—lots of little hands and feet in and out! Besides, doesn’t everyone have a random drawer or cabinet full of plastic containers?
My Must Haves for my Expat Kitchen:
Pressure cooker (like an InstantPot but locally bought) - I have two and use them both at least once every single day! Also, a good blender- we have a second hand Vitamix but it’s worth every single one of the many pennies that it costs. Flaxseed- For a family that doesn’t eat eggs, it makes baking all the delicious things possible for us!
My Favorite Expat friendly Recipe:
Vegan “Ground Beef” Tofu
by Katie | TakingRoute.net
Originally from glowkitchen.com
- 6 Tbsp. light soy sauce
- 1 Tbsp. tahini or peanut butter (or combination of both)
- 1 tsp. cumin
- 1 tsp. chili powder
- 1 tsp. garlic powder
- ½ tsp. black pepper
- 400 g. firm tofu
Combine soy sauce, peanut butter/tahini, and spices well in a bowl. Crumble tofu into small pieces (resembling ground beef texture) into the bowl. Stir well with the sauce. Spread out onto a baking sheet and bake at 205C/400F. Check after 15 minutes for firmness. Stir and cook for an additional 5 – 10 minutes, or longer if needed.
Notes: For my family of 6, I usually triple or quadruple this recipe so that we have leftovers. We find that increasing the soy sauce to scale is way too salty, so I usually use half water/half soy sauce or a reduced sodium version. I do not press the tofu as I haven’t really noticed a difference in the final texture. Because I cook so much at once, my cook time is usually 45 minutes or so. I just begin checking at 20 minutes and then just stir every 10 minutes or so, checking for firmness. You can speed the process by cooking at a higher temperature, but just watch closer to avoid burning!
Other Posts We Hope You Will Enjoy…
This Global Home | Day 13: China
This Global Life | Day 28: Western China (Day in the Life Series)
Episode 20: Struggling with Infertility While Living Abroad with Emily Thomas
