The Hunt for Cinnamon

Life in China is simple, so here is a simple story:

As someone who loves the culinary arts, China is a good opportunity for me to learn a new way of cooking. It also presents a challenge for recreating those American favorites we desire as we are so far from home. I always make sure I have a new culinary mission -- most recently: French Toast.

Somehow I managed to score a Teflon frying pan in this wok prevalent country. You would have laughed at my excitement. You're probably laughing right now at the fact that I thought it was important enough to share this with you. It is. There is nothing else to occupy our time (not until classes start on Thursday), so these little moments make up the simple stories of our life in Beibei...for now at least...

Back to the story. In addition to my incredible find, I collected the other necessary supplies -- spatula, eggs, etc. The bread, however, coming from Carrefour (a large "western" grocery store an hour away in downtown Chongqing). I've never traveled so far to bring home cheap, ordinary, white bread. But, hey, for under 50 cents per loaf and a taste of home, I snatched it up. And now my freezer is filled with bread.

Venturing into downtown Beibei, towards a backstreet where a myriad of vegetables and spices are sold, the hunt for cinnamon began. (I probably should have looked up the Chinese word for cinnamon beforehand, but that would have spoiled the adventure...or I simply don't want to admit to my forgetfulness.) The alleys were lined with the day's produce spread out on blankets and tattered, wooden stands. We, me and 2 others, stumbled upon a spice shop. The entire floor space covered with large burlap sacks of twigs and bark and crushed peppers and other bizarre looking spices.

With the laoban's (owner/boss) help we quickly went through a "smell and check" procedure in search of cinnamon (me being the only one knowing exactly what we were looking for). Surprisingly enough it didn't take all that long. She broke a piece of the bark in half and you can't imagine how incredible fresh cinnamon smells -- the chef nerd in me is exposed. With under 10 kuai (less than 2 dollars) subtracted from my wallet I gained a gallon bag of cinnamon. It's the little things in life that make me happy...

But what in the world am I going to do with huge bag of bark? Gnaw on it until it becomes a tolerable enough grind for oatmeal or some other such food? The famous translation game of International Charades began. I drew the card marked "to grind". In an attempt to win this stupid game that we play at least once daily (and convinces us that we need to learn Mandarin faster), I rubbed my palms together in a "mortar and pestle" type of way and then began pointing back and forth between my bag of bark and a bag of an unidentifiable ground spice while saying "zhege, zhege, zhege" ("this, this, this"). Ridiculous, I know. The response was something between giving directions and shooing away the crazy waiguoren (foreigners). We traveled in the direction of her waving arms.

The tiresome game continued as we moved from spice shop to spice shop. I think our record was 1 - 4. Eventually we did win -- finding a shop with a contraption that seemed to have been fashioned out of a old paint tray, used car parts, and a dusty vacuum cleaner bag. Good enough for me.

The next morning we sat down to a breakfast of French Toast with REAL Log Cabin syrup (thank you international postal service and American friends). New mission: something that requires an oven because I don't have one.