Stretching your family’s palate in Beijing
This week marks our third anniversary in Beijing-_and it has definitely been a palatable journey. I remember one of the first things to rise up and slap us in the face when we arrived in Beijing was the food. The bread crumbled upon toasting. The milk ponged and the yogurt harked back to 1982. Meanwhile, the Lay's chips contained more MSG than even the strongest bowel could tolerate at one, er... sitting.

Almost immediately, we craved food from home. We craved warm powdered donuts, wobbling tubs of buffalo mozzarella and curling slips of shaved honey ham. We craved yogurt iceblocks and hunks of nougat that sweet-talked the tongue. We became obsessed with finding natural muesli and soy milk. Where to buy Lavazza coffee? Jenny Lou's. How to find fresh barbecued chicken? French Butcher in Sanlitun. Is there such a thing as organic in Beijing? Yes. Got to Lohao City. Where's the gummy-bear store? Well, I'm still working on that one.

The searching consumed me, chief hunter and gatherer of food. And securing these finds took months--nay, years. But gradually, along with an infinite supply of great local restaurants and our ayi’s fine cooking, something began to shift in our family. It was our palates, sliding sideways like an oral continental drift from Australia to China. Now, after three years could our mouths have become... Chinese?

For our family, there is nothing like the al dente bounce of jiaozi dough at Din Tai Fung, the satisfying lump of hot bread passing into the gullet, the crunch of silky wilted greens bathed in fresh garlic and a slick of oil, and the crack of toffee crab-apples-a favourite with our kids. All of this is a part of us now, along with hole-in-the-wall baozi and bing. Although we do indulge in the odd foreign treat, we mostly eat endemic foods here, fully engaged in the local flavors. My family and I are glad to say goodbye to our Australian tongues, and I do believe this is the culinary way while living here. Let go of your tongue's security blanket! Immerse. Lap it up. Chow down some chow mein. The donuts will always be there when you go home.

Tania McCartney