Salad Bar Wonders in China

[JillBurgh]

This is old news, but new to me. In China, you get only one trip to the Pizza Hut salad bar, and a very small bowl. So it is somewhat of an underground sport to try to outsmart the Pizza Hut powers-that-be.

The trick is to try to construct a large bowl "extension" made of stackable salad bar foodstuffs right on top of the small bowl you're given, and then fill that food-bowl with non-stackables, like round and slippery foods.

See what I mean here: Salad bar hacking - Boing Boing

Nutty!

[JillBurgh]

Here is a step-by-step photo collection, too: Chinese Salad Architecture - a set on Flickr

[jpmcgrew]

Yep, the Asians have always loved their vegetables and love fresh fruit even more. I wish I was more like that in fact we should all be like that. Did you know that in Asian countries cheese does not exist? In South Korea the only cheese that is readily available is cream cheese. I don't know what else is available in other countries but you can be sure it is imported they just dont make cheese there and are much more healthy because of it. But now as they adapt and crave more of the western foods they are comming down with the same heath problems we have.

[JillBurgh]

Well if cheese is the culprit behind our health problems, I'm in big trouble! I love me some cheese. I do appreciate the good Earth's bounty, though, as well. Can you imagine walking into an Applebee's (Or wherever they have salad bars now) and making one of those salad towers? What a hoot!

[GrillingFool]

We used to go to Western Sizzlin, and get a steak and salad bar.
First salad was in the little bowl they give you...
Second salad, after the steak, was made on the black plastic
tray the metal steak plate came in.
HUGE salads!
We got chastised by the manager every time.... until he realized we were
eating it all.

I can't even conceive eating that much anymore. (Pizza excepted of course.)

[mcnerd]

Originally Posted by jpmcgrew

Did you know that in Asian countries cheese does not exist?

Perhaps that is because they do not have any cows to make milk to make the cheese. All the cattle were killed off years ago because of a mad cow disease scare. You may have seen in the news of the rioting when they tried to reintroduce beef from the USA.

[GB]

Originally Posted by mcnerd

Perhaps that is because they do not have any cows to make milk to make the cheese. All the cattle were killed off years ago because of a mad cow disease scare. You may have seen in the news of the rioting when they tried to reintroduce beef from the USA.

Cows are not the only animals that cheese can come from.

[Maverick2272]

weird stuff. For me that only works if the the end product is a great tasting salad not just a cool looking salad.

[JGDean]

I occasionally go to Pizza Hut or the local CiCis with an 81 year old woman of slight build. She cleans them out and then has dessert pizza. They do not make any money on her... You should see her when the Asian buffet has crab legs!

[BreezyCooking]

Perhaps that is because they do not have any cows to make milk to make the cheese. All the cattle were killed off years ago because of a mad cow disease scare. You may have seen in the news of the rioting when they tried to reintroduce beef from the USA.

You're sadly misinformed. Yes, a number of Asian countries did not & still do not want U.S. beef because of Mad Cow Disease, but "all the cattle" in Asian countries weren't "killed off" because of it.

The reason behind Asian countries not overflowing with cattle is because the climate & landscape aren't suitable for large-scale production of them. This is why you more often see pigs, goats, sheep, water buffalo, yak, & other grazing animals in Asian cuisine more than home-produced beef.

And except for pigs, all the other animals listed above are definitely used to produce dairy products - cheese among them. It's just not the type of cheeses that we're familiar with or that are available for export.

As far as salads go, consuming vegetables raw is a fairly recent thing in China. And in fact, those living in the rural areas still do not consume vegetables raw - only cooked or pickled. This is due to the fact that many farms use human waste as a fertilizer, which obviously can & does make raw vegetables unsafe.