When Nick met my Chinese family for the first time, my brothers took great delight in feeding him foods they thought a Caucasian would not be able to manage. Amongst some of the offerings were hot chillis and salted fish (the “blue” version which smells rotten and should have been thrown away two months ago) both of which we ate regularly so it wasn’t much of a challenge. I think if Nick had been offered turtle or dog meat then my brothers would have encountered some resistance.

Weirds Foods from around the World is an interesting site detailing delicacies people in different countries eat whilst others would grimace and back away from.

The next time we visit my family, Nick will be taking a big block of the ripest blue cheese to continue the challange. I know for a fact my family will recoil in horror at the thought of eating mould…. each to their own, I suppose.

I am a tea drinker, hardly surprising as I grew up mostly in England. There are many camps in the tea drinking world, I like mine strong whether it’s Chinese Tea or English breakfast. Come to think of it, I even like herbal teas well stewed. My neighbour, on the other hand, claims the amount of leaves I use for one pot would last her a week! Let’s just say we BYO whenever we get together to have tea.

Here is an interesting article from a food blog called Chez Pim I regularly tune in to, it is a very detailed write up comparing and contrasting different types of loose leaf tea and tea bags. Depending on which country you are from, some of the brands will not be familiar but the gist of the article is loose leaf is the way to go. My kids bought me a teapot for my birthday that has a removable middle, think beaker with lots of little holes, it takes care of the whole drama of getting the used tea leaves out of the pot.

You know the packs of pop corn that you buy that are especially for the microwave? Personally, I don’t like the flavours they come in never mind what they put in it to create those tastes.

For ages I was popping the corn in a microwavable container until one day, in my effort to pop ALL the corn, I burnt a hole in the bottom and had to throw contents and all out.

I have since discovered you can make pop corn in an ordinary brown paper bag in the microwave. Put in a brown paper bag aprroximately three tablespoons of corn, fold the top over a couple of times to keep the contents in, microwave on high for about 2-3 minutes or until there is a two second gap in between pops.

The great thing about this is you can control exactly how much you need, enough for snacks in a lunchbox, adding flavour or not.

The amount of corn you use will be dependent on the size of the bag (bearing in mind size of lunch bags will be different between countries) and the time it takes will depend on your type/wattage of oven. Don’t be tempted to put too much raw corn in the bag, you’ll be surprised how much a few tablespoons of corn will pop into. Let’s just say, I’ve opened up the microwave with overflowing popcorn much to the delight of the small peoples I was making it for.

There’s been some concerns about the vinyl used to line lunchbags testing positive to lead, levels that are unacceptable in Kid’s paints. Have a look at this article Lead Free Lunch Bag Product Questions.

It seems many have an opinion about this subject but the bottom line, for me anyway, is I’m not prepared to put my Kids’ health at risk. Besides, some of the lead-safe bags are fun and that’s got to make the lunch inside taste good, if we are working on the law of packaging.