JUNE 28, 2014: DINNER DATE NIGHT

DINNER DATE NIGHT with the 

GIRLS AND THE WHEELRIGHTS

JUNE 28, 2014

Brother and Sister Wheelright are in our branch and they agreed to go to dinner with us.  The deal is that Sister Wheelright, Jane, is a Suzhou native and she is a pro at finding coupon deals for local restaurants.  She found one for us to all go to tonight!  We had a fairly traditional Chinese banquet.  Lots of new things to try!  We took Rachel and Rebecca along with us and Leah came as well.  We hoped that Jane's daughter, Maggie, would come, too, but she wasn't able to.

Bethany, Rachel and Leah

 We all tried pork kidney that was cut fancy with fringes.

Here is my journal entry from that day:

Dad came home this afternoon after a LONG and very busy week.  I was so glad to have him back home safely.  Poor Dad was exhausted, but we had dinner plans with a couple from our branch.  Brother Wheelwright is a chemist/textiles person and he married a local Chinese woman just less than a year ago.  She is not a member of our church, but comes with him each week to our church meetings.  Sister Wheelwright, Jane, has a talent for finding discount coupons so she found us some for a really nice restaurant right next to our hotel.  It was a very nice Chinese Banquet style meal.  We had pickled jellyfish, pickled greens, and pickled potato molded into heart shapes for appetizer.  For the main meal we had a delicious meat with hot peppers (I licked one pepper and that was too hot), pig kidney cut into fancy frilled shapes, fish, broccoli in a chicken broth, a yummy slightly sweet yellow bread, chicken and pig feet which included the chicken head and feet as well, and a mixed vegetables that looked like they came right out of the bag of frozen vegetables.  It was quite a variety.  It was really interesting to visit with Brother and Sister Wheelwright and to learn more about Chinese culture and about local Suzhou culture.  Jane was born and raised here in Suzhou.  WE learned that people in Suzhou tend to eat a lot of organ meat.  They also use more sugar in their cooking than most other areas of China.  We also learned that Suzhou is one of 2 provinces that produce high amounts of silk.  2/3 of the world’s silk population comes from Suzhou and a neighboring province.  We also learned that Jane owns a silk store and knows a lot about the textile business.  We had a nice evening and then it was back home and off to bed.  Dad was exhausted and rightly so.