A Chinese-Australian couple came to visit us and had lunch in our place. I tried to be realistic about what I can do to make sure they would enjoy my cooking. I guess that I would never be confident with that. The hardest part is that how to make the food we offered would well serve too different cultures, even though the Australian half who is extremely polite and keeping a very low profile, has been to China at many places for a long time and speaks Mandarin beautifully.

I guess it would be always my struggling as a housewife. I wondered how my Mom prepared a big table of food to treat my Dad’s friends, and how those smart Chinese housewives deal with the situation when eating out at restaurants were not that popular 20 years ago.

Anyway, here is my menu:

* Salad platter: Butter lettuce as background, tomato with Italian dressing arranged in circle. In the middle was potato, hard boiled and sliced eggs, avocado, red salmon and carrot strips with Caesar salad dressing.
* Pickled vegetable with sugar, sesame oil and Lao Gan Ma Chily oil, sprinkle with shallots.
* Beef gravy with bean curd knot (牛腩烧豆腐结).
* Stir-fry prawns with garlic and bird eyes chilies.
* Steaming Basa fish fillets, underneath was soft Tofu with steaming fish sauce (蒸鱼豉汁). Thanks Jessie! Her recipe never failed
* Corn and finely chopped bacon soup.
* Sauvignon Blanc White wine.