Manure Tea Report

老干妈 !!! Put this on your shopping list for your next trip to the Chinese grocery store. Lao Gan Ma Oil Chilli is a brilliant and tasty mix of "crunch" red chili pieces and peanuts in vegetable oil. Cost: under 2 bucks. Oil Chilli makes a great dipping sauce for dumplings and a wonderful addition to almost any meal. This is more than a condiment. You can use Oil Chilli in a variety of ways. I tried oil chilli with Ping's baozu (steamed pork dumplings a/k/a Chinese hamburgers) in Shenzhen last winter and I was hooked. The flavor is subtle and seductive. It's hot, but not painfully hot. The oil helps bring out the deep rich flavor of the red chili pieces and the chili oil soaked peanuts are a special treat. The Lao Gan Ma Company in Guiyang, China specializes in "chilli foods" and there's an interesting variety of products on store shelves. Their website has product descriptions and company information in English/corporate Chinglish. They have been cer...

L ate Augus t is a peculiar time to start writing about gardening. The summer is coming to an end. The days are getting cooler and the nights are getting longer. The garden is dwindling down but now I finally have a little free time to write. Today I transplanted Chinese onions and "Red of Florence" onions . I started them in pots and today they graduated to rows in the garden. I planted some white onion sets last week. I should have onions well into November. Every summer I try to save a quart jar or two of chopped, dehydrated green onions. They are so handy for cooking and they keep very well. Today's bounty included a five gallon bucket of cucumber, a bucket of tomatoes, purple yard long beans , a dozen lemon cucumbers, Chinese cabbage, patty pan and scalloped squash. My lovely and talented Chinese wife, Liu Li Ping is back in Shenzhen, China so Lucky is my garden helper. Sometimes he helps me dig. He's also the official garden greeter when kids and neighbor...