Pizza it is!

It's no surprise to anyone to hear that the food we eat here in the US is totally different than the food the people in China eat.  When we first got Lena we were given a list of the food she ate in a "typical day". 

Here's the list:

Breakfast:  Congee (A type of rice porridge. When served plain it is rice cooked with lots and lots of water and is sort of like a thick watery rice mixture.  It's often served with meat or fish added, even with the meat added it is sort of tasteless) 

Snack:  Fruit (usually apples or watermelon)

Lunch:  Rice or noodles, meat, and veggies

Snack:  Fruit and/or rice crackers

Dinner:  Rice or noodles, meat, and veggies, or dumplings

Part of the reason for feeding children in an orphanage this type of food is that it's easy, but from what I can tell this is also a very typical day of eating in China.  Most meals seem to contain some type of meat (but the meat is not quite the same that we eat here in the US, we saw things like pork knuckles, chicken feat, and beef tongue on the menus in China), either noodles or rice, and veggies.  We didn't see a whole lot of bread and we certainly didn't see cheese or marinara sauce.   

One of the big adjustments a 4 year old child will have in coming to Northern New England from China is food.  Jun pretty much ate noodles for 3 meals a day for the first 2 or 3 months we were home.  He was not interested in French fries, pizza, ice-cream, or chips for at least 6 months.  I assumed it would be the same with Lena, so we asked my parents to make sure we had plenty of noodles and rice in the house for when we arrived.  To my surprise, Lena has not touched a noodle, and hasn't really been interested in rice or dumplings.  What has she been eating?  Pizza!   We had pizza once in China and she seemed to like it, but I didn't think she LOVED it the way she does now.  We got up in the middle of the night on our first day home and I let Lena look through the freezer and the refrigerator to see what she might like to eat.  We had noodles, dumplings, rice, and lots of fruit, but she kept going back to the freezer and pointing to the pizza.  I couldn't really think of a good reason to NOT make the pizza, so I finally put it in the oven.  And at 4AM we all ate pizza.  Then, a couple days ago my brother and his family came for a visit so we all went out for pizza.  For some reason I felt like I should order noodles for Lena, but when she saw the pizza arrive at the table she practically jumped out of her chair to get to it.  She was not at all interested in the noodles.  So, I ate the noodles and Lena happily ate 2 big pieces of pizza. 

It'll be interesting to see how her eating habits develop.  We generally try to eat a healthy diet, but we do eat pizza every Friday, have ice cream several times a week, and, as much as I hate to admit it, we also eat our share of French fries.  I wonder if Lena will like these things.  I wonder if Lena will like a big bowl of spaghetti with marinara sauce and a side of bread too?!