I know that there are many food blogs around and many of them written by people with similar backgrounds to me. You see, I'm Chinese and I grew up in a culture which revolves around family, food and shopping (ok, I added the last one in, but seriously, find me a Chinese person who doesn't love shopping!). Perhaps a generalisation, but in more cases than not, our culture loves to eat. We live to eat and not the other way round, so it's no surprise that if I was going to blog about anything, it would be about food. Well, to be honest, I love to write travel tips and experiences so don't be surprised if you find me writing about random things about trips I've been on. I had originally thought I could turn this into a "lifestyle" blog, but I'm no Gwyneth Paltrow (yes believe it or not, she has a blog called Goop or something like that) and I sincerely doubt any one who reads this would be inspired by any lifestyle advice I have to give....I think it would extend to, "Don't put white clothes into the washing machine with colour"...so I won't be bombarding you with things like that! Food and maybe travel is all I'll write about!
So I said before that I grew up in a culture that revolves around food. You'd probably expect that a person like myself to be pretty much brought up eating asian food, and to be honest, many of my peers who are first generation Chinese in Australia, probably did. However, I grew up eating a multitude of different cuisines, ranging from Italian to German to French thanks to my father's penchant for food! He is a man who not only loves to eat but also loves trying different types of food. Bless. He introduced us to the wonders of eating Bratwurst and Sauerkraut for Sunday lunch or going to a French restaurant to try the snails in garlic butter and most recently, boudin noir and sweetbreads at two restaurants in Melbourne. When we travelled overseas for holidays, it was as much about the sight seeing as it was about tasting the different foods. We have literally eaten our way through most of Western Europe!
Seriously though, we are talking about a man who recently went to an Argentinian restaurant in a bayside suburb of Melbourne and was told by the restaurant that what he wanted to order was too much food. Eyes bigger than stomach. So not only does my father over order at restaurants, he also cooks a feast for 8-10 people when there are only 5 people. It's a genetic fault which I have unfortunately inherited. You may ask, why is this an issue? Well firstly, I am unfortunately not one of those girls who has the skinny asian girl metabolism where no weight is ever gained through consumption of food. The fact that I am not the size of a house is put down purely to portion control and a ton of jogging. It is the only reason I exercise...which I know is pretty pathetic! Secondly, I am not a very good cook but when I do, I don't know how to cook for a small number of people. I have a set of pyrex boxes purely because I always cook too much! Finally, I suffer from massive over-ordering - my eyes are totally bigger than my stomach, which is ironic because I'm nearly legally blind and can't see without glasses!! You need only ask my ex who pretty much gained an extra couple of kgs from our eating extravaganzas over the course of our relationship. On many occasions, we were told by the wait staff at several Melbourne eateries that our order was too much for the two of us. Sometimes we ignored their advice and ate until we both had food babies and other times we would take their advice. To be honest that ratio was probably 3:1 where we would over-order....and the worst thing is that I still harbour a tiny part of my upbringing which required me to eat everything on the plate. Oh my god, have you seen how big servings are these days?? If I did eat everything on the plate (especially being asian where you theoretically have to 'eat the meat'), imagine how many kms I'd have to run a week?!
Anyway, I digress...
My father is affectionately called in Chinese, a greedy cat, for his love of eating. So I guess that's why I've called my blog, the Greedy Kat. Well my name is Katherine so it seemed appropriate given I am my father's daughter through and though. He doesn't call me a Greedy Kat very often, in fact, I think he endearingly calls me a 'fat bastard' a la Austin Powers style, but I think it'd be fairly un-pc of me to call my blog that. Also when I was a kid, I was a bit of a fatty and I grew up in the era where Fat Cat and friends was the thing that young kids watched...and yep, you guessed it, I was called Fat Cat. Lovely for the self esteem huh?! So for the purposes of not bringing back up any deep seated emotional issues, I thought it best not call my blog Fat Kat and friends.......
Ok, enough background for you all (probably a bit OTT but hey, it's my blog and I can write what I want!). So I guess you're wondering how my blog is any different from others that are out there. Well for starters, it probably won't be. In fact, the only people who will probably read this are my friends who are reading it out of respect for our friendship, and those who might randomly stumble upon it on Google. However, I am hoping that it may help people in their decision to visit certain restaurants and to assist in choosing items on the menu. Plus it provides me with a record of where I've eaten in case I need inspiration rather than choosing my regular restaurants that I always go to!
When I visited the ever popular, Chin Chin for the first time, I googled what others had tried at the restaurant to see what was the most popular dish. I'm glad I did, otherwise I would have been lost in a menu that had an abundance of tasty sounding dishes. I suffer from food envy and given the proximity of your neighbouring table, there would have been some serious food envy going on and perhaps even food regret. Yes that's something I suffer from too. Sometimes it's just a fact that you have to decide between two dishes that sound equally as good and then you end up choosing the one that isn't as nice as your eating partner and secretly regret not making the right choice! Yes I know, the tough issues I have to face on a day to day basis.....!!! Anyway, I'd like to think that my blog won't be a pretentiously formal summary of my experiences, but a candid discussion about things that I ate that were awesome and those that weren't so much!
Lastly, I hope that you will all forgive me for my writing style - I'm not a professional writer (more learning to be a PowerPoint pro at the moment) so I'm sure that the blog could be littered with grammatical errors and mixed colloquial sayings (I always just get them wrong and mixed up!). If I fess up now then you can't say I didn't warn you!
Happy reading and eating!
Meow,
The Greedy Kat
ps. A thank you to everyone who has endured or will endure meals with me where I stop to take a photo of every dish that comes out!
pps. For all those interested, both my parents are not overweight! Damn asian non-fat genes that they didn't pass on to me!!!
