One Child Policy Homeschool - Lunch at Our Home

November 7, 2008 - Lunch at Our Home

I've got a confession to share with you. I have a great house helper.

[Stop a minute.....if you're my friend, you're going to read this post and be happy for me. Right? Happy with me and for me? Not jealous, okay? Remember my joy over corn flakes? Okay. Now keep this in perspective. On with the post...]

She comes four times a week, on weekdays, to help with laundry and simple housework. But the best thing about her is that she cooks lunch for us on those days!

So everyday that I homeschool, I don't have to even so much as think about the dreaded "What are we going to have for lunch?" question. She plans the menu; she buys the ingredients; she cooks the meal. The food is always super fresh, bought that very morning.

And she's an incredible cook. I took pictures of three days worth of her wonderful cooking to share with you. (Of course, rice is always served with each meal although I didn't take a photo of the rice.)

Meal 1

This meal contains
pork with peppers (a little spicy)

carrots

roast beef (sort of) with cilantro on top
Sprite dislikes spicy foods, so the helper makes her a portion without hot pepper. That's the small dish toward the back that you see in each meal.

If you're wondering, yes, we are eating a lot more meat than a normal Chinese family. For example, I was talking to a guy who drives a van for a living and still lives at home with his parents. He and his mother and father -- three people-- buy one pound of meat a week. And that one pound of meat is used in three different meals for that week. Needless to say, they do not eat meat daily.

Meal 2

Oh, this was a good one! They're all good, but this one I especially like.

This meal includes
tofu with Chinese chives (jiu cai to us) -- a fav of mine!

fried jiaozi/dumplings -- homemade!

pork with veggies (wood ear fungus and qing sun/celtuse)

Meal 3

This meal includes
pork with Chinese garlic stems (we say suan tai)

spicy eggplant -- This is to die for!

chicken with qing sun/celtuse

And, of course, she cleans up the kitchen afterwards. She makes my homeschool days almost carefree. Sprite and I have lessons, take a lunch break, and then continue until we finish. It's one of those huge blessings that living overseas affords you (sort of payback for all the massive inconveniences that you face).

Besides the fact that she plans, shops, and cooks, she practically pays for herself in cheap lunches! Each one of these meals costs us from $3 to $5. That's lunch for five people -- we've had a house guest at the time of these pics, and the helper eats with us too. She can cook much more cheaply than I can, and she can bargain much more fiercely for good prices.

I know you're wondering how much does a helper like this cost. Want to venture a guess? How much do you think we pay her? We give her a generous monthly salary. All our local friends say we pay too much, and we are okay with that. (I can tell you that she's worth every penny!) She comes four days a week, about 4-5 hours each day. I'm not sure what housecleaning costs in America, but I am estimating that we pay her less for one month than you would pay for one day of a maid's services.

So what do you think? Take a stab at it, and I'll share the actual cost later. And I'm sure you have other questions about our meals and the helper, so fire away, and I'll answer those too!