The principal food of all Chinese is rice, for although they have wheat and sell bread kneaded therefrom, yet they do not eat it save as if it were a fruit. Their chief bread is cooked rice, and they even make a wine from it which is comparable with a reasonable grapewine and might even be mistaken for it.



They eat seated at tables, but they do not use table-cloths or napkins; for they do not touch with their fingers anything that they are going to eat, but. they pick up everything with two long little sticks, They are so expert in this, that they can take anything, however small, and carry it to their mouth, even if it is round, like plums and other such fruits.

At the beginning of a meal they eat meat without bread, and afterwards instead of bread they eat three or four dishes of cooked rice, which they likewise eat with their chopsticks, even though somewhat hoggishly. At banquets, a table is placed for each guest, and when the banquet is a formal one, each guest gets many tables and to explain this I would like to recount what sort of banquets they offered us, and the way in which they were served.

The more rice you pile on, the more portions you create, and the less fat and sodium each one has. That's more like the healthy Chinese diet you think you're getting down at your local Hard Wok Cafe. For example, one of the nastiest dishes is Kung Pao Chicken. A dinner portion without the rice averaged 1,275 calories, 75 grams of fat (13 of them saturated), and more than 2,600 mg of sodium. That's about a day's worth of fat and sodium crammed into one entree.

But if you add one cup of rice to every cup of Kung Pao and then divide it into two-cup portions (split it with friends, take it to work ... you get the idea), each will have about 653 calories, 23 grams of fat (four of them saturated), and 791 mg of sodium. That's still not great, but it's much better.

The next time you cook Chinese food, don't leave the vegetables behind. Yes, vegetables are grillable! What exactly makes them taste so good? The juices stay concentrated in the middle, while the outside becomes seared with smoky flavor. So why heat up the kitchen when you can do it all outdoors?