Mixed Vegetable Dumplings

We have made a new friend in Paris - Mr Zhang. Unfortunately, we don't really know much about Mr Zhang because he speaks no English, the tiniest bit of French and our Mandarin is, to be honest, a bit rusty. But I have met Mr Zhang twice and he has led to two very successful dinner parties. You see, Mr Zhang delivers our dumplings. In great big plastic bags, we receive 150 frozen dumplings delivered to our metro station. I go down to the metro station, give him money, and he gives me dumplings. Hope the police have not been watching.

We heard about him through a friend of a friend. Apparently he is a big hit in the Chinese community here and the word has now spread to the non-Chinese community. Mr Zhang makes great dumplings. I have even found some dumpling baskets in the local Chinese supermarket as well as chopsticks and so we have put on a totally authentic feast for our French colleagues.

Of course given the language barrier and despite Mel's best efforts to translate, the content of our dumplings is still a great unknown. We like to call them "mixed vegetable" for our own conscience. We are doubtful that there are too many vegetable in the dumplings and some bits of them sometimes resemble prawns if you look at them at a particular angle in a particular light. Not something we'd like to impose on guests. Generally, we like to let people look at their food from all angles. But maybe we're being too generous.

But nevertheless they taste great. And they get delivered. And Mr Zhang has no shop - he makes them in his apartment according to "mama papa China recipe" (this is what I could make out of him telling me how he makes them) - and so it's totally exclusive. Very Parisian.

I have scanned my photo folders and it seems I haven't taken any photos of them - but you all know what they look like - think yum cha. However, we did bring out Vegemite after dumplings and I think you can gauge that dumplings were marginally more successful.

In other news - my iPod revived after its little holiday through the washing machine. It is now called iSwam. Apple, if you're reading this - don't you dare take the name. I mean it. I happen to know some lawyers! But truly, it is quite a feat for this little toy to make it out alive - albeit with a bit of hard work and formatting etc. Well done Apple for your design work.

Also in other news, possibly more important news, you'll be happy to hear that pumpkins are back in season. We are saved. Unfortunately, the arrival of the pumpkin indicates the end of summer so we may not see sunshine until next May but there will be soup.