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Q: How to teach her the art of eating pâté ? Explaining your own traditions and why it matters to you
My home province is famous for pâté: a mixture of cooked & grounded meat, fat, and various spices, herbs and else. It's meant to be spread on a piece of bread : farmers and factory workers would bring that with them in a pot, and it allows to have a nice quick meal without any tool or flame. And it can be kept it cans for years without any problem. I grew up with that, I love it, it's part of my identity as much as chopsticks and baozi are part of the Chinese identity.
My mother send me cans of pâté, high-quality one, made according to the tradition. My wife is curious and want to try it : no problems ! So I buy bread, I spread that on the bread, and she tries it. She likes it... and proceed to eat directly from the can, without spreading on the bread. To me, it amounts to trolling. Picture someone eating only the pizza topping, but not the paste, or someone eating only the inside of the baozi. I try to tell to my wife it's not the proper way to eat pâté, that we have a whole tradition around that, and that what she does is like trolling me, which makes me feel really bad and unhappy. So she thinks I'm cranky and annoying... It's true, you don't have to eat with bread, but it's meant to be eat like this, designed like that, and if she eats like that back home, it would be like releasing a massive fart in an elevator full of people. Zero comprehension on my wife side : I'm crancky, STFU. She pouts, I pout, we pout.
Do you ever had such a situation ? How did you manage it ? (I'm a newbie at the whole "being married" thing)
9 years 26 weeks ago in Relationships - China
Prep pieces of bread with pate on, and serve it on the table. You could toast some bread, if she likes.
'it meant to be eat like......' ? 'De gustibus non.......'
get yourself spoon...FAST!
I like my pate on toasted (bruschetta size) bread and chopped garlic with loads of black pepper on the top, glasses/bottles of red, and things....
DrMonkey:
I tried that, actually ! I took two cans, I prepared small toasts, I put them in a dish with a nice circle layout... Nope, she picks the pate with chopsticks and leave the bread apart. I tried to tell her "tradition, the way to do it, mean and purpose, blablabla", but she just heard "blablabla". Frustration, I am frustration.
icnif77:
'Cause women are loosing weight
all their lifey, and bread is full of carbs. Just get spoon, and say '(you know) I love you.. and pate….'
Shining_brow:
I prefer mine on a saltine cracker with tomato and a good cheese.
Sorry if I come off as a Philistine... :(
Now I have to add this to the food I miss.
Shining_brow:
Taobao has! :) In fact, I've got 3 tins awaiting me in centre management to pick up (when it stops raining)
My wife loves it (on bread).
Now she's also into pickles and feta cheese...
She hates olives though haha
Funny considering that locals often criticize me when I decide to eat some Chinese dish my own way, for e.g. when I add some meat juice in my white rice because otherwise it is too dry, they are like "oh no, what are you doing? that is not how you should eat it!" and I am like "yeah, cool story bro".
.
I have a problem with getting my male chinese friends not to drink my 150 RMB a bottle vodka like it is cheap baijiu...Drinking full glasses at one gulp like it is 6 kuai farmer rotgut just isn't cool man.
Hotwater:
Yes but they also drink 1500RMB bottles of wuliangye baijiu the same way so you shouldn't criticise them for drinking your relatively cheap vodka the same way. Plus I though Russians drank vodka by necking it quickly?
Scandinavian:
Vodka has to be slammed and then you throw your glass into a fireplace. THAT is how to do it. There used to be a bar back home that had a fireplace and was coincidentally owned by a Russian. It wasn't part of the "normal menu" but as a good friend was married to the owners brother, we could do the fireplace thing as long as we didn't kill other customers with flying glass. (and I think the charged extra for all the broken glass)
rasklnik:
Da, Ya znaio kak rysski liode pit vodka,
But we don't exactly have shot glasses in China, they fill up beer glasses with it...
...and restaurants don't have fire places...
nzteacher80:
150 RMB a bottle? I drank similar stuff in parking lots when I was a teenager. It sounds like those Chinese gentlemen were giving it the respect it deserves. If it was something a little classy, such as as Belvedere, Ketel One or perhaps Grey Goose then I might be able to muster a modicum of feigned shock.
rasklnik:
I used to drink the 6 yuan a glass farmer's biajiu in the big jars on the counter, so 150RMB is a big splurge for me...haha.
If your wife is immune to what your are saying about something that is a bit of a 'tradition' with you, i'm not saying trample on her traditions, but maybe the next time she cooks a meal that she thinks is 'traditional', eat it with a knife and fork.
Childish, I know, but she might get the idea.
It never ceases to amaze me how inflexible some Chinese are to some traditions that have meaning to their foreign other half, yet they expect the foreign partner to adapt and compromise with no questions.
Take it slowly as you would a child.
Pick your fights. I'm not sure that I'd throw my toys out of the cot over pate but I'm sure I'm precious about some things. I took my Chinese girlfriend to a very expensive French restaurant in Shanghai. She'd never eaten French food before so I decided to treat her to a new experience. She hated it. Everything was too salty or not to her liking.
China is very insular. I find that many Chinese people aren't really up for new experiences in the food department.
Try making your own pate - it's easy. Chicken livers, butter, onion, garlic, seasoning, herbs and some cognac of reasonable quality. Plenty of recipes online. Make enough pate so that she can eat it like ice-cream and you can still have enough for yourself to use as you wish.
Shining_brow:
I met a Shanghai woman who lived in Melbourne for FIVE years.She said that in all that time, she only ate Chinese food :(
(for the unknowing =- Melbourne is Australia's most multi-cultural city (debatable) - with places such as Lygon street, which on it's own has at least 5 (probably 10) different nationality restaurants within about 100m.
Be happy she likes this bite of your culture. I find you frenchies weird for eating presskopf without bread too !!!
My main "problem" with my wife is that she cannot eat bread untoasted (I think it is the same as not being able to drink cold water) so even freshly baked bread gets burnt to toast. Such a waste, but still, we can eat the same stuff for breakfast, so just that we do it differently isn't a big thing. Pate on toasted bread.....
I get told pate is for babies and children... 
Shining_brow:
A few locals... Pate is a type of 'paste', so I think that's the connection.
For me it's a two-way street, give respect and receive respect back. My fiancee tells me about cultural things that are important to her and I accept that, later I tell her about my culture and tradition. Sure we sometimes disagree or don't understand reach other, but then I do the manly thing and talk to her about my feelings.
DrMonkey:
That's a nice theory, but doing the "manly thing" is not always working. Sometime, you meet people that can't wrap their head around that some things can be different, until they are dipped in an other culture for a couple of years. You are born next to the Equator, you won't believe that the length of the day can change through the year... until you travel to Finland. I hit this kind of situations with my wife sometime.
