Home cooking

After receiving a message with the question "do you have a kitchen?" from a civil engineering student I had met the day before on campus, I realized instantly that the moment had come to inaugurate my kitchen.
I invited him over, together with the female chemistry student who had introduced him to me. I had met her in my first week of class during lunch in the large dining hall. They had earlier suggested to go out for dinner tonight at one of the many on-campus eateries, but the idea of starting up home cooking made me eager to go to the Beijing Hualian store to buy some equipment.

My kitchen was still without any tools, except for the knife set and glasses I had bought a couple of weeks ago.
We agreed to meet at GXU's South gate (the meeting point of choice for many students), and I had suggested to bring some more people. This resulted in three female IT students joining in.
C programmers, no less!
The six of us walked over to the large underground supermarket and collected a basic set of equipment for my kitchen: a rice cooker, a wok, bowls, chopsticks, a large spoon, and of course ingredients for food. The civil engineer to-be turned out to be an experienced chef and was leading the way in selecting the supplies.
We brought home three shopping bags of hardware and software that set me back 238 RMB (25 euro). Not that much for a kitchen outfit plus ingredients for a meal feeding 6 people!

After unpacking the rice cooker it was quickly loaded with a mixture of white and red rice (a first for me), plus a top cargo of jiaozi (dumplings) in a plastic steam basket hanging over the rice. Efficient! Veggies stir-fried with some large green chilies, and also the classic eggs and tomato omelette was not forgotten.
All in all a surprisingly complete initiation ritual, executed as if it was already daily practice. Will definitely make this a repeat event, possibly every weekend.