Clean Ingredients Speak for Themselves: Yi Guo Shi Tai’s Small Meal Table
In this instalment, Xia Lili takes us straight into the heart of the Small Meal Table. Presiding over its kitchen, she has not only woven together meal companions, farmer friends and food in a whirlwind of activity, but has also unexpectedly discovered the almost magical “efficacy” of the Small Meal Table in reshaping one’s physical vitality.
I. Cabbage Boiled with Potatoes: Sounding the Trumpet of the Spring Harvest
As I picked through the tiny and not-so-tiny insect holes on the fresh potatoes, I could almost see my farmer friend Hu Xuemei and her helper, Brother Li, toiling in the fields to bring in the spring harvest. Xuemei prices every vegetable the same – ten yuan a jin regardless of variety. To keep my food budget down, I visit her stall once a month when she sets up at the Chengdu Life Market: not only do I save on delivery charges, but because I happily take imperfect produce, I get a small discount on top.
In Shuzhuang Village, Chongyi Town, Dujiangyan – the place I was born – this was always the busiest time for the grown-ups. Once the potatoes were lifted, the ground had to be cleared for the next crop: the biggest ones were picked out and stacked to store, while the smaller ones went into the bamboo winnowing basket to be eaten first.
When the adults were busy, the cooking fell to the teenage girls in the family, and I – the little tail – would sit alongside, helping to tend the fire while watching how they made rice. We would wash and cook the rice first; then, while it boiled, grab a handful of potatoes, scrub them clean, and tear the cabbage leaves into rough pieces.
When the vegetables were done and the rice steamed, the cook would dip a spoon into the crock of fermented chilli bean paste while sending the little tail out to the fields to play messenger, calling every pair of hands back home.
In time, the elders passed one by one; the cousins on both sides moved the whole family away to find work in town, and the girls married off to distant places. The little tail no longer had any footsteps to follow when returning to the family home. And with the redrawing of administrative boundaries, Chongyi Town has vanished from the map of Dujiangyan City altogether.
Yet, fortunately, the experiences of my childhood in the countryside have quietly grown into the tightest, most delicate rings of my life’s tree. So my hometown, my ancestral home, and my beloved family will always live on with me.
II. Ingredients Speak for Themselves
After tasting the potatoes, Sister Jiang, one of the Small Meal Table’s original meal companions, remarked that they had “a hint of milk”. What I tasted instead was a delicate sweetness. Clean, honest ingredients truly do speak for themselves. I am glad the effort has not been wasted – after all, I set up the Small Meal Table precisely so I could hear them speak every single day.
Thank you, Small Meal Table, for unlocking a new chapter of my life in Yulin.
On the last day of February, I had a meal lined up for my companions, and that very evening – the moment I received the food budget – I went wild on Tian’an Life’s online shop, buying a fresh set of chopping boards and knives, stocking up on mixed grains, dried goods and seasonings, and ordering a weekly vegetable box from Hu Xuemei Family Farm.
The moment I left the payment page on Tian’an Life’s WeChat shop, I could hardly wait to share the wonderful news of the Small Meal Table’s opening with Auntie Chen at Yujian Family Farm in Meishan, and ordered ten jin (roughly 5 kg) of rice from our resident “Small Meal Table rice supplier”. Auntie Chen was delighted, saying her farm happened to be digging up carrots just then and that she would bring some along on the day we went to collect our vegetable box at the market, as a congratulatory gift.
That night, lying in bed, I pictured all kinds of ingredients making their way towards me from their places of origin, carrying the fragrance of the soil and the well-wishes of my farmer friends, and I truly felt that even my dreams tonight would make me smile.
When I laughed myself awake, the first day of cooking for my meal companions had arrived.
Standing in the kitchen, surveying everything around me, brimming with resolve, I suddenly felt as though every familiar farmer friend were right there beside me – in this borrowed kitchen – helping me welcome the challenge ahead.
You can truly see where a person spends their time. Over the past ten years, I have poured myself wholeheartedly into cultivating the life I believe in, and it has, in the end, borne some “fruits of a life well lived”.
As a self-taught “food intellectual” – a playful twist on the word “intellectual” – I took stock of my meal companions’ dietary health and, guided by The China Study’s principle that “to improve health, one should eat a primarily whole-food, plant-based diet”, set about restructuring everyone’s meals, starting with the grains.
To ensure the nutritional density of every meal, the Small Meal Table’s “one dish, one grain” format means my companions must take in at least ten different foods at every sitting. Before cooking the rice each day, I run a mental calculation.
Quality carbohydrates are essential for bodies shaped by East Asian genetics, so while reducing the proportion of white rice, I blend in brown rice or millet, then add a handful of seeds and legumes – raw cashews, pine nuts, maize meal, black beans, peanuts – to round out the variety of flavours, textures and nutrients.
III. Running the Small Meal Table Is Like Governing a Great Nation
Because of these meal companions, I have gained fresh perspectives on cooking itself.
Each meal companion has their own reason for “joining in for a meal”: Miss Jiang wants to save cooking time so she can explore her own interests; Tata, who runs the plant shop downstairs, and her brother have neither the time nor the conditions to cook; Chuchuzi, who teaches piano, simply does not want to cook but refuses to live off takeaway; Liu Dashu, who runs a bar, wants to manage his health through a regular routine (mainly by losing weight)…
Apart from Miss Jiang, none of the others have any real understanding of, or need for, ecological produce and the link between ecological agriculture and personal health – let alone the time to look into it. So how can I help them sense the value and meaning of the Small Meal Table?
I will take the time for some “communication and education”. After every prep session, just before I start stir-frying, I squeeze a moment in the WeChat group called “Healthy Living Group” to give my meal companions a quick update: not just what is on the menu today, but where the food comes from and the benefits of this way of cooking…
How do I accommodate each meal companion’s needs within the budget? How do I combine what is in the fridge with the produce coming from my farmer friends? Whose dietary needs have shifted over the past few days, and how should I adjust my preparation to suit them? Whose work schedule clashes with meal collection times, and how do I resolve that? All the coordination and balancing that go into the process demand real thought – it truly does feel like running the Small Meal Table is like governing a great nation.
But I am still happy, because during the daily hours of cooking, I can talk – wordlessly – with farmer friends and meal companions through the food itself.
Everything has gone smoothly.
The kitchen has gone “from muskets to cannons” thanks to the Small Meal Table: efficiency has skyrocketed. With my meal companions pitching in, the fridge’s inventory-clearing has sped up too. The black pork, cured pork, soy-cured pork, Chinese sausage, ham, fish balls and other items that had been troubling me all winter now file out of the freezer one batch at a time – and each time, my heart cheers right along with the fridge.
Within a few days, my meal companions started saying they were like Pavlov’s dogs, anticipating mealtimes the instant the hour struck, and confessed they felt “deeply happy” inside. As the founder and head chef, the cook feels the same way: the eager, open-mouthed anticipation of hungry faces gives the cook a sense of being needed, and watching them tuck in so enthusiastically at every meal fills her with a deep sense of accomplishment.
One day, classmate Liu Dashu came to collect his meal, carried his bowl downstairs and immediately posted a photo, saying the best thing about Yulin is having the Small Meal Table – his joy was plain to see. I think, beyond enjoying a healthy meal, he was also thrilled that he had genuinely managed to “get up early”.
As a barman by trade, making it for meal collection right on the dot at 11:50 a.m. is no small feat. I hope the Small Meal Table’s “healthy eating and a regular routine” can lend him a hand, helping him carry out his health-management project even more thoroughly.
Besides Liu Dashu, I would like to share the story of another meal companion, Chuchuzi.
Last autumn, I signed up for a forest hiking trip organised by a friend and met Chuchuzi, a fellow outdoor enthusiast. She describes herself as someone who gives absolutely no thought to food or the land – she came to the Small Meal Table simply because she did not want to cook, was looking for value for money, lived fairly close to me, and trusted me.
After her very first visit to collect a meal, she came to me excitedly and said, “The food is amazing. Just eating the rice alone is amazing,” adding that this kind of rice would make a “nut lover completely ecstatic”. Every time she comes to collect her meal, she snaps a photo and sends it to her mum back home – “Mum will never have to worry about me not eating well ever again.”
Two weeks into “joining in for meals”, she told me her weight was dropping steadily – she had already lost around ten jin (roughly 5 kg) – and her body was undergoing a wondrous transformation: she felt incredibly energetic and no longer craved snacks or late-night nibbles. Yes, when the body receives enough nutrition, the organs simply run in a state of perfect peace and calm.
Apart from teaching students piano, Chuchuzi also plays in two bands with friends and often stays up late. The Small Meal Table has given her a reason to get up early, helps her manage her health, and frees her from the hassle of ordering takeaway – leaving more energy for her creative work. I joke that if one day her band or a song of hers becomes a hit, Teacher Xia can claim a tiny contribution to her great endeavour.
Before long, the first month was over. Chuchuzi had grown to love the feeling of “eating home cooking” and become a devoted fan of the Small Meal Table. Even though her questions about food are scattered and random – popping up here and there when she comes to collect her meal – she has, more or less, started to think about “why eating properly matters so much.”
One day, Chuchuzi said to me, very seriously: “This (getting to know the land and my farmer friends through the Small Meal Table) is a good thing – it has real value. I hope more people can learn about it.” By the time the Small Meal Table entered its second month, she was more eager than I was for it to keep going in Yulin for ever: “As long as I am working here (at the training school where I am employed), I will come to collect my meals.”
Editing: Xu Youyou