China's green tea eggs

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 9, and Nell, 6, spent three happy months during summer of 2007 travelling around Britain. Now we’re home, but the travel bug is still there. Join us for the occasional sightseeing plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint. This post is from Nicola

Four of my MA students at Middlesex University – who have also done a short internship with the publications team at Friends of the Earth – came round to dinner recently. We had a lot of fun trying to guess what age each person was – and how many people lived in China (1.25 billion), Egypt (80 million) and Turkey (71 million).

The world total is now more than 6 billion which is why these are numbers are so huge.

The only people who were shocked that the UK is so tiddly, with just 60 million people (!) were Lola, Nell and me. It is astonishing how much impact our little home has had on the world, and how many people still want to spend a long time in cities like London.

Perhaps because the Olympics are in Beijing this year, and because one out of every five people in the world live in China the girls are enjoying a special China Week at school. There’s even noodles and dim sum planned one lunch time for the kids – so it was very good that Xu-Song (who prefers to call herself Emily in the UK as we are so rubbish at pronouncing her Chinese name) brought around green tea eggs (see pic above). I liked them – tea and eggs can’t be a bad mix – but Lola and Nell were very nervous. I do wonder how they’ve ended up with such unadventurous tastes despite the many food choices they see, or are even offered, every single day.

It also made me puzzle over the dish I'd take if I was doing international food - I suspect a tooth-rotting, super sweet batch of flapjacks.