About ten years ago I lived in Taiwan. I wondered why every North American I encountered claimed to be "allergic" to msg; headaches, tingling, giddiness etc, but 1.2 billion Chinese didn't seem to suffer these allergies. My research indicated that msg is a naturally occurring salt that could be manufactured commercially, just like sodium chloride can be made by schoolkids in the school lab. Msg celebrated it's 100th birthday last year. It occurs naturally in foods like seaweed, mushrooms, tomatoes and roasted meats. A decent hit of it is found in a pizza. I have noticed the msg taste after eating a beef mushroom lasagne. My personal theory is that Chinese and Japanese fell on msg with gratitude because it provided the umami flavour desperately missing in their almost meat-free diets. Shame they use so much of it now.

Yeast is an organism. It needs food to grow. As long as it has food it will continue to grow. It feeds on sugar. Cane sugar will do but the bread will have a vaguely sugary taste. However if you care to take a little more time it will also feed on the sugars that occur naturally in wheat flour. Altitude has nothing to do with it. Temperature has a little to do with it as it grows more rapidly at warm temperatures but will continue to grow in the refrigerator. Yeast continues to grow until it has used all the sugars available to it, and that's a lot. Therefore you only need to add a tiny little bit of yeast and then wait. Recipes that call for several teaspoons of yeast usually originate from yeast sellers. Bread made from flour, water, yeast and salt that has been slowly risen is the best. The flour seems to release a bunch of flavours and aromas unique to slowly risen bread. The main function of improvers is to give the bread a smooth glossy surface, soften its texture and improve its keeping qualities. If you want to use sugar and 'improvers' do so. Why you would I have no idea when you can also buy glossy, soft, sweet three day old bread at any Chinese bread store.

It does seem that Walmart, Metro and Carrefour are pretty well organised on the wine front. We have a cafe/wine bar here and find that we can sell decent amounts of imported wines in the 100 kuai and under range but there is resistance over that mark. Of course there are huge sales taxes on most imported wines here but it seems a shame that few, if any, importers (other than the above mentioned) seem prepared to trade off high margins for bulk. For example, New Zealand has had a serious wine glut recently that resulted in wine prices at fabulously low levels. And not just the rubbish either. But none of these wines ended up here. The only NZ wines available here at seem to be in the 300+ range. Buzzard, you're welcome to come and see us at Slice of Heaven, 168 Hong Shan Dong Lu.

We agree breadmaking is a fun and magical process. However if you can't be bothered with the ten minutes kneading, don't want to buy a breadmaker or oven don't despair. We're lucky in Kunming to have three cafes, As You Like It, French Cafe and Slice of Heaven making really good artisan bread.

Ask at the wet market. We buy them frozen in 1 kg packs. Look for someone selling frozen wings, feet etc