I: Introduction
Due to the high altitude of Tibet, the water boils at 90 degree Celsius, and cooking with water is impossible. The diet and foods are peculiar in Tibet. The Tibetan diet consists mostly of meat, milks and other high-protein foods. The main staple is `tsamba' . Tea is a necessary. Travelers usually bring dried meat, tsamba, and tea for foods. Recently, after the introduction of pressure cooker, there are more varieties, some are imitations of Han cooking ("Chinese food" in the West). At the end of this article, we will provide the menu of a Tibetan restaurant.
II: Meat
(1) Dried Meat
In the winter, beef and mutton are cut into long stripes to be air-dried in the circular ground caves or bins walled with stones or dungs. Dried beef and mutton keep better and longer, as the bacteria in them are killed during the drying process in deep winter. Dried meat also packs well. In the next year, the dried meat will be Bar-B-Qed or be eaten raw.
(2) Finger Meat
Big chucks of fresh meat are boiled in a pot. Salt, ginger, spices are added. The meat is served when it changes colour. People take the meat by hands and cut them with the carried knives. The breasts and spareribs are for the guests. The tails of white sheep are for the guests of honor. If a young man is treated with a tail of white sheep in his girl friend's house, it implies that he can hope.
(3) Sausage
There are four different sausages in Tibet: blood, meat, flour and liver.
III: Dairy
Milk is drunk fresh or made yogurt, or is separated by churning into butter and curds.
(1) Butter
The Tibetan butter is home-made and can be further processed and refined into butter known elsewhere. Butter is used for food with `tsamba', tea etc., or for the fuel of lamp.
(2) Curd
After butter is made from milk, the remain becomes sour and can be made curd. Milk curd placed in the mouth and sucked on helps to quench thirst and can be mixed with barley flour to make curd-pastry, a holiday delight.
(3) Yogurt
The milk is boiled first, after removed from stove, some old yogurt is added. Yogurt will form in a few hours. In the central and western parts, the yogurt is thin and smooth. In the east, it is too thick to stir. Yogurt is mentioned in the famous poem `the story of Gesar', and has been a Tibetan food for more than 1,000 years.
IV: Staple
The main staple food is `tsamba' . This is made of roasted barley (with husk) ground with a hand mill into very fine flour, which is mixed with a little tea and then rolled into small lumps and eaten with fingers. Butter, curds and sugar add flavour.
`Tubo', a savoury evening gruel made of lumps of wheat flour, tsamba, dried meat and a tuber called `yuangen'.
V: Tea
There are three ways to make tea: simple tea, milk tea and butter tea. The most common tea leaves are produced in the Han Land, as Fu Tea from Hunan, Tou Tea from Yunnnan and Ta Tea from Szechuan. Tibetan tea-drinking forms a special `tea culture'.
Simple tea is boiled tea without any additive.
Milk tea is also called sweet tea. It is an imitation of English tea and Indian tea. However, tea, milk and sugar are boiled simultaneously, which gives it a distinct flavour.
To make butter tea, a Tibetan specialty, you put hot boiled tea and a dash of salt into a tall and slender churn, add a pat of butter, stir the mixture heavily until the tea and butter are well blended and ready to serve. Many non-natives find the taste of this tea a bit rank, but supposedly, once hooked, to go without it causes backaches.
VI: Barley Beer
It is made of barley, slightly sour, resembles beer. It is a must in the weddings and the funerals.
VII: Menu of a modern restaurant
A guest will select from each of the following six groups:
(1) Butter tea.

(2) Cold dishes: yak stomach, air-dried beef, mutton sausage, blood sausage, Xigatse starch sheet, curd, curd pastry.

(3) Hot dishes: stir fried sheep lung, beef stew with turnip, ox-foot stew Han-style, steam wild duck with insect-plant, beef and potato with curry sauce. finger mutton, braised ox tender, boiled mushroom.

(4) Staple: rice with butter, flour lump with butter and curd, tsamba cake with curd, beef dumpling, curd pastry, mou-mou (steam bread, a Norther Chinese food).

(5) Beverage: barley beer, beer, Tibetan vodka, mineral water, soda.

(6) After dinner drink: simple tea, milk tea, butter tea.