Cooking Fun in Pictures

Last Friday, we had another fun cooking session with friends. This week had been a beautiful week, blue skies, warm and humid, and no rain. We were sure we could do the session outdoors.



Of course, I am sure you can figure out what the rest of the story is. Indeed, after we all got settled outside and had gotten everything to the picnic table, it started raining. And raining, and pouring. And raining more. We decided to move indoors, even although that was a bit crowded, since there were ten kids running around too.

Not like I had cleaned the kitchen table in preparation of this either.

I made bread dough, and we started filling dumplings for steaming.



Where last time we made them boring and round, this time our friends taught us how to make them into cute porcupines, and triangles and other shapes.



Amazing how just a few snips with a scissor can turn a boring roll into something cute and fun.

Those dumplings turned out very tasty. Of course we had to quality test them.



They passed the test. Kate special ordered a bunny, Mosaica was creative enough to make one that looked exactly like one.



After those dumplings, we made another batch of dumplings, using wonton wrappers this time.



Those turned out really well too. Amazing how much of those things you can make when you are together. I would never have to patience to sit down and do this by myself.

Time for some calligraphy to round off the afternoon.

Mosaica had been wanting to learn how to do this and was very happy about the demonstration we got. She even got to do some by herself.



Beautiful calligraphy. Maybe in my next life, I'll learn how to do that, I don't think I can quite fit it in my current one. For now I'll just concentrate on learning to read and speak chinese.



During all this, we snacked on watermelon, blueberries, nuts, and tea eggs.



Tea eggs are quite simple to make, just boil cracked hard-boiled eggs in tea with some extras. I remember making them sixteen years ago, when we had friends over for dinner. I made tea eggs, and noodles, and made a nest out of the noodles. I placed the peeled tea eggs into the 'nest' and put a toy dinosaur next to it to guard its nest. Turned out very cute. I think my friends were a bit flabbergasted about the presentation, they had never heard of tea eggs before. They politely declined to even touch them ^^

Sylvia had no such issues with tea eggs and happily ate them.



Such a fun afternoon. Would have been even better if the sun had been shining. The rain was very bad timing. Heck would have been perfect if my house had been cleaned up.