Recipe #14 - Sangria

In honor of our visitors Dana and Allistair, who travelled with us in Spain, I made some sangria.  We are experts in sangria because we sampled it from at least 10 restaurants and bars.  

Here's the recipe:  http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Sangria-Sangria/Detail.aspx

I didn't know if carbonated water was sparkling water like Perrier, soda water or club soda but after much research (and buying 2 of them) I went with club soda.

It came out pretty good.  We had it the same night I made it and it was just good, but it was definitely better the second morning.  It is important to let it sit overnight to let the flavors get better.

Notes: I did all the optional components.  Make the day before for sure.

Modifications: None, liked it as is.

Make again? :  Definitely

Bacon Explosion

How can you not want to try something called Bacon Explosion?  Should I make this for the Super Bowl?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/dining/28bacon.html

And check out the slideshow here:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/01/28/dining/0128-BACON_index.html

And finally, if you're reading this page about bacon, maybe you should click this link and read it in style:

http://bacolicio.us/http://the-best-year-ever.blogspot.com/

Flight, Physical Exertion and Fire

Flight: 13 hours to Chicago, which was in the single digits, then 3 1/2 more hours to get home.  It wasn't nearly as bad as the way there, though.  That one was extremely painful.  Luckily I had some new DVDs for the way back which helped pass the time.

Physical Exertion: 5 hours after getting home from the airport, I left the house to run a half-marathon.  I did pretty well considering the time issues, but I could've done way better.  My heart rate was way too high for the pace I was running, and I think that's due to being so exhausted and completely unprepared the two days before.  I'm glad I did it, though, it was fun.

Fire: I was heating up some food tonight in one of those foil trays with the cardboard-y top.  I put it in the toaster oven and the top caught on fire. I unplugged the toaster oven and opened up the door to it and was greeted by some angry looking flames.  I moved it forward so it wouldn't make my cabinets catch fire and I told Gwen to get the extinguisher.  Luckily after a few seconds it burned itself out.  Toaster, cabinets and most importantly,  the food I was heating up were all fine.

Headed Home

It was a fun week, but very glad to be coming home. 13 hour flight to Chicago, then down to FLL. China is a really interesting place and I'm glad I got to see it. We'll know in a few weeks where our next residency is, so that should be equally cool.

China thoughts

• 7 1/2 hours of class per day is a lot, especially when you add in homework.  At least we have some corporate visits the next couple of days to break up the monotony.
• It sucks to be in China when Duke plays Georgetown, the NFL playoffs are on and the inauguration are all in the same week.
• The smog here is insane.  I don't know how they could let it get to this point.  You can't see anywhere near as far as you should because it's so thick.  Supposedly the government says it's fog, but that's BS.
• I miss being home with Gwen and watching The Office and Top Chef and all our usual stuff.  Awwwww.
• Why did Dad always call mom "China"?  That doesn't really make any sense.
• You can get certain things here ridiculously cheap.  Some people are getting suits tailored for $65.  Someone I know bought a cashmere jacket for $60.  It seems like some people go out almost daily to go get stuff, but I haven't been.
• I slept awesome last night, hopefully I sleep through the night again tonight.
• I called down to the front desk to ask if a meal was covered by the program.  The lady asked the concierge, came back on the phone and said "No, we don't have any mail for you" so I gave up.  A friend of mine called down for chap-stick and they brought him up some chop-sticks.
• The afternoon snack today was octopus salad, boiled bonito and sushi.  I skipped it.

Jet Lag

Doh.  Guess I'm not as adjusted as I thought I was.  I woke up at 4:30 and couldn't go back to sleep.  I've been doing some reading for school and now I'm going to go to the gym for a few.  At least I'll make my insomnia productive.

Back to Tylenol PM for me tonight.

Recipe #13 - Shanghai Wontons

Did you think that travelling to China meant that I could stop my goal of 365 recipes?  No way.  

Today we had some tours that you could choose from and the one I picked was a culinary tour.  It was a lot of fun and I'm glad I did it.  First we were picked up at the hotel and driven over to a local market.  They had all sorts of stuff, meat, pork, strange animal parts, whole chickens, 

unidentifiable fish, ridiculously large vegetables, an an entire stand for tofu.  We picked up the 

stuff we needed to make our recipe (Shanghai Wontons) and headed over to this kitchen area.  

There were some professional chefs there to help teach us how to do it.  There were actually two 

teams, mine which made the wontons and another team that made Black-Pepper Beef Fried Rice.  The chef demonstrated how to cut the tofu, mushrooms, and bok choy, and then we did it for ourselves.  We mixed in the pork then started stuffing the dumplings.  The chef could do them in 5 seconds but it took us a lot longer, and most of our's looked uneven compared to her's, which were amazing.  Next we boiled them and tried them out.  I attached a picture of one of them served on top of the other group's rice, along with my certificate of completion.

On another note, this made me think it would be a great idea to have a cuban cooking class that we could teach.  This lady has a really small business that looks like it's doing well.  Get connected with some small tour companies or cruise ships or whatever, have people in for 3 hours and make rice & black beans, bistec, fried plantains and a mojito and charge them $50 for the lesson and the food.  We could be millionaires.  Anyway, back to the recipe.

Notes: The meat market here looks a bit different from that of Publix.

Make again : Sure, especially since they gave us a recipe book to take away with both recipes in it.