Rolling on the River

I've always wanted to take a night time boat tour through the canals here...and last weekend I finally had the opportunity to enjoy it with friends!

This young girl rode with us, playing a traditional East Asian instrument and singing various songs throughout the tour.

Some of the sights:

Underneath the bridge:

Pretty lights on the pagoda:

An old pedestrian bridge:

Wet N Wild Water Show

We were pumped to get to go out to the lake to watch the water and firework show over the weekend with some dear ones...and you can see why:

I think I even did a post about this place a while back. But this time we got front row seats! :) Which we thought was really super...until the show began. That night there was a strong steady breeze blowing off the lake...and not but a minute after the water show began, you would have thought torrential rains were upon us. But no not from the sky, the breeze was blowing the "water show" all over us! We along with several others were using umbrellas to shield the heavy mists:

I had to even wear my sunglasses at one point to be able to see anything at all:

We were soaked, head to toe by the time we left, all from about 20 minutes of water show...but it was still fun, no doubt! And these cute little ones were having a blast:

Whipping Cream, Who Knew?

Before last week there was only one major supermarket on our side of town. With all 1,000,000 people (not an exaggeration) on our side of town using the same grocery store, you better believe that it makes for one crowded place. Now this place is huge, imagine your normal Wal-Mart Supercenter times 2 in size, but times 50 in population. I’m almost positive that there are over 100 checkout counters.

So last week we celebrated the opening of the brand new R.T. Mart over here on the East Side! We biked to the new store Friday in prep for our first ever attempt at homemade lasagna! The store was pretty jammed packed b/c I’m sure we weren’t the only ones excited about a break from the giant supermarket down the street. But we left happy customers finding most all of the ingredients we wanted.

The ride home was where the adventure really began. We had loaded all our groceries (and a new shelving unit) we'd bought into our baskets and onto the back of our bikes. See pic below. :)

We made it safely through the large intersection right outside of the supermarket, and decided to take a route that was a little longer in distance but didn’t require us to have to get off our bikes and cross any other major roads. Well, off we peddled and around the "halfway to home" point I started feeling the grocery sack and “large and in charge” shelving unit I was hauling wobbling behind my back. Before I could even pull over to the side of the road…whoosh…off my big sack of groceries went flying into the middle of the street. I turned around just in time to see an SUV lock the brakes, swerve, and come within centimeters of our groceries (which were miraculously all still in the bag and not scattered across the street). Haha…whew…close call.

So I ran and grabbed the sack while Jeshica held my bike. I got it all meticulously positioned again, and off we headed. Now you won’t believe this…but not even 10 seconds later a bus was going around us and somehow it clipped the “large and in charge” shelving unit I was hauling. BAM, flapping grocery sack noise…this time both the shelving unit and the grocery sack are out in the middle of the road. Out of nowhere a guard from one of the nearby apartment complexes went running out in the street and grabbed my grocery sack, while I got the shelving unit, and Jesh held the bike. He had an orange shoelace…who knows where that came from…and he helped me strap down my grocery sack and shelving unit much more securely! I thanked him sincerely, and only then did I noticed the small crowd of onlookers standing on the sidewalk watching the foreign girl attempt to carry an “oversize load” home on her bike. Jesh rode behind/beside me the rest of the way…you know just like that little Nissan truck with the flashing lights that rides behind/beside those semi’s hauling wide loads…to ensure all our stuff made it back safely! And it did!

Now here comes the whipping cream part. Before I moved to this side of the world I’d never even heard of whipping cream; whipped cream, cool whip…yeah…not “whipping” cream. But this lil 1 Liter Box has proved to be gold when it comes to making dairy products from scratch (since we can’t get many of the dairy products that are available in the US). I’ve used it several times to make sour cream, but not until this past week did I realize a few more ways I could put it to use. Since we were making homemade lasagna…I used it to make ricotta cheese from scratch (definitely the most domestic thing I’ve ever done in my life). I’ll put the recipe for both of these below…in case you’re in need!

I’ve been on a pudding kick lately, but we used our last box of instant Jell-O pudding a few days ago (and you can’t find it here). So over the weekend I was talking with a friend, telling her about my recent pudding cravings, and she ended up giving me a box of it from her pantry…too kind!! In my head I thought…how delicious would this pudding be with a lil whipped cream on top…I had already looked up a recipe the day before for turning “whipping” cream into “whipped” cream. So I told my friend, who by the way is like super-mom chef, about my idea and she told me that it was pretty much impossible to do without a mixer (which we don’t have).

But, tonight I thought I’d just give it a try. And tonight…that’s where the adventure began. The box of pudding she’d given me was bigger than the one I was used to so I figured I’d just use half of the box and half the amount of milk it required. So I combined them and stirred and stirred and stirred…added some more of the mix…stirred some more…a little more mix…several really fast really hard stirs….a little chocolate substance flying out of the bowl…but still no thickening…just chocolate milk sloshing around in the bowl. What in the world…surely you can half the recipe, right? Well, I ended up pouring the rest of the mix from the box in, but we were out of milk. I repeated that same stirring process over again…but it still resulted in sloshed milk. I checked the box again…what??? I didn’t know there was such thing as non-instant Jell-O pudding! Hahaha! This box required you to cook it over the stove! So I scurried down to the little store on our street since there was still a large portion of milk missing from the mess I’d concocted, to buy the last box of milk they had in stock, the cafeteria carton size box. Yay, just enough!

I came back made the pudding and put it in the refrigerator to chill. After we ate dinner we were excited about pudding with whipped cream. So as Jesh was beginning to clean up I started working on whipping the whipping cream. I knew the recipe from memory because it was fairly simple. Whip one cup of whipping cream until soft peeks form. I must have whipped for 5 solid minutes before Jesh came in and offered to whip for a while (we were determined). Jesh began her attempt at whipping and crack, the handle fell off of the whisk. Haha…it seemed to work to her advantage though, she had the soft peeks going in less than a minute. After the soft peeks form, add one tablespoon of sugar and one teaspoon of vanilla. Then keep whipping until you have soft peeks and the ingredients are blended. It was looking really pretty…and then I told Jesh I’d help whip again…so I whipped my little heart out but our new creation started looking less and less like whipped cream. Hmmm…we were both kinda silent…what could be going wrong. Whoops! It was then that I remembered the last line of the recipe…and I looked at Jesh and said, “DON’T OVERWHIP…that’s what I forgot!” Hahaha…see pic below for the result!

But we ended up putting it on our pudding anyway. (The pudding was still really warm so it kinda just all mushed together).

I'm sorry for the extremely long post...but just thought these were some funnies too good to keep to myself.

Sour cream Recipe:

-Start off with 1/2 cup of Whipping cream adding 1 teaspoon of white vinegar. Stir and you'll notice that the texture changes...wha la...sour cream. If you want to make more than 1/2 cup, make sure to that you make it proportion by proportion or it won't work. I start off with 1/2 cup of whipping cream in the "1 cup" measuring cup and stir in the vinegar, dump it in a bowl then, pour in another 1/2 cup into the "1 cup" measuring cup, stir in the vinegar, and dump again until I have the amount I want.

Ricotta Cheese:

INGREDIENTS:

-8 cups whole milk

-1 cup heavy cream (whipping cream)

-1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt (more or less to taste)

-3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

DIRECTIONS:

1. Line a large strainer with cheesecloth (or a thin wash cloth) and place the strainer over a large bowl.
2. In a large pot, bring the milk, cream, and salt to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally to keep milk mixture from scorching.
3. Add all the lemon juice, reduce heat to low and simmer, stirring gently once or twice, for 2 minutes. The mixture will curdle immediately.
4. Pour the mixture spoonful by spoonful into the cheesecloth lined strainer and let drain. The ricotta will be on top of the cheesecloth, discard the liquid that's in the bowl, and refrigerate it or use immediately.

(If you want it really dry, wrap it back up with the cheesecloth, leave it in the strainer over the bowl, weight it down with something heavy, and refrigerate overnight.)
Makes about 1 1/2 to 2 cups fresh ricotta.