Cooking...Chinese Style

Lately I have been involved in some Chinese cooking classes. I went every Wednesday afternoon for 4 weeks to a local hotel where we learned to cook some traditional dishes.  It was really interesting to learn how their style of cooking is different than ours, they use a lot of different oils, chili oil, pepper oil, soy oil, vegetable oil, all for different flavors in the dishes.  In China they measure with a "Chinese" soup spoon not teaspoons and tablespoons like we are used to at home, just a scoop of this and two scoops of that.  Most of time time there are pinches of spices added, MSG, chicken bouillon, salt, sugar, and cornstarch too.  I think they really LOVE their MSG, and at home every Chinese food restaurants notes: No MSG in food...haha.  There was a lot of hands on parts to the cooking classes, we would watch the chef prepare the food, then we would cook it ourselves, then take home the ingredients and prepare again for practice.  Here are some of the photos from my lessons!

Sweet and Sour Pork, Tofu, Kung Pao Chicken, Sichuan Fish, Spring Rolls, Dumplings, and a few soups!

Blake had sports day at school, he was on the Yellow/Air team.  He participated in all the activities!  I think his favorites were the sack race and the basketball contests. He was a really good team player!  He ran the races, competed in long jump, soccer kicks, the water run, and Grace was there to cheer him on!!!

Some photos of the kids, we have had some fun play dates this week as Blake had holidays at school.  We went to Shanghai one day and the rest of the week we met our friends at different playgrounds!  Grace had her 18 month check up in Shanghai, I can't believe 18 months have passes.  Blake was this age when we moved to China 2 years ago!!!

Brian and I had a nice date night, we got to the movies which was a nice treat for us!  We saw green ice cream and bet on the flavor, Brian was convinced it was mint until he insisted on trying it and got a mouth full of green tea ice cream ....ewwww!  LOL  Things are blooming around our area, we had a lovely day with a blue sky so of course i had to take a photo.

Here is a photo from our girls weekend in Shanghai!  We had a great time exploring the city without kids and eating at lots of tasty places!!!

On our girls weekend to Shanghai we went to the copy market, there are tons of shops for anything from DVDs to designer sunglasses and bags!  I was able to buy some leather belts, purses, totes, sunglasses, and a table cloth!  There was a lot of bargaining going on, you can pay about 10% in some cases of the first price they tell you for anything!  It was really interesting to see all the different shops, the products from pearls, to clothing, glasses, vases, selfie sticks, watches, Chinese water colors, fans, shoes, etc.  You can have eyelash extensions put on and then walk down the aisle and buy a new MK purse.  There is a variety of quality and it is definitely an experience to walk through a place like this.

This is also called the walking road, Nanjing road is where a lot of shops and souvenirs can be found.  You can spend about 20 minutes looking around and then walk up to The Bund which is what you usually see in photos of Shanghai with the Pearl Tower and the river.  It was my first time walking this way and it was a neat tourist site!

The Bund at night!

             France, USA,Chile, Germany and Costa Rica all together in China!

Now we are packing for our trip to Hong Kong and Beijing so stay tuned the next blog update should have HK Disneyland, The Great Wall, Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City to name a few stops!