Cooking Class - Part 2

Kari nervously putting a little bit more filling in her "Scallop Shu Mai Dumpling".

Demonstrating how to twist the top of the "BBQ Pork Buns" and Ken trying to do it like the instructor.

Making an egg roll.

Kari's best looking "Scallop Dumpling" Notice the little pleats in the dough!

"Scallop Dumplings" ready to be cooked.

Rolling out the dough.

Working on more dumplings in both the picture above and below.

Kari learning the pork bun twist.

Finally, it's time to cook the dumplings! We had appetizers when we first arrived at 6pm, then all the food was made, and cooked. One of the Chefs suggested that everyone sit down and eat after she had some of the food ready, but some people were enjoying making everything so much, they wanted to continue to work, so it was 9pm before we actually sat down to eat.

More food cooking. The class was only supposed to go from 6-9pm, but it was 10:15 before we left, so it was a late night for all of us.

Cooking Class - Part 1

Last Monday, Ken, Kari, and Todd went to a cooking class in Seattle at "The Blue Ribbon Cooking School". Since it was Chinese New Year, the theme for the night was "Dim Sum". I went along to take pictures and I also got to eat the food that was prepared. (The cooking class was Ken's 60th birthday present.)

One of the Chef teachers, part of the kitchen and some members of the class.

The first thing they did was chop up ingredients for several different types of "dumplings". The term,"dumpling" included things like pot stickers, egg rolls, pork buns, and some actual dumplings. All the ingredients for each filling was laid out on a tray like the one above.

Todd chopping up fish for the steamed fish dumplings.

Kari and Ken worked on the filling for the shrimp scallion dumplings (Har gow), in the picture above and below.

Stirring the mixture up.

This is what the fish mixture, that Todd made, looked like before being put into the dumpling.

Some of the dough had to be cooked on the stove to thicken.

Rolling out some of the dough.

Making some pot stickers.

Ken is making a BBQ Pork Bun (Char Siu Bao). There was quite a trick to rolling out the dough, wrapping and pleating the dough to cover the pork filling!

Relay for Life

Tonight was the very first Arlington Relay for Life, which was held at Arlington High School. It was supposed to start at 6pm, but we were about 15 minutes late. I had picked up Saben and Annika this afternoon, so I had 2 extra people to get ready before we could go. I had been told by some of the people who help out at the food bank, that there was going to be a bouncy house there, so I figured I could get away with taking them with me if they got to go in a bouncy house. Unfortunately, it had rained enough, that the bouncy house was really wet inside, so they didn't get to go in it after all. They were good sports about it though.

This was not only Arlington's first Relay for Life, it was also the first one I have been to, so I really didn't know what to expect. After some speeches, (when Annika enjoyed playing on the bleacher benches) they lined the cancer survivors up to do the first lap. Everyone else lined the edges of the track and cheered for them.
Some drummers from the high school led the way around the track...

...followed by the survivors. There were several in that group that I knew and I got choked up thinking about Deanna and watching the ones I knew, walk around the track. There was a team from our church participating also, and I saw several people that I hadn't seen in years, that we had known when our kids were in school. One of the MOPS moms, that we had supported for the event, ended up not being able to participate because she is due to have her baby in a couple of weeks and is on bed rest until then, so I missed seeing her, but it was fun to see so many others. Even though we didn't stay very long, I was really glad I went. It was good to see such a great turn out for such worthy cause

Surprises

Sunday afternoon while we were doing some more work outside, I saw a snake in our yard. It's the first time I'd seen a snake in our yard in years. We used to see them every once in awhile when we first moved here, but none for years. It really startled me and not being a big fan of snakes, now I'm afraid to do any weeding in the area where I saw it. Yes, it was just a garter snake, and a pretty one at that (orange and black),but it was a SNAKE, in my mind it doesn't matter what kind it is. There was a snake in my flowers and that's all I need to know to stay far away from that area. I seriously doubt that it is still in those flowers, but since I'm not positive, well, you know how it is.

This morning I got another surprise when I looked out my window. I saw a rabbit hopping across our yard. Now that's a surprise I could live with, at least until they started eating the veggies we planted! I could even do work in the area where I saw the rabbit. Again, when we first moved here over 20 years ago, there were lots of rabbits around, in fact the pasture below our house is named "Stampeding Rabbit", because there used to be so many rabbits in it and they would scare the horses when people rode through the field. But we haven't seen any rabbits for quite awhile, not even in our garage where one got accidentally trapped one time.

Now for the last surprise of the week, hopefully. When I was in Bellingham yesterday, Kari decided to drop the kids and me off at a park a couple of blocks from their house, so we could play and then walk home. Saben had gotten his bike out of the back of the car and went ahead with it. In a couple of minutes, he came back and said there was a man sleeping on the grass. I went and looked and sure enough there was what looked like a homeless man sleeping on the grass. Kari and I talked about what to do, she had told me before that the homeless seemed to be in that area a lot. I decided that I didn't like the idea of them taking over the park and preventing the neighborhood kids from playing there, so I decided that we would stay. (What I actually wanted to do was to make Annika scream her blood curdling scream, which might wake him up and get him to move on.) We played for about 45 minutes, talking and yelling back and forth, the only response from the guy was to turn onto his side. About 5 minutes before we left, a woman came and woke him up, got him to his feet and helped him move on. Based on the way he was staggering when she got him up, I thought he must have been sleeping so hard because he was drunk. In hind sight, maybe we shouldn't have stayed, I still don't like the idea of them taking over the neighborhood play area, I'm just not sure that staying to play anyway is the right solution.

Sunday Afternoon at Alderwood Mall

Usually a trip to the mall is pretty boring, right? Not today! As I drove into the mall parking area, I noticed that one of Penney's parking garages had a lot of police cars and ambulances with their lights flashing, so I decided to go park in the other parking garage. Ken and I were in separate cars because he was heading to the airport after the mall. I had lost him at a stoplight after I zoomed through a yellow light, so when he got to the same spot he went the opposite direction and found a place at the other end of the parking garage where all the flashing lights were. We met in Penney's and shortly after we got in, there was an announcement made that no one was being allowed in or out of the store until further notice. Rumors started almost immediately as to what had happened. We heard that:
1. It was a drive-by shooting.
2. The person shot was all right, someone saw her sitting up in the ambulance.
3. The person shot was dead.
4. The person was an older woman.
5. The person shot was a teenager.
6. I just looked for a story on google and KOMO says that Penney's was evacuated temporarily, which it was not, just locked down.
7. Gangs were involved.
After we finished our shopping, Ken was ready to go to his car and head for the airport. After he got to his car, he talked to someone who told him that he wasn't going to be allowed to take his car from the garage even if he had a plane to catch. We were about ready to switch cars so he could get on his way, but he talked to a different policeman who said that he could leave, they just needed his name and address before he could leave. He called me and said that as he was talking to the policeman, that he looked over the policeman's shoulder and noticed someone covered with a white sheet lying on the ground with their feet sticking out from under the sheet. The policeman he talked to said that it looked like it was a suicide, not a drive-by shooting. Which is a relief, but brings up the question of why someone would go to a mall parking lot to shoot herself. You just never know what is going to happen when you head to a mall.

Another Busy Weekend

As is often the case, we can have several weekends where we don't have anything going on, then all of a sudden everything happens in a weekend or two. This weekend was not only the weekend that we had tickets to go see Skate America with my parents, but it was also one of the Canby Board meeting weekends that Ken has to go to. So, he left for Oregon Friday morning, and I stayed home this time because Mom and Dad were coming over Friday afternoon. Then Saturday morning, Kari brought Saben and Annika down to visit with them and stayed until almost 5pm. After they left, I called Ken who was on his way home from Oregon and was going to meet us in Everett for the skating competition, and found out that he would be in Everett in about an hour. We met up and headed for the ice arena at 6pm. The competition was going to start at 7pm, so we had a little time to walk around, take in the sights, get some food and eat before it started.

We had tickets for the women's short program and the men's free skate or long program. The women were first and they had 3 minutes to do their routine. The first skater we watched seemed to take a long time to do her 3 minutes, but after that it didn't seem long at all. Since I have tried ice skating and can barely keep my ankles from wobbling as I calmly skate around a rink, I am always impressed at what trained skaters can do. I guess the picture above is like doing the splits, only on ice and standing up.

We enjoyed the competition, but discovered that we didn't have a clue about how the judges scored the skaters. Some we thought wouldn't do very well because they had fallen or had some bobbles, still scored high, and others we thought had done well didn't score as high as we thought they should have. The men's program which was a routine that took under 5 minutes, was especially that way. The guy from the USA was in first place after the short program the day before, he was the last one to skate and we thought he had done pretty well, but he ended up in third place. We discovered that Scott Hamilton, a famous skater from several years ago, was at the other end of the arena from us, giving commentary for TV. We definitely could have used his commentary to understand what was going on. Fortunately, when they announced the scores for that US skater, everyone there booed the score, so maybe we weren't the only one that thought he did better than what the judges thought. It was nice to start getting acquainted with some of the names that will probably be appearing at the winter Olympics in a couple of years.