Yes, food and dance are things that I love! Whether it's cooking myself or being cooked for, or dancing myself or watching. So here are the latest in all these!
First a wedding we went to in June--the weather was spectacular! :)
A beach in Isla, where many weddings take place.
Traditional Cantabrian dance performance!
Seafood feast at the wedding
Now comes the hands-on part. Thanks to random internet searching, I came across a great blog called lafujimama.com Highly recommended for it's large variety of Asian recipes, especially if you are missing the cheap and readily-available eats in Vancouver!! :(
Anyhow, experiment number 1 was homemade udons. You get to roll and step on the dough with your feet--fun! ;) Don't worry, wrapped in a towel, not barefoot!
Cut them thin or else it's hard to cook through! This is when a pasta maker would be come in handy.......
Homemade udons, mmmmmm!!
Secondly, we tried to make tofu, after lots of searching the city for soybeans. I didn't realise it'd be so difficult, but found green soybeans (mung beans) in some places and then finally found white ones. At first I was looking at the green ones and thinking, this doesn't seem quite right.....soy milk doesn't come from these! We tried to use them anyhow to try and came up with green goopiness.....think gelatinous greenish-grey goop and that's about right. What a laugh though! Anyhow, here is the real (successful) experiment!
The chefs working hard on their projects. :)
Making tofu isn't as difficult as it seems, thanks to the power of the internet! :) First you soak the soybeans overnight, then puree them with water and boil them for a while. You get a nice soy milk and pulp that can both be consumed as is. You can stop at this step or continue if you want tofu rather than soy milk.
Soy milk and the strained pulp--great baked with cinnamon, sugar etc and then sprinkled on yogurt or cereal!
Then you take the soy milk and add something so that it curdles--we used lemon juice coz that's what was on hand, but you can also use vinegar or the traditional stuff called nigari. Or Epsom salts also work apparently.... It's hard enough finding soy beans here so we decided to keep it simple. Whatever you use will affect the taste and texture slightly but we weren't too fussed.
Acid+ soy milk--this is how you get the tofu.
Straining the pulp for tofu
Once you have the pulp you are almost there. You need to put it on a cheesecloth (or in our case a piece of thin fabric) and into whatever form you want. You can put it in a mold and then leave it with something heavy on top. Pressing it makes it firm and the longer you leave it the harder it gets.
Final product--homemade tofu! (A bit thin but still cool and yummy!)
Now comes the dancing part--gotta work off those calories from cooking so many yummy things! :) In June, I joined several people from my dance class in the end-of-year performance at the local theatre. Our class was for flamenco, but the school is full of young girls from about age 5 onwards learning all sorts of dance. By the time they reach their 20s, they are semi-pros and this was their chance to shine. We were all very impressed by all their skills, costume changes and memory for all the routines! :) We only danced two bits and that was enough for us! It was a looooonnnnggg night of waiting around but enjoyable. The nerves got to us but when show time came, it was over just like that and no one fell over! ;D
Ladies in my class getting ready
Ready to go in our skirts, shawls and buns with a flower on the side!
These are the teachers--two sisters own the school
The little one, Tatiana, is my teacher's little girl :)
The semi-pro girls with their long trains
The only little boy in the whole show
This is our group!! I'm at the back on the left, standing beside someone seated in red.
That's me on the left with my arms all over the place! ;D
Our second number was a cha-cha style routine with about 30 of us all over the stage.
The teachers round off the night with some fancy footwork
