Nineteenth Day - Hanging out in Hanoi 11/20/10

Hannah

Today we did a cooking class. It was fun, but I only had fun for a little bit. Why? Because We were making yummy fried spring rolls, when our cooking extraordinaire was trying to flip the spring rolls, she accidentally dropped them in the very hot (to me) cooking oil. It  splattered on my hand. It was not a very bad burn, but it still hurt very much. But I also learned how to treat a burn, with out ice, and the pain goes away pretty quickly. You need half of a lime or lemon. Then you simply squirt the lime juice on the places where you got burned and you are good. Also you can use some white light vinegar. After a while the pain will go way and you just have to be careful about where you put your hand.

        After the crisis, we made some yummy snake head fish fresh spring rolls. They were very good. Then we made some easy fried rice. And then for dessert we had some taro and sweet potato with ginger soup. It was O.K. but since I have been in Vietnam, I have not really liked these Vietnamese desert dishes. After the cooking I played the piano for our teacher. Then we headed back to our hotel. Now we are just simply hanging out in Hanoi. See Ya!

Sumner

Today after breakfast we had to decide what to do for the day.  We had a couple of options, one to go to a primate research center and walk in a national park. Another was to do another cooking class at Old Hanoi. And the last was going to a river that was supposed to be like Hallong Bay (that’s a really pretty bay with lots of pretty little islands). We decided that we didn’t want to go to the primate research center because there was a four hour drive to get to the national park. And we voted out the river because we are going to Hallong once dad came. So, by default, we did the cooking class.

When we go to the cooking class we were told to sit down and wait for the teacher. When she arrived she didn’t look ready for a cooking class. She looked like she was a flight attendant on an airplane! Before we started cooking we went to the market. It was originally an outside market but the government made a building so that it became and inside market. We went inside and walked to all the stalls while she pointed out the ingredients for the food. We didn’t buy anything because it was cheaper for the restaurant to buy it in bulk. We saw some interesting things in the market but probably the most interesting one was all the roots that looked like garlic one was called traumatic and was yellow in color. She picked some off the root and gave it to mom who played with it in her hand, a decision she later regretted because her hands turned yellow! She had yellow hands for the next few days. After the market we went back to the restaurant and started cooking. The first thing that we did was made some fish sauce and then went on to making fried spring rolls. First we mixed the ingredients for the spring rolls. We mixed some pork, some carrots and all sorts of other things on a plate. Most of it was already chopped up but some of it we had to Julian. After that we split the ingredients into three piles and put them into the rice paper. Then we got pans and little cook stoves to fry the rolls. Our cook stove ran out of fuel while we were cooking, so the spring rolls didn’t cook very fast. Mom and I were on one side of the table and Hannah and the chef were on the other side. We weren’t doing to well because when we were making the ingredients for the spring rolls and needed egg yolk I accidentally spilled the entire egg on the floor (that’s why I am not a chef). Any way as soon as I said that Hannah a the teacher were doing everything well the teacher tried to get a spring roll out of their pot with her chopsticks. The spring roll accidentally slipped from her grasp and fell back into the oil resulting in a splash of hot oil in the direction of Hannah. When Hannah saw the hot oil fling at her arm she removed her arm from the path of hot liquids. unfortunately she didn’t move it enough so she got a couple of splatters on her hand. The chef immediately got lime to remedy the situation and squirted it on Hannah’s hand. Anyway once we finished cooking our spring rolls we ate them with the fish sauce that we made previously made. It was absolutely delicious! (Can you tell I like food?) OK, we finished our spring rolls and then went on to making some grilled fish. We put some greens and some different seasonings in a pan with the fish. Then we grilled it to perfection.Then we used rice paper, put some stuff in it, and then added some of the greens and fish to the spring rolls. Then we rolled it up and ate it with the fish sauce. After we ate the spring rolls we made some fried rice. We put some rice and other ingredients into a pan and then fried it. I was the first one to try to fry the rice but because it was a rather small pan and allot of rice it was kinda hard to stir. Well some of the rice ended up on the table so I asked mom to do it. She wasn’t much better that I was though so more rice was spilled. Obviously mom and I were having bad days for cooking! We ate the rice and then went on to making a desert. It was taro, sweet potato, and ginger soup. It was basically the same as the desert at the cooking class in Sapa. It was kinda funny but the hostess had dipped the spoon into the soup and sampled it. Then, in Hannah’s words, she “Shoved the spoon into my mouth so I had no choice on whether or not to eat it off the spoon that she ate off or not!!!” Well after that bit of excitement we were served some. We didn’t like it very much and so we made the excuse that “we were full already.” Then we payed for the cooking class and Hannah played some piano for the teacher. Then we started walking back to the hotel when we realized that we had forgotten to get the recipes from her. We got back to the hotel and rested for a while and then went out and walked around. Then we had dinner and went to bed.