Honey & Orange Jello

I don't know why we had so many oranges in the fridge, so the fastest way to get rid of them was to make them into jello. This is another simple recipe from the book.

The golden standard:

Picture from the book

Coffee Jello

The grapefruit/lemon/mint jello are all gone, so Mr. Lilasaur has requested that I make more. Since it was a weekday, I picked a super simple one. For information about the book, please also refer to the same link.


The golden standard:

Picture from the book

Grapefruit, Lemon, and Mint Jello

As have mentioned in one of the previous posts about buying a whole bunch of books from Eslite, one of the books I have purchased was a book about making dessert cups, which includes jellos, puddings, and more. For those who can read Chinese, here is the book. It is a great book with lots of details, pictures (of each step!), and even a CD of demo videos. I have also bought a lot of sheet gelatin and cute glass cups from Taiwan in preparation to make these wonderful looking desserts. The sheet gelatin used in this book are 2.5g each, so that will be the case for all the desserts from this book. For those of you from Vancouver that don't want to buy sheet gelatin from Amazon or Taiwan, you can buy them from Galloway's Specialty Foods. I haven't tried these personally, so I don't know if the setting power would be the same. If Galloway's is still not the option for you, you can choose to buy Knox powder gelatin from Superstore with the ratio of 4 sheets = 0.25oz or 7.2g powder (source). Supposedly desserts made with sheet gelatin taste "purer" because powdered gelatin has a fishy taste to it. I don't have enough experience so I don't know. Anyhow, let's get on with the dessert.


The golden standard:

Picture from the book

Asia Trip 4/4 - Tapei, Taiwan (Food, Wedding Photography, and conclusion)

Ahhh, finally the food section! Since I WAS there for wedding photography and the dress fitter told me that I was meaty (more on that later), I did restrain myself a little... for a few days. We didn't take pictures of everything that we ate, but here are some...

Taipei Seafood, where we had our small wedding banquet:

Female crabs with sticky rice. The crabs themselves were nice, but the flavouring of the sticky rice wasn't that special.

Asia Trip 3/4 - Taipei, Taiwan (intro & scenic)

As have mentioned in the first post, the purpose of going to Taiwan is to visit Mr. Lilasaur's relatives and do wedding photography, so we actually had to stay for 3 weeks to get the fitting, photography, and development done. Since we are staying in Taiwan for so long, we basically had enough time to play almost everything Taipei has to offer as long as it is reachable by the MRT. So let's start with the transportation system.


Transportation

The public transportation system in Taipei is quite convenient, just like the one in HK. You just go to one of the MRT stations to obtain an EasyCard, load money in it, and use it like a cash card. However, unlike the Octopus Card in HK, EasyCard isn't as widely accepted, so please take note of that and bring more cash with you. It costs $500 NT to buy the card, which includes $400 spending dollars and $100 deposit. You can get the deposit and remaining money back with a small processing fee when you return the card at one of the MRT stations (there is one in the airport). Other than that, you also need to know these things about the public transportation system:

Asia Trip 2/4 - Hong Kong, China

After visiting my relatives for 5 days, we stopped by Hong Kong for 4 days. However, because the first and the last days were used for travelling, we were only left with 2 days of actual sight-seeing. After consulting with a taxi driver and my ex-roommate (born and raised in HK), we decided to use one day for Ocean Park and the other morning for the Peak Tram.

First thing's first, you should definitely go to one of the MTR stations and buy an Octopus Card. It is basically a cash card that allows you to take public transportation, make calls from public phone booths, and buy things from 7-11 & other major convenience stores. By using the Octopus Card you can sometimes get discounts at attractions and convenience stores. You can return the card with $10 service fee and get the remaining cash back when you are at the airport.

Asia Trip 1/4 - Canton, China (mostly just pictures)

Mr. Lilasaur and I got married, so we were due to go to Asia and do the "show-and-tell" to all our non-immediate relatives and do wedding photography. I am originally from the Canton part of China, while Mr. Lilasaur is from Taiwan. Since I rarely go back to China and Mr. Lilasaur goes back to Taiwan quite often, we decided the best place to do wedding photography would be in Taiwan. Besides, Taiwan seems to offer very good photography at competitive prices. We have determined that this was the most economical route: Vancouver --> Hong Kong (layover) --> China (1 week) --> Hong Kong (2 days) -->  Taiwan (3 weeks)--> Vancouver. The whole trip was one month long, and costed $1300 (tax included) per person from Eva Airlines. October/November were chosen because they are off-season months and Asian temperatures would be more tolerable to those that are used to living in North America. Anyways, so here is the first part, Canton, China.

One of the options to get from Hong Kong to Canton is via a boat. Since Mr. Lilasaur and I was supposed to arrive in HK at around 8:40, we thought the best option was to take the one at 9:35 leaving from the airport. We have inquired beforehand that we can buy our tickets at the E3 section of the airport and the staff would help us get our luggage. WRONG!

My Second Attempt at No-bake Jello Blueberry Cheesecake

I saw this recipe (in Chinese) a long time ago and actually made it before... with a catastrophic result: 

Figure 1. The Golden Standard

Making Pho at Home

Ever since Mr. Lilasaur and I have been living together, we have shopped at T & T almost every weekend. There was one particular time that I noticed a gentleman in front of us paying for Pho soup cubes, and that was when I realized I can probably do it at home.

Shopping list:

• Defrosted hot pot beef slices (we bought the rib eye ones)
• Pho soup cubes (I just chose the cheapest one at ~$2.50 for 4 cubes)
• Vietnamese rice noodles

Killing Sea Urchins and Eating Uni for the First Time!

We decided to take a break from crabbing this week but we'd still like some seafood to eat, so we decided to drive all the way to Fisherman's Wharf in Richmond. This is only the second time that we've been there, but we've always heard that they have really good deals on whole sockeye salmon and sole. We were so happy last time when we walked away with 3 lbs of (frozen) spotted prawns for $20 and 6 live lemons soles for $10, lol. The prices were just ridiculously cheap compared to what we usually have to pay at T & T Supermarket for lemon soles.

Today, as we descended down the walkway to get to the market, Mr. Lilasaur's attention was immediately grabbed by a crowd near the end of the walkway. He "Oooooh"ed as he gravitated towards that direction, and dragged me with him. Turns out it was a stall/ship/vendor that was selling live sea urchins at 3 for $10, and a Caucasian woman was asking what they are. The vendor (Caucasian) was laughing as he said, "Well, they're sea urchins, and this is where you get uni from. You eat it raw. White people don't like this stuff!" The lady laughed and walked away. I started to inquire about how to open the the sea urchins and he briefly described to me. During our short conversation (about 3 minutes), 2 ladies have already bought their $10 worth of sea urchins.

Pitt Meadows Corn Maze

I have been wanting to go do a corn maze for a few years now but have always forgotten about it in the Fall season. Turns out, corn mazes are usually on for the whole summer as long as there's corn growing! 

A quick search on Google lead me to the website of the Pitt Meadows Corn Maze. For $12, this place offers the older population (like us) a 17-acre maze, a bee observatory (not available when we went), a petting zoo, pig races, the Lions Goat Bridge, and a haywagon ride. For the younger kids, they have a train ride and they can also pretend to be little farmers by picking fake fruits to deliver to a fake farmer's market. This place also has a corn cannon that you can play at $2 for 3 shots. Apparently you can win a small slurpee if you can hit the target. Totally worth the $2 by the way.

When we arrived, we received this card which contains the rules and the check-list of stations:

front

The Crabbing Obsession Continued

So I have been lazy and completely ditched this blog for a while ever since the 2nd post, hahaha. In short, these things have happened since then (in chronological order):

• Bought a Seahawk 2 from Walmart for $40. The whole set includes 2 plastic paddles, a hand pump, and the rubber boat. 
• Bought life jackets for both of us (by law in Canada), they are $50 (for me, I can't swim) and $20 (for Mr. Lilasaur, he can swim). Both from Army & Navy. 
• Also bought, from Army & Navy, a 28" square cage ($40) and an additional crescent folding trap ($25). Apparently this folding trap is better quality than the $10 one we bought, but they look the same...

More About Crabbing

Just a few things that we have overheard/observed/learned from other people:

• salmon heads/trimmings work really well, except that this bait is quite pricey
• crabs seem to like Sockeye, just like we do
• Dungeness crabs like sandy areas while Red Rocks like rocky areas
• the crabs seem to come in before the high tide hours (seems to make sense, because they'd be swept in with the waves?)
• tide times for Belcarra are similar to the Deep Cove ones
• people have been more successful in catching males in May-June
• people have been more successful in catching crabs on cloudy/rainy days

Crabbing & fishing in Belcarra & Barnet

After two days of randomly asking co-workers for fun things to do around B.C. on this long Canada Day weekend, Mr. Lilasaur and I finally decided to go crab fishing on Friday night, and started our research then. 

Prep Work

In Canada, a Recreational Tidal (saltwater) License is required to crab and fish in salt water.  Since it's not that expensive, we just bought a 3-Day license for $12.32 each, after tax. Further information regarding licensing can be obtained here: DFO, Recreational Licensing. Remember to have the license with you at all times, and remember to sign. There are two main types of crabs that one can catch in B.C., the Dungeness and Red Rock. The legal size for male Dungeness is 165 mm while for Red Rock it is 115 mm. It is illegal to catch females for re-population purposes. Maximum is 4 per person. For pictures of the crabs and information on how to sex the crabs, refer to this official guide: DFO Crab Pamphlet. We heard the fine for crabbing without a license is $300, the seizure of all the crabbing equipment, and the crabs.