Pretzels

We are on a short home assignment. We are staying with family and so between visits with churches and supporters we are able to enjoy some time with family. 

Today our outing was to Uncle Henry's Handmade Pretzels for a factory tour. The average American eats about two pounds of pretzels a year and the average Pennsylvanian eats 12 pounds a year. Some of that is the German roots and then combined with that is the fact that there are numerous companies here making pretzels. 

My mom asked me what I was expecting and I told her that I thought it would be in the back of a barn. My guess was close. 

We walked in and were at the packaging department. There was no fancy facilities or reception area. The girl came over and began the tour. The first thing we saw was the dough machine. One hundred pounds of flour, yeast, sourdough, water, salt, and soda. One batch makes 2000 pretzels. The day shift makes 16 batches. The evening shift makes 11 batches.

I think one of the most interesting things in the factory was this machine. The lady would knead the dough to get the air out and then put a tube through and turn it and it was cut the tube to the size of piece for each pretzel. The factory was not that high tech.

Uncle Henry's pretzels are twisted by hand. There are about 10 ladies there twisting the pretzels. I asked if there were other pretzels companies that twist the pretzels by hand. She told me that there are two other companies that she knows. The training is three months. That surprised me a bit. They need to be doing about 11 pretzels per minute.

Each tray holds about 90 pretzels. These are formed and then they get a soda bath which gives them the colour.

The salt is put on the peel and then the pretzels are placed on that to put them in the oven. I had made soft pretzels at home. Soft pretzels bake at 400F as that is about as hot as my oven goes. The oven is 600F so that is probably how they can make hard pretzels. The pretzels are only in there for about seven minutes.

After baking the pretzels are cooled for about an hour.

Then they are packed in bags and they cool in front of a fan.

The factory is small with maybe 15 people working there.

I thought this was an interesting sign. There is one

It was a fun outing and factory tour. Uncle Henry's has been make pretzels since 1983. I was told that they ship worldwide.

We got a free pretzels. It was hot, just out of the oven.

We bought a bag to eat. We need to eat our 12 pounds for the year in a month which I don't think we will really do but we are enjoying pretzels.

Beth

S'more Fun

The days are getting longer. The weather is a bit warmer. It is time to enjoy bits of summer. I found a grill marked down this week and decided it would be fun to be able to grill a bit in the summer. Having a grill meant we needed to make some S'mores. That sounds so easy. S'mores are just three ingredients but finding the right substitutes was the challenge. We were attempting to anglicise the American campfire treat.

I found imported marshmallows at Costco. The bag says they are Mega and it means mega. There was a comment about American food being big and how these marshmallows followed that tradition. We decided that these worked best if we cut the marshmallow in half before we toasted it. 

The back of the bag tells how to make a S'more, calling it a tradition campfire treat very popular in the United States and Canada.

I had my marshmallows now to get the graham crackers or something that would work. I have to say that the whole cracker section of the supermarket is missing. The best there is here are water crackers but we are missing things like Cheez-its, Triscuits, Wheat Things, and even saltines. You can buy some of these things on amazon.co.uk and a few other American food websites but you pay quite a bit and I didn't have time to wait for an order to come. I bought Digestives and Biscoff hoping that one of them would work.

In the end given the fact that we had Mega marshmallows we ended up using the Digestives.

I also had to find the right chocolate. That doesn't should that hard as we have lots of delicious chocolate here but I didn't want it too thick because the chocolate needs to melt a bit. I bought about four different chocolates. In the end we decided that the Cadbury Dairy Milk Kids was the best chocolate.

We toasted the marshmallows over the grill. We had invited our neighbours to join us. Our back gardens are next to each other and Helen is in my small group. Their son had S'mores at camp but it was a new treat for the rest of the family.

Here is one ready to eat.

Miss K is enjoying her S'more.

These were a fun treat and we enjoyed sharing them with our neighbour. We sat around the grill/fire for a bit staying warm. We have enough marshmallows, chocolate, and Digestives to have these again.

Beth

Happy New Year

Xin Nian Kuai Le

No, I didn't read the calendar wrong and miss a month. It is time to celebrate Chinese New Year.

I think I first celebrated Chinese New Year in the late 80's when I was working in international purchasing. The offices and factories in Taiwan shut down for two weeks so it was two weeks to catch up on things at work. Then in 1992 I left Taiwan just before Chinese New Year. When I was single and living in Asia most of Chinese New Year was an opportunity to travel. The office would close for a week or so and it was a great time to travel except that everyone else did so the planes were full and the resorts crowded.

When we were married, we spent Chinese New Year enjoying a bit of quiet. I can remember Taipei being very quiet during the day as so many people left the city either to travel abroad or to return to their home town. Then at night it would get loud with fireworks.

Hong Kong had a bit of a different feel at Chinese New Year. The shopping malls would be decorated. Usually to reflect the zodiac animal.  Here it is from the year of the pig.

In Hong Kong we lived in a rural area. Yes, there is such an area. Not far from our flat they would sell oranges at this time of the year. It is hard to believe that little girl is now 11.

This was one of my favourite photos of her. We walked up to look at the oranges and she was pointing to them.

The market would have all kinds of decorations for sale.

The area around the Star Ferry was usually decorated and so from there you could look towards the island. I miss Hong Kong.

Well, I decided to celebrate Chinese New Year a bit this year. We invited some friends over and made dumplings. I made my own wrappers which was the first and last time to do that. I am guessing that I made 4 recipes of wrapper dough and that was a lot of rolling. J was the master roller and cutter and he did a great job of getting thin wrappers which is what you want. We probably made about 100 dumplings.

We ate them boiled and fried. Fried are my favourite. I also made some fried rice to go with the dinner. We had oranges for dessert.

We had a fun evening making dumplings and then eating dumplings. The kitchen was a mess when we were done but it was worth it.

Happy New Year!

Beth

The Deli

When we were in Florence,  well actually up on the top of a mountain outside of Pistoria, we walked down to the village where there were about six or so shops. The little grocery was closed on Wednesdays so we wandered to see what else we could find. We found a nice deli. 

There was bread in there and the lady would cut the amount you wanted. 

Desserts and some treats.

Meat -- we got bits of a number of different kinds just to try and see what ones we liked.

Here is some biscuits lined up and ready to go home with you.

I thought these looked so pretty.

There was also some cheese. The girl waiting on us spoke a bit of English. We got some bread, meat, and cheese and called that lunch. We loved the place and the food so much we walked there the next day and bought extra to have with us when we traveled to Rome. 

It is fun to wander in the shops and just see what they have. 

Beth

Hong Kong Food

One of the fun things about traveling is eating and enjoying the local food. We had a long list of restaurants and foods that we wanted to eat while we were here.

There is a saying about Cantonese food - "Cantonese will eat anything in the sky but airplanes, anything in the sea but submarines and anything with four legs but the table." I will say that Cantonese cooking is a unique style of Chinese food.

Take away is popular. It is an easy lunch or dinner. Two of the days we were there my husband was in meetings. The kids and I were on our own for those days. I saw a  place near the hotel that had take away so I thought I would try it. The sign for take away was in English so I knew what they had. This was next to a restaurant so you can sit down or have take away.

I ordered a duck, pork, and chicken. It was white rice, meat, and green vegetable. My duck did not taste like duck but it was delicious. Dinner for the three of us for HKD69 or under $9 or £6 - That is a cheap dinner.

The next day we went swimming in the pool and decided to get take away again. We ordered the same thing pork, duck, and chicken. This time we got pork, duck, and chicken so what we had gotten the night before was not pro, duck, and chicken.

On Friday we decided to go there again for lunch -- there weren't many options near the hotel. I really wanted what I had the first time. Since I had taken a photo of my meal. I took my camera and asked them what that meat was and told them that was what I wanted. Yes, it can be good to take photos of your food. It had a Chinese name and was a type of pork.

Adventures in take away. Sometimes you get what you want. Sometimes you get something better than what you wanted. Sometimes you have no clue what you got.

One of the places on our list was Crystal Jade which is traditional Cantonese cooking. J had wonderful memories of eating the wonton soup and so that was on his list of things to get. I think he ate the whole bowl. He loves Chinese noodles -- breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Once you place your order, they put a list on your table and as they bring the dish, it is crossed off the list. This is typical for most Cantonese restaurants.

Fried bread threads - it really does have bread threads inside. This was not something that we had in Taiwan but I remember eating it China and it is often on my list of things to eat. You do eat it with chopsticks and if you want you can dip it in condensed milk.

Dumplings - I love dumplings. I used to get a box of 10 dumplings for $1 and call it lunch. These dumplings are delicious.

Sweet and sour chicken is one of J's favourites. I think he has eaten that all through our trips to China.   I have to say that it was good here with lots of fresh peppers and pineapple.

Xiao Long Bao or as we refer to them in English, Soup Dumplings. They are called that because there is a bit broth  in the dumplings so you need to be careful when you bite it.

That was our dinner at Crystal Jade with a few other things. The dumplings are some of the best that we have found in Hong Kong. I will say that we went at the same time as everyone else and so we did have to wait but the wait was worth it.

Dim Sum is traditional Cantonese cooking. I think the traditional restaurants are large rooms full of people sitting at round tables and ladies walking through with the dim sum on the cart. You just order and get it from the cart. The room is nosy with the sound of chopsticks clicking and tea cups rattling. Eating dim sum in Hong Kong is part of the culture and experience.

We had dim sum three times while we were there and each time we had some of the same dishes and some different dishes.

Char Siew Bao or Pork Barbecue Buns - the meat has a barbecue sauce on it and the dumpling is not thin but light and fluffy. We had some at Crystal Jade and when we had dim sum. I think J ate about three of them which isn't that many but when you consider you get a steamer of three that is eating all of them.

Har Gow or shrimp dumplings were in this steamer. Shrimp wrapped with a thin wrapper that is a bit sticky and chewy. Miss K says, "shrimp, my favourite." She would eat a whole steamer of these but we do ask her to share except for J who does not like shrimp.

Turnip cake - this is made with daikon which is a radish but looks like a big white carrot so sometimes this is called carrot cake. The daikon is mixed with dried shrimp and pork sausage steamed and then pan fried. It does fall apart a bit so it requires some chopstick skills. This is one of my favourites.

These were the barbecue pork inside a bun. The filling is the same as char siew bao. They are good but I prefer the steamed ones.

Some spring rolls - there can be various fillings. There were three on the plate but someone couldn't wait and had one.

Sticky rice wrapped in a lotus leaf - This reminds me a bit of the sticky rice from Dragon Boat Festival.

It can have mushrooms or chicken in side.

During this trip we like I mentioned we had dim sum three different times and this is just s sample of what we ate. Some of the other things we had were custard buns which are sweet, chicken feet which J ate, and meatballs. We really enjoyed all the Chinese food we ate during our trip. Most of these are things that I don't make at home though I do make pork dumplings.

Beth

Fish and Chips

When I think of traditional British food, one of the first things that comes to mind is Fish and Chips. It is commonly a take-away meal.  I think there is one in every neighborhood.

Today we walked to a Fish and Chips shop not far from where we are staying. Miss K kept saying she was going to Ivar's. I guess she spent too much time in the Northwest.

There was just one man working. It wasn't busy but there a lady there in front of us and as we were leaving a man came in. There was some fish in the case ready to be ordered.

We ordered cod which is a traditional fish for fish and chips. The pieces were big much bigger than we would get at Ivar's.

We got four pieces of cod and three orders of chips which was more than we could eat. We didn't order mushy peas which is a traditional side dish.

We put malt vinegar and salt on the chips as that is the traditional way to eat them. Bob had some ketchup and HP Sauce with this fish.

Miss K is smiling as she gets ready to eat her Fish and Chips. She decided that she likes the British Fish and Chips better than Ivar's.

We enjoyed our fish and chips and might have to go again.


Beth