Meal # 28 Asian Cooking Day

So not only do I cook copious amounts but so do most of my friends. Now we have these fun days called cooking days. We decided a theme, then we go shopping, then we prep and eat lunch and then we COOK, like all day. It may be my favorite thing to do yet. I enjoy the people I am cooking with. They never get mad or frustrated when I am in their way. They are very laid back people and are very funny. We cooked at my dearest friend Brittani's house, she has the biggest kitchen and the coolest gadgets. Jenny came from (God only knows where she lives) and drove us all around looking for our asian ingrediants. We must have gone to 4 stores looking for Lemon Grass. I was at the point of plucking some from the yard and squeezing some lemon juice on it. Then we have our male addition, Caleb. He is very helpful and knows many random facts. He is handy to have around to open jars too. We started the day off by brainstorming recipes and our grocery list. Jenny took detailed notes and all of the supplies we already had were set out. Finally, we loaded into the car and started out for the Oriental Market in Orlando. This is like an attration, everyone should go and experience it. It has many intresting smells and is not organized in a way that I can find anything but duck eggs which can be put in any aisle. Their are tiny turtles in the foyer that smell so bad that even Brittani passess them by without even blinking. We wander around searching for oyster sauce, noodles, lemon grass, celery, tuna, salmon, and other necessities. We pass some odd things like chicken feet, pickled intestines, roast ducks, a buffet of fresh fish (all parts included) escargot, live lobsters, crabs and shrimp, and a dozen different kinds of pastries that look sweet but have things like bean curd in them with lemon zest. Oh and don't forget the BoBo tea; tea with big black soft balls of tapioca in it. Very popular. Okay so we get our stuff and head to a couple more stores to get the rest of our list. I was making crab ragoon, shrimp egg rolls, and orange glazed cornish hens. I don't even remember what everyone else was making though I did help with it. But sheeze they can write their own blog, ya know. So we cooked and cooked and Jenny tried to make rice for something but it never cracked and it was super hard but wet all at the same time. We tried everything to save it, including adding sugar and milk to make a rice pudding thing but sadly we ended up chucking the whole thing. That was about the only problem the whole day! My crab rangoon came out crispy and creamy on the inside. My egg rolls where spectacular with the help of Jeff who worked with me on my wrapping skills. And my cornish hens where okay but really just tasted like chicken. Which I guess they are. But they were so tiny and cute, with their little wings and legs. Everything turned out edible and that means...Success! Tiff
Here is a video of Caleb and the Pudgy Pilgram ~ working together!