This is a variation on your everyday sweets. You basically use your favourite sponge cake recipe, but steam the batter in two batches with the shallot / pork fluff mixture in the middle and up top. The sweet and salty mix is always a welcomed conflict to your taste buds (like stewed pork hog on brown sugar shredded ice). The deep fried crisp shallot (preferrably fried in lard... healthy....) when mixed with the pork fluff, create a whole different taste that is unlike the original ingredients... it is weird, better, hard to explain, you just have to try it.
So the Chinese name for the steamed buns is 饅頭, and if my memory serves, it means "wheat head". The story goes that foreign savages had invaded a part of China, so being the passive-aggressive Chinese people, they made steamed buns out of wheat flour, symbolizing the enemy's head, and they chew them up to express their anger. I doubt that drove the enemy away, but this is a good invention that benefited the future Chinese foodies.
My attempt to to make a rabbit, but it look mutated....
So making steamed buns is not as hard as I thought, and adding green onion definitely kicks it up a knotch. But it is important to have a good recipe with secret ingredients. To be a nice guy today, I will tell you guys one of her secret ingredient is egg. Good luck figuring out the rest!
Okay, I lied, there is lots happening in Nanaimo. New houses are being build every day. And where did they find the land to build them? Cutting down trees of course. So now the creatures of the forest have nowhere to find food other than people's yard, in the middle of the day!
Can you see this mama deer is not alone in this photo? Find her kid!
So this is what happened to our cherry tree, apparently cherry leaves are one of their favorite food.
So I went back to Nanaimo to visit my parents this past weekend, and oh my, there is lots happening - with the plants, not with the retired residents of Nanaimo.
The fig tree is budding with fruits. The Japanese pumpkins visibly grow larger and larger everyday. My dad's pride and joy pear tree is overloaded with fruits (as always). But it is not a good year for prunes and plums - it took me a while to actually found any fruits on the two-floor-high trees. Too bad, I like plums...
In an effort to understand how music and life work together, I ventured out and seeked out this "Sidewalk Cellist" on the busy street of Commercial Drive. It was not a glamourous show, it did not attract hundreds or thousand of fans, but it was a close, friendly, personal, and genuine performance - very Vancouver. The thing that attract me to seek her out is the interesting fact that there was almost no advertisement - the only advertisement was the chalk writing on the sidewalk (how fitting!).
Sorry these photos looks like I was spying on her (well, I guess I was kinda, I wasn't sure if I could take pictures/video). So for the videos you will need to turn the volume way up.
It was really nice to sit in the shade, enjoy her music, and just read a book on my iPhone. Hearing the wind blowing, leaves shaking, having acorns falling on my head(?!). Even though the streets of Vancouver is still busy like usual - garbage truck backing up, fire trucks wizzing by - but it is nice to have a corner where you can really just chill.
For more information on Clara, just google "Sidewalk Cellist". She will be performing free cello concerts every Saturday to the end of August in the Napier Greenway (Napier St. and Commercial Dr., Vancouver by the Britannia Community Centre) from 2:00pm to 4:00pm.
