Visiting friends

A friend, Kim, that I went to college with (William and Mary, Physics study partner) now lives with his wife, Jing, and teenage daughter outside of Portland, Oregon, and they invited us to come to visit on Saturday and to enjoy an authentic Chinese meal.

Kim told us that if we arrived early, we could help in the preparation of the meal, so we got there relatively early and were able to participate in some of the preparation. Note: all names of dishes and Chinese characters were provided by Kim in a text message -- I can copy and paste!

We helped in making the 饺子 jiao zi (pronounced "ji-ao dze") ...

... we put the pork meat mixture into the pastry wrappers and sealed them up for cooking (Patti, Jing, and Kim all working on the 饺子 jiao zi).

Jing continued on with other preparation -- here she was working on a spicy beef that Kim indicated he had specifically requested.

Kim gave Carl a 花椒 "hua ji-ao" or Sichuan peppercorn to try. He suggested Carl just put it into his mouth in front of his teeth and experience it. Initially, Carl said that it had a citrus taste, but as he held it in his mouth and chewed it a little, it got more intense, and spicier. Then his bottom lip started getting numb. They gave us some to take with us -- Carl gave one to a neighbor here in the campground -- he had much the same experience, but indicated that at the last, it was a salty taste (we think that Carl may have missed this because we started eating our meal before that would have occurred). Just in case Carl offers you something that looks like a peppercorn -- be forewarned!

The 饺子 jiao zi cooking.

Our beautiful dinner

Refreshing lychee fruit after the meal

Some of the extra 饺子 jiao zi and the package of potsticker wrappers that we used to form them.

We had such a good time - enjoying food and fellowship, catching up a little on our last 40 years of life.

It is so nice to visit friends!