More September 10th - Dinner at Helen's

After a wonderful day with Helen and our new family of four touring the Great Wall, and having a fabulous lunch at The Schoolhouse Restaurant we drove back to Beijing. I napped in the van all the way back. It was  the kind of nap one has after a day of physical exertion, great company, and a satisfying lunch. I am not usually able to sleep during car rides, but this was a very special day.

After we returned to Beijing we drove to Helen's brand new neighborhood. She lives in a newly developed area of Beijing with suburban high rises, which is the norm of housing here in Beijing, not single family homes. She took us to her local supermarket, which was multilevel, and had the magnetic carts that I am just crazy about. It is just too cool to push your grocery cart on to the escalator and have it magnetically lock into place. This way you can go from floor to floor without having to use an elevator. And, you can still fill up your cart without having to pay for purchases on each individual floor. Too cool!  :)

We saw a lot of different foods, a lot of which I didn't recognize. Some I did. Like bird's feet, etc. You know, I even saw stewed bird's feet on a buffet while in China. Very interesting, but not something I would eat. I digress.

Anyway, we followed Helen around the supermarket while she gathered the items for our dinner. She was the quickest shopper I've ever seen. I'm not even that fast and I don't like to shop for groceries. She didn't waste any time, and didn't want us to loiter. Once we had all the necessary items our driver took us to Helen's condo.

Once there Helen gave everyone treats and proceeded to cook like crazy! :) She cleaned, prepped, cut everything twice as fast as I do anything at home. She was a woman on a mission. She had promised to teach me how to prepare authentic Chinese dumplings. Now I understand why she was so speedy with everything as it takes much preparation time to make these wonderful little dumplings from scratch. This was a great cooking lesson, and I've tried to commit every step to heart. One thing echoes in my ears. . . "squeeze the edges hard or they'll come undone while cooking and make dumpling soup."

It took us about and hour and a half to prepare all of the ingredients to put inside the dumplings, and then to stuff all of the dumplings. I think we stuffed and shaped about 200 dumplings. I am proud to say that NONE of my dumplings fell apart while being cooked.

Helen also prepared stir fried vegies, wonderful egg dishes, and noodles. WAY too much food for six people. Oh, by the way did I mention that Helen's handsome fiance was there?

Helen was a magician and everything came together at the same time. She taught me how to boil the dumplings just right, not to much, not too little. What a wonderful cook she is. :)  We thoroughly enjoyed having dinner with Helen and her fiance. Faith and Skylar also had a great time at Helen's playing and having treats.

I couldn't have planned a better end to our trip than dinner with Helen. This was such a blessing and so appreciated. Helen is just an angel.