Beijing

Saturday night we watched some of the swimming and the volley ball. I must admit I was a bit sleepy and didn't see a lot. However, Sunday, I was up early and we watched some rowing and synchronised diving. I was very proud to see the Canadian rowing teams doing so well. Three groups have qualified for the finals which is great. Unfortunately Canada didn't make it into the synchronised diving. The Chinese team took the gold medal. They really are good. The picture on the left is from the National Post and is of the Canadian four man rowing team which came in second in their heat, as did the two other Canadian rowing teams. The picture on the right is the CBC news picture of the Chinese synchronised swimming team, Guo Jingjing and Wu Minxia on the podium. Sunday night we watched more swimming but had to go to bed before the end. I find that I can no longer stay up til all hours of the night like I once did. One can catch up on the Olympics the next day, but its not as much fun as watching it actually happen, but my bed calls me so that's that. I see that Michael Phelps has got two of his expected eight medals. This morning on GMA there was a segment on moonlighting and a woman on the Outer Banks in North Carolina (how well I know that area) is taking care of people's dogs when they are on vacation. It made me think of EZ a dog I used to take care of regularly when her mistress was off being a flight attendant. Unfortunately Zee, as she was known, is no longer with us, but she was almost pure hound and would spend hours hunting if left to her own devices. She was a very well behaved dog and just turned up out of the blue. They tried to find an owner for her, but couldn't do so, so she took up residence with my friend where she lived many years. In those days I used to walk about 4 miles a day so walking with Zee was very easy except for one time when I walked past a home where their dog was not fenced or leashed and came dashing out onto the road, Zee thought it was attacking me and went for the dog, I am hanging on to her leash like grim death and ended up on my knees, on the road, hurting like hell and yelling obscenities at the owner of the other dog. My knees were quite badly scraped and I was not a happy camper. I can't find a picture of Easy at the moment, but she would have fit into the picture here. I hope you can enlarge the picture, it is quite funny. In honour of the Olympics being in Beijing, I figured I should post some Chinese recipes. This is the first one for the ever popular Peking Duck. It is a lot of effort and I can't really see anyone having a go at it, but for interest, if nothing else, here is the recipe. I don't know how authentic this is, I only ever ate it once and we had a kind of crèpe with it. However, I have a Chinese Cookbook as part of one of my computer cookbooks and this was the recipe.

Peking Duck (picture from National Food Industry)

Serves: 4

Source: Madame Wu's Garden

1 (4-1/2 to 5 lb.) duck 1 tsp. salt 8 green onions 2 (1/4 in.) sliced gingeroot 3 tbs. honey 2 tbs. cornstarch 1 can oven-ready biscuits 1 small can plum sauce

A day in advance, clean duck inside & out, dry thoroughly. Season inside w/ salt. Tie together stem ends of 2 green onions, place inside duck cavity w/ gingeroot. Bring edges of tail opening together, stitch w/ a length of fine wire. Attach another wire to neck as a handle. Mix 1 qt. water w/ honey in large wok or small turkey roasting pan, bring to boil. When boiling, stir in cornstarch dissolved in 1/4 cup cold water. Continue to stir to consistency of a thin stream. Lower heat. Holding duck by neck wire, dip into honey mixture 3-4 times to coat on all sides. Remove duck, suspend over container in cool place. Set an electric fan towards duck to help dry the skin. Let duck drip-dry over- night. Next day: preheat oven to 450. Place duck breast side up on flat rack in roasting pan. Roast 30 min.

Reduce heat to 300, turn duck over. Roast 30 more min. Turn duck breast side up again, roast for final 30 min. Remove biscuits from can, divide each biscuit in 1/2. Bring 2 in. water to boil in bottom of steamer. Place biscuits in container above water, cover, & steam 5 min. Thinly slice stems of remaining 6 onions into 2-in. diagonal strips. Divide sliced onion between 4 butter plates, place 1 tsp. plum sauce on each plate. Prepare duck for serving by cutting off drumsticks & wings & placing on platter in position whole duck should be. Carefully slice off all skin pieces of about 1 and 2 inches, lay them aside. Slice same size pieces of meat from bone. Place all carved meat on platter, cover w/ skin pieces on outside to make presentation look like a whole duck. Eat by making sandwich of onion, plum sauce, duck, and skin.

Have a great day.