Our 1st Cooking Project: Pumpkin (Rice) Cakes

It's that time of the year again! Pumpkin patch field trips, pumpkin crafts and jack-o'-lanterns......So, at the Chinese Club @ Peregrine, we made some pumpkin cakes! 

As little chefs, every club member worked seriously on this project. 

We combined the traditional Chinese bakery ingredient, rice, with the popular western holiday food, pumpkin, kneading them into small dough balls. We added creative stuffing inside, chocolate chips, raisins, and even marshmallows. We used strings to make prints on them, and finally, them got steamed! Uh-oh, however, the marshmallow ones were not that successful (we should have thought about that marshmallows tend to expand in heat....so that broke the skin of the dough). It's like an experiment, isn't it? But regardless, they tested yummy and sweet! Here are some pictures we took on our cooking day. I hope you all enjoyed this little treat!  

Let's Make Some Pumpkin Cakes

Tomorrow, Oct 28, we'll have our first cooking project with our Chinese club students. And the food we'll cook is....Pumpkin Cakes!

Here's a small language lesson.  The Chinese word for pumpkin is 南瓜（nan-gua), literally translated, South-Squash.  In Chinese, we actually have two kinds of melon/squash/gourd that are named after direction words: South (南 nan ) and West (西 xi). The character 瓜（gua）could be used for melon, squash, or gourd, usually depending on if it's a fruit or vegetable or both...... It was believed that pumpkin was introduced into China from South America long time ago. That's why it was named by the Chinese as "nan-gua" (南瓜, South-Squash). Can you guess what is a "xi-gua" (西瓜, or West - Melon)? We'll talk about it when we do the hands-on cooking tomorrow!  

The cooking instructions and recipe are attached here for your reference:

Pumpkin Cake   南  瓜  饼 （nan – gua – bing）

Ingredients  (to make 20-25)

Sweet/Sticky rice flour            2.5 cups
Sugar                                        0.5 cup

Sweet red bean paste                5 oz

Canned pumpkin puree            15 oz

Vegetable oil                            1 teaspoon

Directions

1)    Make the dough: place the flour and sugar in a mixing bowl, add the vegetable oil and slowly add in the pumpkin puree, stirring with a wooden spoon or by hands, until the dough feels thoroughly mixed, soft but non-sticky.  Knead the dough for about 5 minutes and let it rest for 3-5 minutes.

2)    Make the cake: divide the dough into small equal pieces, roll it into a ball with the palms of your hands, and press your thumb into the center of the dough to form a little nest. Place about 1/3 teaspoon red bean paste filling into the nest, gentally draw the edges of the dough up to enclose it, hiding al the red bean paste. Roll it gently between your palms to make a smooth ball. Use a string to gently make pumpkin prints on the ball.

3)    Cooking: place the cake onto a parchment paper lined in the steamer, as many that will fit without touching each other. Pour enough water into a sauce pan and bring to a boil. Set the steamer filled with cakes over the sauce pan. Cover the lid and steam the cakes for about 6-7 minutes. Turn off the heat and wait for half minute (without opening the lid). Serve when still warm but not hot.

Reminders

• Wash your hands thoroughly before making the cakes.
• Since sticky rice (flour) is extremely glutinous, all, especially kids and seniors, should watch out for choking, particularly when eating hot.
• Store ingredients in the refrigerator and freeze what you can’t eat/cook. 

"Little Mouse Goes On Lamp-stand" Song

 So here comes our next Chinese nursery rhyme,  小老鼠上灯台 （xiao-lao-shu-shang-deng-tai), little mouse goes on a lamp-stand!  I'm attaching the lyrics and translation as follows. If you wish to listen to it, please paste-and-copy the Chinese words above and do an online search yourself. I'm sure you'll find more than one video/audio links to this famous Chinese children's song.

We introduced it the first time on Oct 23. We'll continue reviewing and singing it for the rest of Oct class meetings! Have fun learning a new song in Chinese!

 xiao   lao   shu, shang  deng  tai  
小老鼠，上灯台(the little mouse, climbed up the lamp-stand)
tou   you   chi,  xia  bu   lai
偷油吃，下不来(stealthily ate oil, was unable to get down)
miao  miao miao,  mao   lai    le
喵 喵 喵，猫来了(meow, meow, meow, here came the cat)
ji    li   gu   lu  gun xia lai
叽里咕噜滚下来(ji-li-gu-lu down fell the mouse)

Week 10/13-10/24 Class Theme and Activities

 We are continuing our theme of "Animals" in our meetings for these two weeks.

On Tue, Oct the 14th, we introduced the incredible ancient Chinese puzzle: "Qi Qiao Ban (Pronunciation: chee-chiao-baann, or, Tangram in English)." Literarily translated, Qi Qiao Ban means "seven versatile boards." It is hard to imagine how versatile they are until you give it a try! Of course, the boards themselves won't be so great without your effort and wise input; it is challenging at times. But it turned out that all the kids in our club enjoyed playing with it. Out of these seven small boards, we made all kinds of animals: cat, fish, duck, sheep, cow, rabbit, swan, dog, turtle, jelly fish, and even beaver....Our creativity is quite impressive, isn't it?

On Thursday, October the 16th, we read the story book, "Three Pigs, One Wolf, and Seven Magic Shapes." Besides learning the new animal vocabulary in Chinese, we were further inspired by the book and made more Qi-qiao-ban animals in the last 15 minutes of our class time.

The next Tuesday, we reviewed the Ha-ba-goy song, not only by singing, but also went through the lyrics line by line. It's actually fun to play this word game. Sometimes, we felt like we were reading the Chinese lyrics word-by-word already! We tried to finish our Qi-qiao-ban animal book. But then we had more creations and run out of time.

We are aiming to finish our Qi-qiao-ban Animal Book on Thursday, the 23rd, by adding covers to all our animal book pages. We'll go through the Ha-ba-Guo song word by word one more time. If things are going well, we may learn a new song. Of course, it will be related to animals again! Stay tuned. ; ) 

Link to the "一只哈巴狗 Yi-Zhi-Ha-Ba-Gou (a pug dog)" Song

We introduced the following song on 10/7, Tue. If you missed the class or wanted to review this song outside of our class meetings, please check it out at the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBbYODk-qmQ

Don't forget the body/hand movements to go with your singing. ;-)  Enjoy!

Lyrics for Sep Songs (with PinYin)

Hello Song 一

你好,你好(ni hao, ni hao)

你好吗？你好吗？(ni hao ma? ni hao ma?)

我很好,我很好(wo hen hao, wo hen hao)

谢谢你,谢谢你(xie xie ni, xie xie ni)

再见！再见！(zai jian! zai jian!)

******************************

Hello Song 二

你好、您好、你们好

(ni hao, nin hao, ni men hao)

同学好，老师好

(tong xue hao, lao shi hao)

早上好、下午好

(zao shang hao, xia wu hao)

你好、您好、你们好

(ni hao, nin hao, ni men hao)

******************************

声调歌／Four Tones

一声平平走

(yi sheng ping ping zou)

二声上山坡

(er sheng shang shan po)

三声下又上

(san sheng xia you shang)

四声滑下坡

(si sheng hua xia po)

******************************

拍手歌/ clapping hands

拍拍手、拍拍手、大家一起拍拍手

(pai pai shou, pai pai shou,dajia yiqi pai pai shou)

上拍拍、下拍拍

(shang pai pai, xia pai pai)

左拍拍、右拍拍

(zuo pai pai, you pai pai)

前拍拍、后拍拍

(qian pai pai, hou pai pai)

石头、剪子、布！

(shi tou, jian zi, bu!)

September Class Review

With only four students on board in Sep, we have lots of opportunities to practice our pronunciation, to seek for individual attention and help from the teacher.  So far, things we’ve learned, but not limited to, are the following:

*  how to greet and to respond to greetings in more sophisticated ways besides “Ni-hao.”  

* to count numbers 1 to 12 and read clocks, which allows us to playing the game “Old Wolf, Old Wolf, What Time Is It?” in Chinese.  

* to be aware of the different tones for one sound. One thing we have been aware is that in Mandarin Chinese, the tone of each character (equivalent to English word) is super important. Since many characters share the same sound but mean totally different things, four tones are used to differentiate them from each other; for example, mǎ (horse) is very different from mā (mother). 

* to recognize some Chinese characters and phrases, especially through playing the “Matching Cards” game. 

* to familiarized ourselves with Chinese classroom instructions. 

Belated Greeting

Chinese Club Students and Parents, da-jia-hao!

I've been thinking of putting up a blog for our club meetings lately. Sorry for taking so long for me to write up the very first entry, partly due to technic problems with my home Internet (I was out of Internet for almost the whole month of Sep).

Anyway, here you go: a new blog site! Hopefully, this blog will serve a place for us to communicate a little more, outside of our weekly meetings.

I will try my best to post things that we've been working on so far: Chinese phrases, characters, songs, rhymes, games, etc. It will be a resource site for all of us; a place where you can find materials for reviewing whenever needed.

Stay tuned!

Che Laoshi