Sweet & Sour Chicken

Squeezing the lemon juice

Mixing the vegetables for the fried rice

The final meal :) 

Rosa and I had a cooking session a few weeks ago where we cooked fried rice and sweet and sour chicken. It was a major task, it took a lot of work and help from Rosa's mom. It was a risk because neither of us have cooked either of these things before but I'm really glad we did it because I learned a lot. The chicken we made was excellent, however we failed in making the fried rice. But I think that was important for us because we learned what not to do for next time. We burnt the rice because we left it unattended and stopped stirring it. I think next time, before frying the rice we'll boil it because the rice wouldn't cook by just frying, which is why we burned it. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/sweet-and-sour_chicken_03829

Ingredients

For the sauce

• 50g/2oz caster sugar
• 1 garlic clove , crushed
• 50g/2oz canned pineapple, diced
• 1 tbsp tomato ketchup
• 1 tbsp Shaoxing wine
• 1 tsp cornflour mixed to a paste with 1 tsp cold water
• 1 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1 lime, juice only

For the chicken

• 4 tbsp flour
• 2 tbsp cornflour
• pinch baking powder
• pinch sugar
• 1 free-range egg
• 2 chicken breasts, cut into bite-size pieces
• vegetable oil, for deep-frying

For the fried rice

• 2 tbsp groundnut oil, for frying
• 2 free-range eggs, lightly beaten
• 2.5cm/1in piece ginger, peeled and finely diced
• 2 garlic cloves, finely sliced
• ½ red pepper, seeds removed, diced
• 100g/4oz peas
• 300g/11oz cooked long-grain rice
• 50g/2oz cooked ham, cubed
• 3 spring onions, finely chopped
• soy sauce, to taste
• sesame oil, to taste
• ground white pepper, to taste
• 2 tbsp chopped coriander, to garnish

Preparation method

1. For the sauce, mix all the ingredients, apart from the lime juice, together in a small saucepan and simmer for five minutes until thickened, adding a splash of water if it thickens too much. Add lime juice to taste. Set aside.
2. For the chicken, mix the flour, cornflour, baking powder and sugar in a large bowl then gradually mix in the egg to form a paste. Stir in enough water to make a thick batter the consistency of double cream and whisk until smooth.
3. Half-fill a deep, heavy-based pan with the vegetable oil and heat until a cube of bread dropped in sizzles and turns golden-brown in 30 seconds (CAUTION: hot oil can be dangerous. Do not leave unattended). Coat the chicken pieces in the batter then fry for 4-5 minutes, turning two or three times, or until golden-brown and crisp and completely cooked through. (You may need to do this in batches.) Remove the chicken from the oil with a slotted spoon and set aside to drain on kitchen paper.
4. For the rice, heat half the groundnut oil in a wok over a high heat then add the beaten egg and stir as it cooks to break it into small chunks. When cooked, remove from the pan and add a little more oil then add the ginger and garlic and fry for 30 seconds. Add the red pepper and peas and fry for a further minute. Add the rice, ham, and spring onions and season generously with soy sauce. Stir until well combined, then season, to taste, with sesame oil and white pepper.
5. To serve, spoon the fried rice onto serving plates, top with the deep-fried chicken, pour over the sauce and garnish with the coriander.
   
   
   We used the recipe above to create our meal! 
   
   
   
   
   
   

Varsity Soccer

I tried out for the soccer team the week after the play ended. I wasn't happy about starting a new activity right after I'd finally finished such a time consuming one but I really wanted to be on a Varsity sport before I graduated from ISK. In choosing to participate in soccer along with continuing to balance drama as the Fringe Festival comes up, I've demonstrated qualities of perseverance. These qualities are further highlighted as I continue with a sport I played in 10th grade and was unable to play last year due to my move. Anyway, I made the soccer team and am excited/nervous to begin the upcoming season. I want to get in shape and I like having a sport to play and a team to belong to, however I am nervous about playing in soccer games at this school. It's a risk for me because I've never played Varsity here and the season is really important so there's a lot of pressure. 

Arabian Nights Matinee

Today was the matinee, our first real performance. It went decently. There were many errors, of course, but you always have that in a show so I think we pulled it off quite well. It was a little scary beforehand but once I got up there I wasn't nervous at all. I think it'll be a bit more nerve-wracking tomorrow night when we have an audience from ISK but I hope this audience will also stimulate us to give a better performance. I felt the audience today didn't react very well to the piece. Either our performance wasn't very good or, as children, they were too afraid to laugh and were too young to be engaged or they really didn't respond well to story theatre. I think that story theatre is a very different type of theatre than most people are used to, what with the continuous breaking of the fourth wall and the narration of one's actions. It catches people off guard and is risky to try but I'm glad we're doing it because it gives me a whole other type of theatre to have experience with. Maybe (because the demographic will be a bit older) tomorrow night people will respond better. A lot of the ensemble work in Sindibad and the Envious Sisters worked well so I'm happy about that, however I forgot one of my lines in the end during my monologue so that was frustrating. Hopefully tomorrow night that won't happen and the performance will be as fluid and comfortable as possible. 

Interact OVC Party

Serving cocoa to the kids 

The gorilla one of the children drew at the Drawing Station

Teaching one of the kids how to write CAR

Walking Vivian back to the parking lot

Today we held the Interact OVC Christmas party. Unfortunately it was raining, so we couldn't go play in the playground or go swimming, especially since most of the children are HIV positive. So we altered our plans and divided the party up into 4 stations: the breakfast station, clothes & books, reading room, movie, and coloring. I was a group leader, so I took one group of children to each station. We began at breakfast where we made cocoa and served mendazis, hard boiled eggs, sausages and so on to the children for breakfast. Then we went to clothes/books and helped children pick four articles of clothing and two books. There it was quite hectic because some children didn't know what to do and some took too many things. There was one girl, called Vivian, who was shivering because she was cold from the rain and she wasn't sure how to pick out clothes so Rosa and I helped her pick her clothes. The next room, the reading room, was also hectic but A LOT of fun. We got to help the children read and I love reading to kids so I got really into it. Every time we came across a word I thought I could make a connection to I tried to teach the children it. I was able to teach Vivian how to count up to five on her fingers and I taught the children at my table how to differentiate between various colors. Particularly the color red because that was written in one of their books. In this room I found that the older kids seemed as if they were trying to get more clothes through the younger kids. They kept going through the younger children's bags and the younger children couldn't say anything. Not only were they too young to understand, but as their elders the older kids probably intimidated them. Also I feel like the language barrier contributed to this too. I'm planning on telling Ms. Henderson or Parijat on Monday so that this issue can be addressed. We went to the coloring room in the end where we had a lot of interaction with the children, as we saw what they were drawing, helped them think of things to draw and so on. There was one kid who was drawing a gorilla from one of the books he'd picked up and it was excellent! I was really impressed and I'm excited for the next OVC party we have! 

NHS

Yesterday during our NHS meeting I suggested that we do a cleaning supplies drive for the Home for the Aged in Runda. We visited this Home for the Aged when we did the Runda Feeding Program and on a walk with my mom we went and talked to the director, who told us that they needed fans, cleaning supplies and other things. I figured that to start off with it would be very easy for NHS to organize a drive of cleaning supplies to donate to the Home. These items are so easy for us to acquire and make such a difference to places like this, so I think this is a very important thing to do. I love how, being NHS, I have to resources/manpower to actually go about organizing something like this. I think it's great that I'm able to connect two of the groups I work with, Interact and NHS, to work towards bettering the community. I feel very at ease in NHS and am able to contribute ideas. I also gave the idea to do Christmas grams but instead we're going to do Thanksgiving grams. I suggested that we make cookies at my house, using the Autumn leaves cookie cutters that I have. This is my first true fundraiser with NHS and I'm excited to start working on it. I created the poster below for the cleaning supplies drive and will post it on the NHS Facebook page to see if it will work.

Just Write Competition

I submitted the following poem to Just Write:

Guilty eyes

Upon a guiltless man

Hearing the mother cry,

He’s eternally damned.

He looks down as she goes by

He has shattered her world

His actions cannot be rectified.

She turns and speaks her first words:

‘Go to hell’ she hisses

Her eyes screaming blame

She’s then gracefully dismissed

Her baby’s death was not his aim.

He begins his exit

Numb to his very core

Her words had hit him even

Harder than the courthouse door.

He walks out a ‘free man’

Lawyers are congratulated

This was not his life plan

Everything’s been complicated

Reporters surround him now

Is this what freedom feels like?

An escape he is not allowed

They all look alike.

‘No comment’ is mumbled

Through his weary lips

His spirit begins to crumble

His heavy heart’s been ripped.

He thinks of the flawless girl

Her face lifeless and still

The night’s events unfurl.

She should not have been killed.

He drove his truck

Headlights so bright

She was high on her luck:

Not meant to be out that night.

He casually changed the station

Wistful blues poured on through.

She focused on her presentation

And gazed in the mirror, while driving too.

Tires squealed.

And horns blared.

His vision is real.

He was there.

Through the crash he blacked-out

He now remembers only

His attempts to switch routes.

But it was not meant to be.

Guilt for the guiltless

This is where he lies

Who said freedom was painless?

To the girl he is forever tied.

I just found out I won 3rd place with the poem above! :) 

Horseriding

I went horse riding again for the first time since school started this year yesterday. It was so much fun. I feel like it's like riding a bike; you never really forget. I had the best horse, his name was Donald. He was completely prepared to trot and canter and had a great deal of energy. Plus he easily listened to me when I wanted to turn. The only problem was that because he had so much energy he began going to fast and became hard to control. When I cantered the first time he went to fast and I lost control so I went off the track. I had to really challenge myself to get control of him when cantering but I kept working on it throughout the lesson and by the end I was able to do a controlled canter around the track multiple times. It was a great feeling to have this sort of control over Donald so all in all I'd say it was a great first lesson back.