Vanilla Pudding

Ingredient:

• 3/4 cup sugar 
• 4 tsp cornstarch
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1 cup of cream 
• 2 cups of milk
• 3 egg yolks
• 1 tsp butter
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• several sliced peach for decoraiton

Step#1

place sugar, salt, and cornstarch in a bowl

Step#2

pour Step#1 into cream

Step#3

pour milk and egg yolks into Step#2 

Step#4

cook Step#3 over medium heat and keep stirring constantly for 3-5 minutes

Step#5

remove from heat and stir in vanilla and butter

Step#6

pour Step#5 into pudding cup and place it into fridge

Step#7

place the sliced peach on top of the vanilla pudding 

Egg Tart

Ingredients

• 25 pieces of unbaked tart shells
• 5 eggs
• 1 cup of white sugar
• 5 cups of water or you can use milk 

Step#1preheat oven to 400 degrees 

Step#2dissolve sugar in water/milk in a bowl

Step#3beat in eggs into Step#2

Step#4place the tart shell into the tart mold and pour Step#3 into the mold

Step#5bake them 400 degrees F for 20 minutes

Opera

When I have spare time, I always like to cuddle in my sofa and watching movies, opera and TV shows. Here, I am going to introduce three of my favourite operas/ movies: Phantom of the Opera, Moulin Rouge and Carmen. I had watched them for more than fifty times since I was junior two. My interest to opera also starts from that time because during my music class, my music teacher kept playing operas in class. Moreover, he also took us to theatre to watch the operas. Therefore, I started to fall in love with opera from that time.

Phantom of the Opera

The Phantom of the Opera is based on a french novel Le Fantome de l'Opera by Gaston Leroux. The film is directed by Joel Schumacher; produced and co-written by Lloyd Webber. The film was announced in early 1989, but production only began in 2002 because Lloyd Webber's divorce and Schumacher's busy career. 

It's a story tells about a man Erik, who is a musical genius but whose face is horribly disfigured. Therefore, he decides to hiding from the world so he lives in the deep underground in the cellar dungeons of the Paris Opera House. As time goes by, people all address him as the ghost in the opera house. After some time, he falls in love with a young singer, Christine Daaè and starts to coach her to become a perfect singer. However, when Christine's childhood friend Raoul suddenly appears into her life, Erik becomes jealous. As a result, he kidnaps Christine and attempts to kill Raoul if Christine didn't agree to marry him. 

Moulin Rouge

Moulin Rouge is a romantic Jukebox musical film directed, produced, and co-written by Baz Luhrmann.

Moulin Rouge tells the story of a young and English writer: Christian who falls in love with a terminally-ill star of the Moulin Rouge actress: Satine. However, Satine plans to seduce the Duke in order to ask the duke to help her career. Unfortunately, when Christian shows up into Satine's life, she feels confused that if she still wanna chasing for fortune or follow her heart:  escape with the writer Christian. This musical is based on the setting of the Montmartre Quarter of Paris. At the  74th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for eight Oscars. Moreover, It was also the first musical nominated for Best Picture in 10 years, following Disney's Beauty and the Beast.

Carmen

Carmen is an opera by a french composer Georges Bizet. The opera was first performed at the Opera Comique in Paris, on 3rd March 1875. 

The opera tells the story of the downfall of Don José, a naive soldier, who is seduced by a woman Carmen. José abandons his childhood girlfriend and run away from his military duties. Jose and Carmen have a wonderful time together. However, José is abandoned by Carmen because she falls in love with a man Escamillo. Jose is too angry about that because he give up his jobs, friends and family. As a result, Jose decides to kill Carmen as his revenge. This tragedy ends with Carmen dying in her blood. 

First Alaska Cruise

The past summer in Seattle is really intolerant, it is really stuff and humiliate. Also there was not rain for a long time. Therefore, I decided to go to Alaska to escape this hot summer. I did a lot of research on the internet, but still couldn't decide which cruise is the best to me so I asked several friends who had a experience with the Alaska Cruise before. They told me that the Princess Cruise is much more suitable for elders; The Carnival Cruise is a party cruise; Norwegian pearl Cruise is the medium between the Princess and the Carnival. Also the suite price of the Norwegian Cruise seems much more reasonable for me.

Here is a video that introduce the Norwegian Pearl.

  

After I had made the reservation on the norwegian website, i soon started packing my clothes and accessories for the Alaska "summer"

On the departure day, I went to the port on the Alaskan way in the morning. The check in line was really long, but the process speed is really fast.

View of Seattle from the Cruise

View of Seattle from the Cruise

After I had finished checkin, I went to the Garden Cafe, which is a 24-hours buffet, to had my lunch and waited there until the Cruise departure.

Here are some of the pictures from the restaurant on the cruise. The food was marvelous and it would be definitely a add-on for this trip. I originally thought that free restaurant won't serve good quality food. However, i was totally wrong, the food was really high quality and they changed half of the menu everyday so you can had different dish everyday.

The first day is Cruise day, of course, you won't feel bored on the cruise because  there are football court, SPA, swimming pool, theater, auction, party and a lot more!

The second day, the Cruise arrived the Juneau where is capital of Alaska.  We originally had an reservation to go to the glacier by helicopter. Unfortunately,  the wind speed that day was too big and the rain is too heavy that the helicopter couldn't take off so we had to switch this reservation to the next port: Skagway. Since we had no other reservation here, so we wandered around and checked out the places. When we walked trough the street, we noticed that there was a USPS store so we dashed into the souvenir shop and bought several postcards and sent them out before the USPS was closed. We also bought two packs of smoke salmon in a fisherman shop.

The second day, we arrived the port: Skagway. A lot of passengers went to take the white pass, but we only had little time before we needed to check-in our helicopter trip so we chose to stay on the ship and have our lunch.

When it was almost time, we went to the port and check-in. So after all the members arrived, we were took to the helicopter headquarter and the people there helped us to chose our snowshoes and life jackets. 

Helicopter Headquarter

After we were all settle down, our helicopter departure in the foggy weather. The helicopter was really fast, but sometime felt unstable as the wind became stronger.

View from the Helicopter

 After 15 minutes flight, we saw a flag of Alaska on the ground. Our pilot told us that we would land there.

On the Glacier

When all the members joined together, the leader handed each of us a rain coat and a crane, which would help us to stable on the slippery glacier.

On the Glacier

During the tour, the leader showed us a lot of whole like above, some of them were really deep hole and you couldn't see the bottom of the hole. The overall experience there was so great! Although it was expensive, you won't have a lot of chances to do this in your life.

The third day was the Glacier Bay day. The cruise would arrive the glacier bay and stop at some spectacular glacier. However, the cruise arrived the glacier bay at 5 in the morning and I was too sleepy to go outside. Therefore, I missed one glacier :( 

Here is a video that other people who took the same ship and same path as mine. 

The fourth day, we arrived Ketchikan where is famous for brown bear and salmon. We walked around and bought some fudge here. During the lunch time, we went to a restaurant to have Alaska king crab leg. The crab leg was really sweet and really fresh, I wish I would have that again!
After we had our lunch, we started crazy shopping because this is the last port that we stopped in Alaska.

The fifth day, we arrived Victoria where is the capital city of British Columbia.  We didn't go to the Empress Hotel to have the fancy afternoon tea. On the other hand, we chose to walk around the place because we don't want to drive to here from Seattle next time :)

Victoria is a really beautiful place that full of old-fashioned buildings. Also, there were a small market that sells food and small accessories near the port. Moreover, there were also some people performed on      near the sea bay and sang beautiful songs. 

The last day. we arrived at Seattle in the early morning. We slept until 8 and enjoy our last breakfast on this cruise.  This was the most memorable trip that I have ever had.

Oreo Cheesecake

Ingredient:

• 1 package of OREO Cookies
• 1/3 cup  butter 
• 24oz PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese, softened
• 3/4 cup  sugar
• 1 cup of Sour Cream
• 1tsp.  vanilla oil
• 4 eggs

Step#1 

heat the oven to 350°F.

Step#2

crush 30 cookies evenly and chop remaining cookies. 

Step#3

mix crushed cookies with butter then press it on the bottom of the 9-inch springform pan.

Step#4

beat the cream cheese and sugar in large bowl. Then add the sour cream and vanilla oil into the bowl and mix it

Step#5

add eggs into Step#4, one at a time (mixing on low speed)

Step#6

add the chopped cookies into the bowl then keep stirring

Step#7

pour the Step#6 into the springform pan

Step#8

bake an hour, until center feels hard then refrigerate the oreo cheesecake  at least three hours

Homemade Pizza

Ingredients

• 1 package of active dry yeast
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 cup warm water (110° to 115°)
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 3cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 pound ground beef or pork
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 can tomato sauce
• 3 teaspoons dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 1 medium green pepper
• 1 can of corn
• 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

Step#1
dissolve the active yeast and sugar in water in a bowl and let it stands for 5 minutes
Step#2
add oil and salt into the flour then mix it,until it becomes a soft dough
Step#3
mix Step#1 and Step#2 together and blend it until the dough feels smooth and elastic.
Step#4
place the dough into a greased bowl then cover a warm clothes on top of the dough. then wait 50 minutes
Step#5
divided the dough as two, then press each dough as flat as you can
Step#6
place the corn, dried basil, tomato sauce, oregano, black pepper, mozzarella and green onion on the flat dough
Step#7
bake Step#6 in 400F for 30 minutes

Takoyaki Ball

Ingredients:

• 4 cups flour
• 2 cups chicken soup
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 lb. boiled octopus, cut into bite-size 
• 1/4 cup chopped green onion
• 1/4 cup dried shrimp

Step#1

mix the flour, chicken soup, and eggs into a bowl 

Step#2

preheat a takoyaki pan and grease the molds

Step#3

pour the Step#1 into the molds until full

Step#4

put the octopus, green onion, and dried red shrimp in each mold

Step#5

grill takoyaki balls and flipping then with a pick to make balls

Step#6

when the color of the takoyaki looks brown, remove takoyaki from the pan and place on a plate

Step#7

You can pour takoyaki sauce and green onion on top of the takoyaki balls.