Pastry Gifts

Hey! I'm back! I just had a HUGE culinary failure 2 months ago and since then I haven't baked or cooked anything until last week. My failure was so huge and heartbreaking that just talking about it makes me sad. I kept myself busy so I could move on but there are always reasons to celebrate so I made these gifts to give to some significant persons to me.

I just took another Chinese proficiency test . If you're familiar with Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK), that's what I took. I passed level 4 that includes 1200 vocabulary; 600 new words and 600 old words from the previous 3 levels. I wasn't paying attention to the date of the exam and only became aware of it 10 days before the actual examination date with zero knowledge of the new vocabulary. The old words; I have no problem because they're already engraved in my brain. I studied by myself  for 7 days and asked for help from my teacher and friend before. Imagine what work out my brain had for a week!



To repay her kindness and make some kind of memory of our friendship I made some hopia for her. The day before the exam instead of reviewing, I spent the whole afternoon to make hopia filled with homemade red bean paste, I know your familiar with these from my old posts. Having a cold also doesn't help! I made ways to keep everything sanitary. Fortunately before dark the hopia were ready and already boxed. That night my headache was so severe I didn't even bother to open my notes and I just said to myself that if I don't pass there is always a next time.



The morning before the exam I tied the boxes with ribbons and tried my best to write a short message in Chinese. I know my writing is not the best but at least I tried. She is from Mainland China so I used simplified characters, that's also the system used in the proficiency test. I don't have much issues in speaking and reading Chinese but writing is another story for me. What are written here are just two ways to say "Thank you very much!" and my Chinese name.



The test was difficult and I did not even finish the writing part. I'm just happy it's all finished in the end. In fact I already conditioned my mind in the beginning that I went there just to give my gift. She was surprised when I presented her my gift.  She said " How did you make it?!" "Come over here I have some pretty mooncakes from a friend!" (Hopia is similar to some styles of mooncake in China. This is a variant of the 酥皮月饼 su pi yue bing Flaky Mooncake.)  All of the conversations are in Mandarin. The other teachers were surprised too! They said it's so delicious on par or even better than the ones they have in China. They even said a man who can cook well can marry a beautiful girl in China! :P They really appreciated it and I'm so happy!




She was so happy so unexpectedly, she gave me a gift too! A mat and a brush to practice Chinese calligraphy. Water is used as an ink and fades as it dries allowing the mat to be used over and over again. What a practical and eco-friendly way to practice calligraphy; writing which is the skill I struggle the most. She showed me how to use and wrote my name on it. Oh my! The writing was so beautiful! Bear with me because I'm still practicing.







Here is my Chinese name that I wrote on it.



After a few moments, it fades.



Here is a comparison.



 Here are some more of my practice characters.

I love you



Thank you in Traditional and Simplified script. Although most of my friends are from the mainland and I use simplified characters to communicate with them, I also study traditional characters myself because those are what are used in our country. I just love them both.





I really love her gift and I will always remember her when I use it. Her colleague maybe because of the deliciousness of the hopia also gave me a gift even though we don't know each other that much; it's a book with a talking pen that will read every passage in the book so you have a pronunciation and audio guide.

My beautiful and kind teacher/friend with me. 



She lives in this ancient beautiful town in Hunan. I want to go there someday. I really have this thing for places with ancient feel; the houses, the stone bridge, the river.



I checked the results of the test and I passed! It was really a miracle thank God! 180 is the passing score for the 300 item test; with only 10 days of review, making hopia instead of having a review before the big day and a cold and headache on the day of the exam, I still managed to score 207! We're just overwhelmed even my parents who really support me in my Chinese studies. I'm planning to take level 5 next time, another hard work because 1,300 new vocabulary will be added! I hope I will pass that too.

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Another gift this time for an old friend.



I met with an old friend from my high school days too. It has been 4 years since we last saw each other. We were classmates when we were freshmen in high school but we do not talk much, it's only at the end of the school year where our friendship blossomed. We were one of the "loners" in the class who do not have a "fixed" set of friends and we found console in each other. We would talk on the phone four hours during the summer breaks from night till the wee hours of the morning! I guess it's just because we have the same interests, hobbies and likes. By our sophomore years we were no longer classmates, I was move to class 2 from class 1 of the special curriculum because my grades weren't good enough; well, still good but not enough to make the cut for class 1. It was new world for me because basically half of the class was gone and a new half  from the old class 2 replaced them. We were ranked individually to determine the final classes. Even though that's the case we still continued our friendship even the long telephone talks. Though I had new friends, there was no one that can understand me like her.

We graduated and she was the class valedictorian with an average of 94.XX, I was 77th out of 80 students with a grade of 90.I can't remember; most grades were just separated by decimal numbers. She went to the University of the Philippines to study Industrial Pharmacy; I also passed the university's entrance exam but it's for another campus for a degree in Nutrition. I didn't pursue it because it was too far away and I really want to take something related to hospitality.



4 years later we already had our degrees when she randomly just greeted me on my birthday this year. We chatted a lot (a long chat is the evidence that we really missed each other) and she asked me if I want to meet her because she will come here to our hometown in a few days. I said Yes! Of course! So we set the date, time and venue of our "mini reunion". She asked me to bring anything that I cooked for her. She just wants to taste any of my concoctions because she was curious every time I posted something.

I don't have a lot of ingredients that time and knowing that anyone who tastes my hopia smiles and raves about it, I said I will make hopia for her. She was amazed just as she heard it because she always thought that the little treat is never made but always bought. This hopia is filled with peeled split mung beans, what we call here as yellow mung bean paste. I made the mung bean paste a day before and made the pastry on the day of our reunion to  ensure freshness. These are 4 large pieces and because we both like mixing sweet and savory flavors I made the 2 plain and the other 2 with chopped salted egg.



When we met were so happy, we barely contained ourselves. On our way to the food court she immediately asked about my promise hopia and as soon as we are seated I gave it to her and we both experience a sense of bliss. She devoured a piece (the one with salted egg) immediately and encourage me to turn it into a business  because to her the taste, the appearance, and presentation was perfect.


 
We talked for 4 hours as she goes through another piece of hopia this time more slowly. We did a lot of catching up and talked about a wide range of topics about the fields we studied. Here are just some samples. First we talked about yeasts like candida and lactobacilli, it was our opening topic because it's related to her microorganism study and my baking. :P Then it went wild as we talked about molds like aspergillus oryzae, a. flavus, a. niger, penicillum species. Then we talked about toxicology related things like aflatoxin B1 G1, ochratoxin, neurotoxin, hemotoxin, and other stuff. Then our high school memories and nostalgia, then anime, then our future plans, then her thesis about bacteriophages, then about languages we study like the derivation of meaning of Chinese characters; I taught her a little French and Mandarin then she taught me some Japanese, we even sang old and foreign language songs before we end our short reunion. Now you know how crazy we are and why we found completeness in each other. Throughout our stay, 4 or 5 groups of people sat next to us and as you can imagine, hearing all those crazy things from us; all of them gave us weird looks but we don't care! That's what make us happy!

Of course, the last thing we did was to take some souvenir photos!

My genius friend Charleen! We understand each other like no other!





Thank you very much!