Author Archives: jwrobitaille
Pavlova
Pavlova
Prep time
Cook time
Total time
I like to make this after I make key lime pie because I have 4 eggs whites left over from that recipe (why waste them?)
Recipe type: Dessert
Serves: 8 servings
Ingredients
- 4 egg whites
- 1¼ cups white sugar
- 1 t vanilla
- 1 t lemon juice
- 2 t cornstarch
- 1 pint heavy cream
- whatever fruit is in season (strawberries, blueberries, peaches raspberries). If no fresh fruit is available, use lemon curd or fruit preserves.
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Draw a 9-inch circle with a pie plate on the parchment paper or make individual Pavlovas with a spoon.
- In a large bowl, beat egg whites until stiff but not dry. Gradually add in the sugar a little at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat until thick and glossy. Gently fold in vanilla extract, lemon juice, and cornstarch.
- Spoon mixture inside the circle drawn on the parchment paper. Working from the center, spread mixture toward the outside edge, building edge slightly. This should leave a slight depression in the center.
- Bake for 1 hour. Cool on a wire rack.
- In a small bowl, beat heavy cream until stiff peaks form; set aside. Remove the paper, and place meringue on a flat serving plate. Fill the center of the meringue with whipped cream, and top with jam and or fruit.
turkey test
The city is bustling with traffic and strollers along the waterfront and vendors selling roses to stalled traffic. We arrived at the Legacy Ottoman, a gorgeous century old hotel with a lobby of marble, four foot chandeliers, the most amazing collection of carved chairs and sofas I’ve ever laid eyes on, and walls covered with paintings depicting scenes from the Ottoman Empire, located in the bustling heart of old town.
Legacy Ottoman lobby
Lobby or ornate chairs
We opened the windows to our room overlooking an ancient many domed building that seems to function as a shopping mall, a mosque to the left, and a view of the Blue Mosque in the distance.
View to the left of our window
Building directly in front of our windows
The wailing call to prayers that fills the evening air sends chills down my spine. We are in another country.
Our group is small, 19, from all over the world—Australia, South Korea, Canada, and US, and they are quite the world travelers. During dinner on the 6th floor overlooking the bridges crossing the Bosphorous, we listened to tales of trips to Miranmar, Abu Dabi, India, Thailand, Jordan, South America. This is a group of people who like to travel. About ¾ have done Gate 1 tours before and the rest of us are newbies. Interestingly, they often travel independently, but choose to do tours in areas where independent travel would be difficult (the very reason we chose this tour).
Arrival in China
I found a wonderful twelve day trip to China through Sinorama tours, a Canadian company. I was a little leary at first because the price was so reasonable, $1600 for a ten day tour including airfare from Orlando. The reviews seemed positive, and so far I have been impressed with their organization and efficiency. We purchased seats with extra leg room, which meant bulkhead seats, for around $80 each, the best money we have ever spent. We were able to stretch out our legs and sleep for part of the thirteen and a half hour flight from New York to Beijing on Air China. We were met by the Sinorama representative and taken by bus to our hotel, the Lijingwan International, one of the most luxurious hotels I’ve been in, certainly on a tour.
Beijing hotel
We discovered that we cannot get our email on gmail because China blocks Google and FaceBook, so no email while we’re here.
The Great Wall, Ming Tombs, tea ceremony
The Great Wall
We visited the Badaling section of the Great Wall that covers four thousand miles across northern China.
Qin Shi Huang, China’s first emperor, who unified the seven kingdoms, is responsible for both the Great Wall and the terra-cotta warriors. Each of the seven kingdoms had a wall around it, and when Qin unified the kingdoms, he joined the northern walls to protect from invasion from Mongols. The largest scale construction of the wall, however, was during the Ming dynasty. When we visited the wall, there were crowds of Chinese tourists, but nothing like the crowds during July and August.
Ming Tombs
Thirteen emperors from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) are buried in this large site, much of which remains unexcavated. When a Ming emperor died, all of his childless concubines were entombed alive in a separate concubine’s tomb.
A museum houses artifacts from the Ming Dynasty, including ceremonial garb, jewelry, and scrolls. This jade headdress features dragons and phoenixes.
The grounds are filled with ancient trees with sprawling limbs held up by supports made to look like tree trunks.
Tea Ceremony
We visited a tea house and watched a demonstration of a tea ceremony. We were treated to ginseng oolong tea, jasmine green tea, lychee tea with wild rose buds, and puer imperial tea, each of which has distinct health benefits.
[Video of tea ceremony to be added but YouTube blocked in China]
As we drove through the traffic in Beijing, we saw lots of modified scooters being used for all kinds of transport.
scooter
After all of that, we went to a Peking duck dinner with a dozen dishes culminating in Peking duck.
Temple of Heaven, Tienenman Square, Forbidden City, Peking Opera
The Temple of Heaven is 5,000 acre park in the middle of Beijing where the Ming and Tang Dynasty emperors paid homage to heaven.
Built in 1420, the three-tiered temple was the Temple of Heaven and Earth, with the top tier painted blue for heaven, the middle tier painted yellow for the emperor, and the lower tier painted green for earth, but in 1530 it became the Temple of Heaven and a separate Temple of Earth was built elsewhere. Today, it is a park where people exercise, and gather to play cards and chess.
detail of dragon and cloud column
In the Seven Star Stones garden (that represent the seven peaks of the mountain Tai), matchmakers gather to arrange marriages.
Seven Star Stones Garden
roof of Temple of Heaven
Next, we visited a silk factory where we saw an old machine that spins silk thread from silkworm cocoons.
Silk spinning machine
The silk from eight cocoons is gathered to make one silk thread. Single cocoons are used to make silk thread for cothing, and double cocoons are used to make silk comforters. The double cocoon silk is stretched to comforter size.
Stretching silk for comforter
Tienenman Square is best known for the 1989 face-off between protesters demanding greater democracy and government troop and tanks, best symbolized by a line of tanks stopped by a single protester who stood in front of the tanks. The interesting thing is that even though that image is ingrained in our minds, young Chinese have never heard of it. The protest was not covered in the news and is not taught in schools. Although China used to be full of images of Chairman Mao, one of the few images of Mao today in is Tienenman Square on the entrance to the Forbidden City.
Tienenmen Square with entrance of Forbidden City in background
The Forbidden City is an unbelievable sight that was begun in 1420 and completed fourteen years later, with the help of one million workers. It is said to have 9999 rooms but a recent survey showed it was closer to 8400. It is one of the most remarkable places I’ve ever seen.
First gate to Forbidden City
Second gate
The sheer size of the place boggles the mind, and we saw less than 1/3 of the site. It seems to go on forever, palace after palace, courtyard after courtyard, gate after gate, throne room after throne room. I have never seen so much detail in the elaborately painted ceilings, roofs, fretwork, and the sheer size of the courtyards.
Although the living quarters of the Emperor are closed for renovation, the Dragon Mother’s, the mother of the emperor’s quarters were open. They were filled with elaborate carved woodwork, jade and porcelain artwork and statuary. Beyond that, the Imperial garden were another wonder.
The Forbidden City is surrounded by a large moat, a man-made river that connects the Forbidden City with the Summer Palace outside the city. 
Moat surrounding Forbidden City
After yet another amazing meal where a dozen dishes rotated on a lazy Susan, we went to the Peking Opera, a centuries-old, stylized art form that features elaborate costumes, heavily made-up faces, high-pitched voices, and traditional Chinese instruments. The highlight of the show was the elaborately choreographed pole kicking number in which five performers tossed and kicked a dozen poles between them. [Videos to follow when YouTube is accessible.]
Summer Palace and Hutong area
Our first stop was at a state pearl showroom. Sinorama can afford to offer such reasonably priced trips because they are subsidized by the state for stopping at the state showrooms where, of course, people spend money. We learned that 90% of the freshwater pearls in the world are produced in China, mostly in Beijing. One of the two lakes that produces the pearls is in the Summer Palace. The freshwater pearls are produced by cutting an oyster into 20-30 tiny pieces and inserting the meat into another oyster shell where they will be covered over by the pearl lacquer to produce 20-30 pearls of various colors.
freshwater pearl
Pearls are associated with the Summer Palace because the Dragon Lady favored pearls. She was buried with a fist-sized pearl in her mouth in a coffin filled with pearls. Her tomb was raided during the Kuomitang and the large pearl and jade pillow were given to Chang Kai Check, and today are in a museum in Taiwan.
The Dragon Lady, Empress Cixi
The Summer Palace (constructed in 1600’s but added to and rebuilt many times) is four times the size of the Forbidden City. It is associated with the Dragon Lady (Cixi). She controlled power for 57 years through the reign of three emperors.
She began as a concubine of the emperor Xia Fing, and attracted his attention through clever collaboration with the head eunic. She rose to power because she bore a male child and the empress was childless. When the emperor died at 31, hers was the only male heir, and she became the power behind the throne. Because she controlled the dragon seal, she had power. She controlled everything and married her son to her niece and had the woman he loved murdered. As a result, the son hated his mother and preferred the empress. The Dragon Lady had the empress murdered as well. When her son died at 19 of syphilis, she picked a nephew as the next emperor. In 1898, the Reform Movement recommended westernizing the country, but because that would mean less power for the Dragon Lady, she ordered the execution of the officials who recommended the reforms, and placed the emperor under house arrest in the Summer Palace, where he died two years later without an heir. The last emperor (also appointed by her) was the nephew of the old emperor.
painting of Summer Palace
The Dragon Lady spent exorbitant sums on the construction of the Summer Palace. While the people were starving, she had 108 dishes for every meal, some only for the scent and some only for the appearance. Cixi, The Dowager Empress’s living quarters, the Hall of Happiness, was built in 1750 and rebuilt after the Summer Palace in 1886 after Anglo-French burned it.
The emperor’s quarters
Cixi’s quarters
The Long Corridor, also built in 1750 and rebuilt in 1886, is 728 meeters long and has 8,000 paintings on the beams and ceiling. 
island in smog
A man-made lake covers two-thirds of the Summer Palace grounds. The dirt excavated to make the lake was used to create a mountain on which sits a Buddhist temple.
We had lunch at a family’s home in the Hutong area. Hutong is Mongolian for narrow way, and the streets are indeed narrow.
We took rickshaws to get there.
It is one of the more expensive areas of Beijing, Houses cost $35,000 per square meter (a little over a square yard). Not only that, but twenty families share one toilet at the end of the street.
Back lake area of Hutong
Courtyards
our hosts for lunch
Scooters on street
Entrance to old Opium Street
After lunch we had a brief photo stop at the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube, where Michael Phelps won eight gold medals in 2008. For the first time. the smog was so bad that photos were difficult.
Water Cube and Birds Nest in smog
Then we were off to the airport for a two hour flight to Xian, arriving at our hotel around 11:30 pm.
Terra-cotta Warriors, Tang Dynasty show
Xian is one of the oldest cities in China and is surrounded by nine miles of city wall.
City walls
The silk road began in Xian and went through Iran, Afghanistan, and Turkey, all the way to the eastern Mediterranean and Italy.
Terra-cotta Warriors
In 1974, farmers digging a well found the terra-cotta head, and archeologists began to excavate the site. What was once farmland is now a huge city and is one of the primary tourist destinations in China. Between the Xian and Litong (where the warrior museum is located), huge fifteen-story blocks of apartment complexes are being built.
ghost cities
Most are not yet occupied and are called ghost cities because there is no infrastructure, no schools or subway nearby. The apartment blocks may be as numerous as the terra-cotta warriors.
Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor who unified the seven kingdoms, ordered the construction of the terra-cotta warrior army in 221 BC, eleven years before he died. Eight thousand warriors with their weapons, horses and carriages were built in eleven years although the tomb, which covers 565 sq. kilometers, twice the size of Macao, was begun when he was thirteen. Qin, known as the first emperor, standardized Chinese characters, currency, measurements, and laws. Before Qin, when an emperor died, his entire court would be killed with him in order to serve him in the afterlife, often between one hundred and two hundred people. According to our guide, the 720,000 slaves who worked on the tomb were all buried when the tomb was completed.
Each of the terra-cotta warriors is unique, with different facial features. They were coated with lacquer, which was very expensive, and then painted in bright colors. Unfortunately because of the lacquer, the color disintegrates very quickly when exposed to air. The terra-cotta soldiers are about a mile away from Qin’s actual tomb, which has not yet been opened because it is the size of a city and a new museum would be needed to cover it and because high levels of mercury have been found in the soil. The mercury was mined in the surrounding mountains and used to fill rivers that represent the waters of the earth.
The terra-cotta museum sight is remarkably well-developed.
Pit 1 is the largest, holding the bulk of the army.
The warriors are arranged in rows with earthen walls between them supporting the beamed ceiling, which was covered with mats and dirt. The entrances were sealed until after the emperor’s death in 210 BC, a revolt happened. The army that revolted against the emperor’s son broke in, stole the weapons, broke the warriors, and burned the complex.
Pit 2 is smaller and houses the archers and cavalry. It also displays several excellent examples of the warriors. The kneeling archer was the only soldier to be discovered intact. Bits of the original color can be seen on the back of the armor, as well as the detail on the bottom of the sandal.
Pit 3 is the headquarters of the army with high-ranking officials and generals.
reproductions of bronze chariots
A separate museum houses the two half-sized bronze chariots discovered nearer to the emperor’s tomb. Further excavation of the warriors has been halted until a method of preserving the original colors is developed. There is speculation that similar sized armies might be found on the other three sides of the tomb.
On our way back to Xian, we saw trees covered with persimmons and pomegranates and lots of vendors selling both fruits.
tangles of electric wires
That night we were treated to a dumpling banquet and had the chance to sample 16 different types of dumplings, most shaped like what was inside the dumpling.
The dumpling banquet was followed by a Tang Dynasty show, quite the extravaganza of dancing, elaborate costumes and music from the Tang Dynasty period from the 7th century AD.
musical instruments
Jade factory, flight to Wuhan
Today was a transit day, but we stopped at the Jade factory before going to the airport (another government showroom). We learned about the different qualities of jade. The highest quality is Jadeite, which is the hardest and most transparent jade and is generally mined in the rivers. The most prized colors are pale apple and lavender. Nephrite is a softer, less transparent jade, generally the green color we associate with jade, and is mined in the mountains near Xian.
jade Buddha
We flew to Wuhan in under two hours. Wuhan is a city of ten million people and is growing by one million people a year, so like in Xian, new apartment buildings are everywhere.
skyline of apartments
Once again our dinner was quite good, with many spicier dishes than we had in Beijing. As always hot tea and beer or soda is included in the meal. Our hotel is, like the others, unbelievably luxurious.
Our guide told us that there was a park next to the hotel where there is dancing, and we were glad we ventured out. The sidewalk beside the park was decorated with a dozen elaborate chrysanthemum flower displays lit up with twinkling lights.
display with instruments
geese
bonsai chrysanthemum
In the paved park beside a small lake, kids roller-skated and drove little wheeled carts while perhaps thirty women performed group exercise dances somewhere between tai-chi and aerobic ballet. It was a lovely scene and gave us a very different feel for the city. A pedestrian walk circled the lake with upscale restaurants and bars facing the water–quite a lively scene.
our hotel
Yangtze Cruise, Water Village, Three Gorges Dam Project
We signed up for the optional Water Village excursion (298 yuen or about $45) that highlights the culture of the Tujia minority, and were happy we did. Located in the middle of Xiling Gorge, the tour involved several hours of walking along a new walkway (created in the old style) to accommodate tourists, and although it was crowded in places, the scenery was gorgeous.
Each group was led by a local guide dressed in Tujia ethnic costume. We saw 300 year old statues along the path.
depiction of trackers pulling boat
We also saw wild monkeys, 
listened to Tujia flute music and a love songs sung between a man and a woman across the blue-green Dragon River, and saw a reenactment of a Tujia wedding ceremony.
Reenactment of wedding ceremony
fishing nets
That afternoon we walked through a local market (nicknamed ‘maybe later’ market because that was what all the vendors called after us). 
We boarded buses to visit the Three Gorges Dam project. Three Gorges Dam is the largest hydroelectric facility in the world, costing almost 25 billion American to construct. It produces about .3% of China’s electricity. The primary purpose of the damn was flood control, the secondary was to improve navigation, and the third was power production. It is a mammoth construction project, begun in 1993 and completed in 2012. The dam raised the water level over 100 meters or 300 feet and necessitated the relocation of millions of people.
Three Gorges Project
That night we had a captain’s welcome party with Chinese champagne (like sweet Cold Duck) and dancing. That was the only night we were asked to dress up. At 8:30, we passed through the first of five locks that raised us 130 meters in four hours. Boats were squeezed side by side, and the opening of the locks is accompanied by loud screeching noise.
entering first lock