Making bread and dumplings

The other day we had some family over for the evening.  

Josh and I make bread for our family (saves some money and also gets rid of some of the stuff in store bought bread that I don't appreciate so much) and my niece, Lucy, really wanted to learn to make bread for herself (she and my nephew, Jimmy, come for piano lessons each week and LOOOVE it if they come on a day when we've just made bread because we sometimes send a loaf home with them).  

Anyway, so we decided on a swap.  

I made bread with Lucy(one loaf of regular and we also made one loaf of cinnamon bread), while my sister-in-law taught my family how to make Chinese dumplings.

Oh my gosh.  If you have never had these delectable little nuggets of Asian delight, you should totally get your very own sister-in-law raised in China and BEG her to make you some dumplings.  They are fabulous.

There was a lot more technique required for the dumplings than there is for bread, but that was half the fun.  You have to learn the right way to roll the dough, the right way to seal the edges and how to this and that and the other and it was really really fun.  Most of the kids got in on the action at some point and we just had a blast.

And that was the fun of our night.  It was wonderful to spend the evening with people we love, and made it even better that we got to chow down on delicious food while we enjoyed each other.

I really do have the best family.

(Are you hungry yet?)

(P.S. This is my favorite bread recipe.)

(I would totally give you the dumpling recipe, but I'm going to have to do it again and pay attention to the amounts because there was a lot of...."just throw some in" "keep adding some until" "sure, put that in if you want" so I don't really have an actual sort of recipe just yet.)