Wow....what an amazing list of people.... too many of them no longer with us or active here. It is nice to remember some of their names and their struggles that we shared. Thanks for the memories.

It will be difficult to find a cooking class for dim sum. I also don't think it is really necessary. The prep and cooking for most dim sum is simple. The wrapping, pleating, etc takes practice and there is no substitute. I suggest you pick one dim sum dish, look up a recipe in a dim sum cookbook, online, or video, and just try it. Again and again. I am less familiar with East Indian curries but have made various curry dishes. Cooking classes might be more available for this cuisine. But making curries is quite easy, there isn't difficult technique required. Pick up a good cookbook - the Julie Sahni cookbook is one. The ingredients may take some looking, depending on where you live. I'll give you an example. Suppose you want to make xiao long bao (soup dumplings). - Take 1 lb ground pork and 2 lb pork bones/feet, add 1/2 tbsp each of ginger, garlic, scallion, and some salt, pepper. Simmer this in water for several hours to make a broth. You only need a couple cups of broth, but it has to be fairly concentrated and very flavorful. So you might start with 2 qt of water and slow boil, uncovered, until it reduces to 2-3 cups. Discard all the solids, keep the broth. Stir in a couple packets of unflavored gelatin powder. Refrigerate overnight. - The next day, make a simple dough from flour and a little water, knead it, roll it into a cylinder about 1" diameter, cut off 1/2" sections, flatten and roll those into round disks (skin) about 3" diameter and about 1/8" thin. You'll want about 20 of these skins, cover the stack with a cloth. - Remove the jelled broth from the refrigerator, spoon about 1 tbsp of the broth onto the center of a skin. Include some of the fat cap. Paint the edge of the skin with beaten egg. Gather the edges of the skin together at the top, folded/pleated, then pinch and twist to seal. Keep your finished dumplings on a plate or tray, under a towel, as you work. Keep the first ones in the refrigerator if it is taking you a long time to make the rest, as you don't want the jelled broth to melt. - Set your steamer over a pot of boiling water. Lay some lettuce leaves on the steamer to prevent the dumplings from sticking. Steam the dumplings, without overcrowding the steamer, for about 10 min. Carefully remove to a dish and eat right away. It isn't hard to make these. Here are the xiao long bao that my son made, on his first try. It is hard to make these perfectly or very fast, but we don't need to. Remember there are many variations and refinements. Don't get hung up on finding the definitive recipe. Also note that dim sum restaurants use considerable salt, lard, MSG, etc as shortcuts to flavor and juicy texture. To make equally tasty but healthy versions, we have to really concentrate our broth, use gelatin to replace lard, etc. Some like pork/shrimp filling in their xiao long bao, others like just soup. For filling, you'll combine 1/4 lb ground pork, 1/4 lb chopped shrimp, ginger, garlic, scallions, sesame oil, salt, pepper, a little soy sauce and black vinegar/Worchestershire sauce, and mix that with the broth before refrigerating it. Test a dumpling to determine steaming time necessary to cook the filling. Just try it. It'll be fun. The first results will be edible, if not pretty, and they will get better with practice.

Right now he's getting Purina Kitten food. But I would like to find a healthier food with less fillings in it. I know it's more expensive, but when there is less filling, they eat less so the food really isn't more money. It's better for their tummies too. I'm going to check out PetSmart for that. I know if you use the cheaper foods with all the fillers, cats stand a bigger chance of becoming diabetic. I told my husband also, to only give him a FEW treats a day, not a handful like he did with our other two cats. We have a rubber shoe mat that we used with our other cats to put under the litter box. But the litter still ends up all over the place. Silly cat likes to lay in his box. LOL I'll post pictures from my phone in a bit.

Oh Oly, we share the same type of grandson, both with kind souls and not interested in sports. He's 11 & still kisses me when no one's looking. :) Small town school but not too small. My two boys played baseball from Little League through high school. We only have baseball and basketball. DS1 has a boy and a girl, the girl is 9 and is the athlete in the family, she just finished basketball, and softball begins soon. She is fast as a whip, DGS is not. DGS has no interest in sports, he did two years of T-ball and although he was decent it wasn't his thing. But the kid is smart and inherited his dad's engineering brain, which they both got from my dad but it skipped me. lol DGS is winning blue ribbons (2 in February!) with things he's built out of Lego's, & he also gets to go to the Lego conferences out of town, which is through school. He's flourishing in Quiz Bowl and today he's one of the finalists in another town competing. His parents don't care that he's not in sports which makes me happy. IMO, kids with kind souls need to be nurtured, not pushed. KWIM? He still plays like a little boy, has lots of friends and they don't care if he plays sports or not. Oh, building friendships now is important. He's a great Kayacker which he learned at day camp in the summers, so I guess that's a sport. Even if our GS's did play sports it doesn't make them immune from bullying, or being a bad player, etc. The boy's self-esteem comes first. My gut tells me the boys probably do wish they could play but they know deep down they probably wouldn't be as good as the other boys. During basketball season for DGD she was a knockout on the court, getting all kinds of accolades from the family, and it worried me that her brother would never get the same attention. But he is, by the other things he does. He even got his two 1st plafce blue ribbon crafts in our local paper! Glory, he got some glory. One last thing, our grandsons are still young and maybe someday they'll want to play a school sport. It's never too late unless it's a huge school where you have to try out.