Hello everyone and welcome to this edition of “Sara sees a really awesome place on channel 16 and goes there immediately because it has the word ‘crystal’ in the title of it”. Today’s episode is about a little place in Lakeville, Pennsylvania called “Crystal Cabin Fever”. Frozen sculptures as far as the eye could see? A giant ice slide? A full scale cabin made entirely of ice?  The story I saw on the news was just so compelling, I had to go see it for myself. Also, Larry wanted to try out his GPS.

When we got there, we found out that the entire exhibit was in a GIANT barn, and they could have very little lighting so the ice wouldn’t melt. That being said, my photos are very dark and of sub par quality because the lighting was just too poor, and it looked REALLY bad if you took it with a flash. … anyway.

It was ten bucks to get in, and they gave you free hot chocolate. That was pretty great, considering it was FREEZING in there. I regretted not wearing boots the minute I stepped into the door.

After we paid, we rounded the corner and were greeted with this site:

The woman inside of the above picture will give you some indication of the scale of this thing! The craftmanship and details were just amazing. I can’t fathom how long something like this would take!  Here is a detail of one of the logs that made up the cabin:

Outside of the cabin there was even an outhouse. This is not very practical!:

Here’s Larry, my boyfriend, sitting on the bed in the cabin. I sat on one of the chairs that was on the opposite wall and it was FREEZING!

Below is a detail of the ice that was just above the door. The light  was hitting it in such a way that it had all rainbow colors in it. I thought it was really striking and beautiful:

There were signs strewn about this place, and each and every one of them were carved into ice. I think they were either sponsors, or the people who actually carved each section, but I am unsure. Here is one:

In the middle of the room there was a stage with sculptures that looked like they had just been finished and were almost ready to be placed out or something. Here is an owl from that section:

Here is an ice angel, also from the stage that I mentioned above:

An ice moose was right behind the cabin. These were very dark because there was only a very small amount of light in this area:

In ET, his heart would glow. In Crystal Cabin Fever, the animals’ butts glow:

This swan was my favorite piece in the entire place. There is something about the smoothness. I know that a swan is really one of the most stereotypical ice figures you could find, but alas, it was beautiful:

After we finished looking at the ice sculptures, we went to the end of the barn to find something really quite “cool” …. lolz, bad pun… ugh. … Anyway, there was an ice slide. The whole thing was entirely made out of ice, and MAN was it fun. Here is a picture of the side of it:

I am really not that internet savvy, but I uploaded a video of the slide in action and placed it on youtube. The link is below. It also features me going down the slide. I apologize for my annoying voice and for the shaky camera work when I’m going down the slide with the camera in advance. Here’s the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaCjkE97jso

After we had gone down the slide a few times, it was time to get our free hot chocolate. We were very much surprised to see that the entire concession stand was ALSO MADE OF ICE!

After this, we traveled to Adventure Games. I seriously couldn’t feel my feet all night, but I am so glad that I went. I will go next year if they do it again, and this time I will remember to bring boots so I can go down the slide a million times instead of just two.

Hope you guys like the pictures. You should all go see this next year! Until next time!

Hey everyone! I made Taiyaki this weekend! For those of you who don’t know what the HECK that is… well… it’s a japanese pancake-like pastry that is shaped like a fish. I see it a lot in various anime, and I have always wanted to have it! It always looks so good, but then again, doesn’t all cartoon food. Heck, I used to want those chili dogs that Sonic the Hedgehog was always eating in that silly cartoon, and I DEFINITELY don’t like chili dogs!

Whenever I tell people “I made the fish pancakes this weekend”, they think “Ew… pancakes made out of fish”… but that’s not what they are at all! They are really just a kind of pancake batter filled with whatever your heart desires (please don’t fill them with liver though. That’s just gross) … We filled ours with red bean paste (which was surprisingly good), and chocolate which was AMAZING!

What you have to do is mix the pancake batter and then heat the little grill thing. The grill is basically this cast iron mold that makes the fish shape. You don’t have very much time to do what you need to do with these little fish cakes. Once the grill is heated, you spoon some batter in the bottom part of the fish. Then you fill the head with your desired filling, be it chocolate, bean paste or even vanilla cream! After this, you have a small amount of time to cover your filling with more of the batter. If you aren’t fast, the bottom part of the fish might burn!

Here is a picture of the bean paste. It looks TOTALLY unappetizing here, but i swear it was good.

After you do the steps above, you pretty much just have to turn the grill over one of the burners on your stove, and pray that the batter doesn’t stick to the top. I wrecked a few pastries because i was too hasty in opening the taiyaki grill.

Here is a picture of our first one. It’s a little bit burned on the top, but it tasted very good! This was one of the ones we filled with red bean paste.

The skewer is there to lift the fish out of the grill. They stick no matter what you do, and you really have to pry them out of there!

Here is Larry, waiting patiently and hoping that none of the batter got stuck to the top of the grill!

We started these at around 3:00 on saturday, and by 5:00 we had a pretty decent batch. We haven’t quite gotten it to a science yet, and some of them do still burn. Just last night we lost almost an entire batch because there wasn’t enough milk in the recipe!

Here is a pic of the finished taiyaki. The brown stuff on most of them is the chocolate oozing out. On the other ones it’s just burned pieces, because they are REALLY hard to cook.

I am absolutely the messiest cook in the entire world, and while cooking these, i wouldn’t have been surprised if I got some batter on the ceiling. I get the same reaction from everyone who sees them though. They’re like “What the heck are THOSE things?!” …

I’m so happy that I was able to get a grill and taste what taiyaki tastes like. It’s actually quite good, and next time I make them, I think I’m going to try vanilla cream inside of them! One of my friends who just recently returned from japan told me that some taiyaki in japan has a weird green tea batter that is used for the pancakes! I would love to try that!

Man, why am I so afraid to fly! I wanna go to Japan!

Anyway, until next time!