It was nice to get everyone together again even for a short time. John and Sheena came down from Toowoomba on Saturday and James and Dora flew up from Sydney on Friday so that we could all spend the eve together. Barbara didn't have to travel very far to join mum and Alison at our place.
Mum has been making good use of the local asian stores to buy bits and pieces to add a touch of authenticity to our celebrations this year. If it were up to Alison and myself we'd just head off into China town for a quick nibble of something soaked in sweet and sour sauce to avoid all the prep work. Luckily for us mum was feeling inspired so we just helped where we could to get things ready and tried not to get in the way.
A few tid bits that we put out to snack on before dinner. Dried red dates, longans, pistachios, fortune cookies and sweets. It's amazing how every single bit of food included in the meal has a special significance to it. Something I should know really but hasn't quite sunk in. Maybe I could get a book on it somewhere...
Mum planned to prepared five dishes which turned into seven for starters before serving the steamboat. Here in the picture we have chicken covered in prawns, pickled jelly fish, fried dumplings, pork spare ribs, pickled veg and five spice meat rolls.
I wasn't allowed to take pictures of the food when people were sitting down *glares at Alison* so I didn't take any pictures of the actual steamboat. I did however manage to quickly snap a shot of the mushrooms before Dora and I devoured them.
Sheena brought some lychees and Barbara made some sweets for our dessert. By this point we we're struggling and passed on about three containers of meat that we failed to finish. At least we'll have lots of left overs for the next few days. :)
Glad that we all managed to squeeze around the table without too much discomfort. Everyone wore bits of red for good luck so let's hope that this year will be even better than the last.
2 comments:
always a good place to start....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_new_year
which then leads to....
http://www.educ.uvic.ca/faculty/mroth/438/CHINA/traditional_foods.html
btw just got Flickr Pro :-)
Sweet. Thanks for the links.
About time you upgraded to a Pro account. Better put more pictures of your food and Comic Life projects for everyone to see. :)
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