This year's Lunar New Year

This year is the year of dog. My mom's year, though we didn't do anything special, sorry mom (plus we're thousands of miles apart). I just know my mom was born in the year of dog. I was born in the year of tiger so it'll be a while before it gets to my year again. In my faint memory, I've enjoyed Lunar New Year as a kid. As the only child in my family, I got all the "red bags" (aka money bags!) from my family, from uncles, aunts, grandparents, and sometimes very close friends of my parents.

When I was little, the Lunar New Year's Eve usually consisted of us visiting my paternal grandparents in Hsinchu, Taiwan and all of my cousins and I would look forward to the night to sparkle up the neighborhood - fireworks! And food was always great - lots of yummy food, the cold-cut marinated meat and lots of braised meat, fish dishes, delicious fish or meat soup, and a number of yummy veggie dishes - think of the feast like the Asian version of Thanksgiving. After dinner, the adults often played mahjong while the children spent hours playing tag or games in the backyard. I remember this was also the only day "elders" did not get upset if children did not go to bed early - part of the tradition = everyone should stay awake until dawn. The story behind it is by staying awake, the family, together (whether this means by playing mahjong or other games or just chi-chat all night), can scare away the bad spirits and illnesses that may linger nearby at night time. So people can begin their first day of the new year without those bad spirits and illnesses. Another story I've heard is that when young adults stay awake until dawn on new year's, this brings luck and longevity for their parents. The first day of the new year = like a repeat of the day before (lots of food, lots of family time, family make greets/phone calls with neighbors/friends). The second day of the new year usually involved going to my maternal grandparents' place and again, lots of food and another collection of red bags happened there. So that's what my childhood with Lunar New Year has been like. At least for the first 13 Lunar New Years I've had. It's completely different now.

Since I moved to the states, I sometimes stayed awake on Lunar New Year's Eve but only because I was binge-watching something 😜. No more fireworks, no more red bags (although mom said some relatives still prepared the red bags for me and my mom would accept them on my behalf since I'm not there). No more yummy homemade food from grannies around new year's because I'm too far away. So, what can one do when one knows her relatives (including parents and pretty much anyone she shares blood with) are enjoying rounds and rounds of delicious meals without her? Make my own food! For every year of the last several years, hubby and I have either mad-cooked for the Lunar New Year or made only a dish or two for potluck (happened only back in Utah, hopefully we can pick up the Lunar New Year potluck trend again in Colorado).

Here's what we made for this year's Lunar New Year.

Together, we consumed 7 dishes (took 3 rounds), and of course some white rice. The 7 dishes were (from top to down and left to right in the picture above): fish cake stir fry with broccoli (魚板炒花椰), baked buttery Chinese napa (焗烤奶油白菜), pan fried Chinese sausage with sprinkled white sesame seeds (乾煎香腸), spicy rice noodles with ground pork (螞蟻上樹-this actually direct translates into "ants on a tree" because tiny bits of ground pork looked like ants crawling on threads of the rice noodles which also looked like thin twigs to whoever named this dish hundreds of years ago if not thousands, but no, no ants involved), baked lobster tails with pesto (青醬烤龍蝦), sweet and sour tilapia fillets (糖醋魚片), and fried shrimps with pineapples (鳳梨蝦球). Some of the names for these dishes are made up by us, some are legit dish names back at home 😋. Of course, Lulu the Queen's servant (her Majesty Beibei's servant, that is) likes to observe all things when movements are made in the kitchen. She tried to steal pieces of the Chinese sausage ever since they were put on the table (bought from the Chinatown Market in SLC, yep, I brought it to CO with me) and hubby was on watch for the whole evening to prevent her from doing that.

To us, we don't celebrate Lunar New Year like our ancestors have done. We certainly don't have easy access to many of the traditional ingredients needed to make traditional dishes. We take the new year as an excuse opportunity to cook a lot, be creative, and eat like we're on Round One for Thanksgiving (Round Two would happen in November, you know, on actual Thanksgiving Day).
Hope everyone is having a good start on the dog year!