 Day 33: Chinese New Year |
The Chinese New Year dinner (on the eve of February 3rd) is like the Christmas or Thanksgiving of holidays for Chinese. I celebrated that tonight with my boyfriend’s family because his dad’s half are of Chinese origin (but grew up in Malaysia).
If I had to sum up the evening quickly, I’d mention a LOT of good food and a lot of these little red packets:
Pretty aren’t they? And they just kept coming and coming and coming, which is good… because they are all full of MONEY! Ok, Chinese New Year, you just got even better.
Pat’s family is pretty huge, so we had 3 full tables of people and food enjoying the evening at The Oriental in North Sydney, a place that my boyfriend claims is the best Asian food in Sydney.
“Kung hei fat choy” is repeated over and over.
And we ate so much food! We ended the evening with some awesome little toffee apples which are actually brought out to the table hot and then dunked in ice water before being served. The toffee outside becomes crispy while the inside is soft, warm and mushy. Yum.
Where would the night be without a classic little fortune cookie? You have to choose your own, or else your fortune won’t be right. This is mine:
I like, especially the spelling errors.
All in all, good evening, and I’m looking forward to more in the future.
I used to love Chinese New Year (my family is Chinese) for the red envelopes. But now that I”m married, it’s my turn to give them out — and it’s not as much fun as receiving them for sure, lol.
Haha, yeah some of Pat’s cousins were handing out packets since they are of the married with child age. They didn’t seem to be having nearly as much fun
Jill, I haven’t lived in Indonesia since we got married, so I never paid my obligation to give out the angpao
Wow, sounds really yummy! And I love your picture today, you can tell everyone is having a good time.
Indeed! It was yummy — at least all the dishes that didn’t have seafood or mushrooms in it
His grandmother went out of his way to make sure I had something I enjoyed.
You have much more Chinese New Year than I do this year! My family back home is celebrating it, and we have snow storm here in Toronto. My favourite parts of the parties we usually have back home are 2: the angpao (red envelope with money), and durian (that sock-smelling fruit, as we all love durian so we usually have it)
Durian is the worst!!!!! How can you eat it?
We live in a very diverse world, but the new year coming in February is so different for me. Sounds like a pretty good celebration event and that dessert makes me hungry.