So now that Chinese New Year is over, my Chinese friends and I have been exchanging ideas about what we did for the kids’ classroom presentations for the New Year.  A friend told me a really cute idea, that I am definitely stealing for next year.  She got some of the calligraphy brushes, ink, and some rice paper at a local Pearl River in New York.  She demonstrated how to write a few simple Chinese words to 20 first graders!  I thought that was such a wonderful idea!

I learned the Chinese calligraphy when I was little, but I haven’t touched a Calligraphy brush for a very very long time.  I had pretty good hand writing too!  There is something really relaxing about holding a brush, and drawing these characters.  There are 2 types of ink you can use, inkstick, or pre-mixed bottle.  The pre-mixed bottles are the most convenient, but I really enjoyed using the inkstick.  The ink from the inkstick is made from lampblack (soot) and binders, and must be rubbed with water on an inkstone until the right consistency is achieved.  It takes a lot of patience to get the right consistency, but there’s something really soothing about it.

When the kids are a little bit older, I am definitely going to introduce this to them.

Lantern Festival – 元宵節 – Yuán xiāo jié

Lantern Festival or 元宵節 is celebrated on the 15th day of the first month in the lunar calendar. This is not to be confused with Moon Festival, which is celebrated on the 15th day of the eighth month in the lunar calendar. Traditioanlly, 元宵節 marks the end of the Chinese New Year celebration as it’s the first full moon of the new year. Once again, families gather together for one last time before returning to work and “normal” life. During the gathering, everyone is to enjoy some 湯圓, tāng yuán, made out of glutinous rice. As you have seen from our previous posts, Chinese people believe in symbolic food, the circular shape of the tang yuan reminds family members to stay together and be united. So don’t forget to eat your tang yuan on 2/28 this year!

For the first time, there is a DS games based on the popular kids show Ni Hao Kai-lan. Based on Nickelodeon’s educational entertainment television series for preschoolers and designed for the youngest of gamers, Ni Hao, Kai-lan: New Year’s Celebration is a collection of easy-to-play mini-games featuring six-year-old Kai-lan and her young animal friends, Rintoo the tiger, Tolee the koala, Hoho the monkey, and Grandpa YeYe.

The games, developed by 2KPlay, (given to us to try) involove gentle and engaging activities such as cooking Chinese dumpling, making almond cookies, and marching in parades. This game is designed with young gamers in mind, (3-5 years old), so it’s relatively easy for them to play independently. I only had to show my 4 year old once before he got the gist of the steps. In addition, the game also provides encouraging hints whenever help is needed. My 4 year old was so happy there is a game for him on the DS. He has already asked for one for himself!

While this game is designed for preschoolers, my 7 year old also enjoyed playing the game. It also provided him something common to share with his little brother. It was cute to watch the two of them huddled over the screen while coloring, and clicking through the shapes. According to them, their favorite activity was cooking dumplings as they both love to eat dumplings!

Many of you know I fly often with my boys to visit  families in California. I’m so looking forward to bringing this game with us on our next trip. Anything to contain 3 boys on a 6 hour flight is a lifesaver in my opinion! Oh yeah, it offers some Chinese culture  and words they can buff up with before seeing my parents!

Ni Hao Kai-lan: New Year’s Celebraion game is available at retailers nationwide including Toys R Us and Target.

Reunion Dinner – 團圓飯 – tuán yuán fan

This literally means “Reunion Rice”, it is the big dinner Chinese  people eat on New Year’s Eve.  It is considered one of the most important events for Chinese New Year.  It is translated as Reunion Meal, as all the family members would make a special effort to make this dinner, so that the family is once again united before the New Year.  It is a symbol of strength and unity of the family.

As mentioned from my previous post, I have a big family.  Even now that I am married, I still make a point to go back to my parent’s house for this dinner.  This becomes a juggling art, as we will also need to have dinner with my in-laws as well.  We will usually have an extra early dinner with my in-laws, then head to my parent’s house for a second meal,  and then a sleepover.  This is definitely the beauty and the difficulty of having all family members relatively close by.  I am sure this doesn’t sound all that unfamiliar with most of you, as Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners are probably handled in a similar manner.  It’s crazy, but it is all good time.

I am doing a presentation for two kindergarten classes next week for Chinese New Year.  I ended up making a Power Point slide with a lion dance movie embedded in it.  It’s very cool, if I must say so myself.  The school has smart boards so that I can just operate the power point presentation right on the big screen.  This is my first year with public school since my time, so I am easily excited.

Anyway, I found that I ended up talking about food a lot.  Just like most everything I write here, it always somehow goes back to eating and food.  I thought I’d share with you on some of the most popular symbolic food that we eat for our Reunion Dinner on New Year’s Eve.

1.  Scallops – because they look like ancient Chinese coins

2.  Whole Chicken – symbolizes happiness and marriages

3.  Whole Fish – because the Chinese word for fish (yu) sounds similar to the word “plenty”, and that you must not eat the whole fish so that you will have leftovers.

4.  Long Noodles – their length represents long life.

5.  Steamed Dumplings – because they look like the shape of traditional Chinese gold ingots.

6.  Nian Gao (Sweet Sticky Rice Cake) – because its pronunciation is a homophone for a “a more prosperous year”

Doesn’t this make your mouth water?  Happy New Year!

For centuries, Asian people have celebrated the New Year by gifting money to friends and family as a way to wish them peace and happiness for the coming year. While this money-giving tradition typically happens in person, a new free service from PayPal partner Lottay.com enables people physically separated by location to wish friends and family a Happy New Year with a virtual hong bao (red envelope) filled with real money and/or a personal message.

Here’s how it works:

1. Go to: http://www.lottay.com/lunar_new_year
2. Input the friend’s or family member’s name and email address.
3. Easily customize the hong bao with graphics, personal message and dollar amount (if desired).
4. Press ‘Send’ and the virtual hong bao will be delivered instantly via email to your loved one.

If a person is sending money with the hong bao, Lottay.com allows him/her to use their PayPal account to securely gift money to their friends and family. Once the monetary gift is sent, the recipient will be notified that they were given a cash gift along with their hong bao.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Growing up in Hong Kong, Chinese New Year means 2 weeks without school, lots of food, lots of visiting relatives, and new clothes.  It was my favorite holiday growing up, and it is still a very big holiday in my heart.  I try to pass on the tradition, and how fun Chinese New Year could be with the boys.  To make a point, when I was still working my 9-5 job (more like 7-5), I would always take a vacation day for Chinese New Year.  Hey, it is important, and I do feel that I need to set that example for the boys.

Anyway, I have such fond memories of the New Year.  My mom would start planning the meal a few weeks in advance.  I guess not that much different than planning Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner.  Our home would be cleaned from top to bottom.  In our tradition, the big cleaning should be done on the 28th of December (lunar calendar).  I always got so motivated that I definitely did my big share of cleaning.  It is believed that you should clean the house to sweep away all the bad luck before the New Year begins, so that it doesn’t carry on till the following year.

Then we would decorate our house by hanging red papers with good luck writings on them.  Remember the story of Nien from previous posting, this mythical monster was afraid of anything red.

We will then eat with our whole family on New Year’s eve.  I have 4 sisters, and 1 brother, so we always had to find space for this big dinner in our little Hong Kong apartment.  This dinner is called “reunion dinner”, or 团 圆 饭, tuan yuan fan.  It is a tradition that everyone should try VERY hard to make it to dinner.  Usually there are 8 or 9 dishes, which is another topic for another day, and usually consist of chicken, pork, fish, black moss, and some other shell fish.  We will then have to clean up and sweep again before midnight, otherwise my mom restricted anyone to sweep our house until the 3rd day of New Year.

Then on New Year’s day, our parents would give out red envelopes to us, and we will say our Happy New Year to them.  It is a tradition that only married couples give away red envelope to children.  I remember opening the red envelopes at the end of day to count the money I “made” everyday, and would do a total tally to see if I did well that year.

After New Year’s day, then we would travel to go see our relatives, or they would come over to our house to see us.  I have a very big family.  My dad is one of seven kids, and my mom is one of six, so we had lots of visiting to do.  We would bring candy or chocolate.  The tradition is that you need to bring something sweet, to wash away any bitterness from last year.

Oh boy, so busy and so much fun, and therefore Chinese people celebrate New Year for 15 days.

Noodles or Pasta, which came first?

If you ask the Chinese, most will say noodles were invented way before pasta, and the other would be true if you ask the Italian. The truth is, I don’t know. However, growing up, I was told that Marco Polo went to China around the 13th century, and saw Chinese people eating noodles with ground pork sauce, also known as 雜醬面 and fell in love with the dish. However, when Marco Polo returned to Italy, he forgot/lack all the necessary ingredients, so instead, used a tomato based sauce, and therefore created Spaghetti Bolognese.

Regardless of the history, I love both noodles and pasta. In fact, my kids often call long pasta (spaghetti, linguine, etc.) 面面 (mian mian) and the short pasta (fusilli, penne, etc) pasta. Anyway, the past couple weeks have been very busy in our household, and I know it’s only going to be busier in the coming weeks with all the holiday stuff. So, I’m going to share a pasta recipe my friend Marieanne taught me, it’s extremely simple and quick (30 min or less from start to finish), and it’s a gourmet meal my kids love!

Pasta Carbonara 

Ingredients:

1lb          Thin Spaghetti (I like Barilla)
1 T          Minced garlic (more if you like)
3 oz        Prosciutto or Pancetta, diced or sliced
2              Egg Yolk
1              Whole Egg
1C           Grated parmesan cheese
2 T          Fresh Italian parsley, chopped
3 T          Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper to taste

 Direction:

1. Cook Pasta according to package direction until al dente. (about 7-8 min)
2. Beat egg yolk and egg with a folk, mix in grated parmesan cheese until the mixture resemble a thick paste. Add salt and pepper.
3. Heat about 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil in a large sauté pan, add garlic, and prosciutto, about a min
4. Pour cooked and drained pasta into the sauté pan, toss lightly so the pasta is coated with the olive oil.
5. Transfer the Pasta into the egg mixture, toss quickly so that the egg doesn’t scramble. Season again with salt and pepper if needed. Add parsley and enjoy!

Over the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend, our friends Scott and Dawn hosted a Chinese Cooking Party. This following a weekend long of over eating, was truly a feast!

The theme for the cooking party is for everyone to bring a dish or two to demonstrate, so that we can all learn from each other to cook the various “famous” dishes. While most of us are Chinese, we all have very different backgrounds. Dawn is an ABC with Chinese/Malaysian background. Laurie and I are from Shanghai, and Dorothy is from Hong Kong. Mixed into the group is a Latina and an American Filipino from LA . Our husbands are even more diversed, with ancestors from across 4 different continents. The point of all this is that a Chinese Cooking Party can be for anyone. At the end of the day, it’s an opportunity for everyone to get together, and catch up with each other’s busy lives over some delicous food and drinks.

The same Chinese food, made by different people can have very different taste/texture, it’s all about the “secret” technique or ingredient one incorporates into the cooking method. So, having a live demostration allowed us to get to the bottom of things. In addition, we not only learn something new, we were also able to teach and share our food and heritage with our kids, the same way our moms showed us.

Our menu for the party:

1. Fried Egg Rolls (Beijing Style made with shreded carrots, and mung bean threads)

2. Pan Fried Seafood Pot Stickers (Cantonese Style)

3. Steamed Pot Stickers (Northern Chinese Style)

4. Scallion Pancake (Beijing Style) (recipe on our previous blog)

5. Stir fried rice cake (Shanghai Style)

6. Chicken Adobo (not Chinese, but very delicious)

7. Eight Treasured Rice with Red Bean Paste (Shanghai Style)

8. Baked Coconut Sticky Rice Cake (will post recipe soon) 

It was somewhat a coincidence we had 8 dishes all together, but hey, we are Chinese and luck is never a bad thing! So go aheaad and host a Cooking Party this holiday season!

Hot Pot – 火鍋 – huǒ guō

I had a very lovely dinner with my dearest friends this weekend at my house, and our meal of choice was hot pot.  This is one of my favorite meal growing up, and still is.  Hot pot is usually eaten in winter, so we were probably a little bit too early, but the food was very good.

Hot pot is like fondue for Chinese, minus the cheese.  There are many variations in terms of what types of food to serve, but in general, hot pot refers to a metal pot of stock simmering at the center of table while various ingredients are being cooked right at the table throughout the meal.  Then food is being scooped out when they are cook, and everyone serves themselves by dipping into their favorite sauce.  Typical ingredients include wonton, fish balls, meat balls, tofu, dumplings, noodles, vegetables, mushrooms, thinly sliced meat, and seafood.  Basically, it’s whatever you like to eat.

It’s actually a pretty long meal, as you put the raw ingredients in, you will have to wait for the food to cook.  This will then usually transform into some nice conversation.  As the best hot pot requires many different types of food, so you will usually invite a few families over to enjoy all the food.  This actually makes an awesome and easy party/gathering without too much preparation, since most ingredients don’t require much work except buying them from the Chinese grocery store.  So next time when you are planning to host a gathering, consider doing hot pot.  Oh and one last thing, beer and white wine go REALLY well with hot hot!  Enjoy!