Today is the Lunar New Year, celebrated by many Asians around the world, including, Chinese, Vietnamese (they call it Tet), Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand etc. It is also the start of the year of the Rabbit. If you're born after January/February in 1951, 1963, 1975, 1987, 1999, 2011, it's your year in 2023!!
New Year's Eve
Yesterday, hubby and I had our new years eve dinner at home by ourselves, nothing too extravagant as we're not good cooks. One thing that we made sure we had is tong yuan. These are glutinous rice balls and are filled with different types of fillings, such as black sesame, peanut paste or red bean paste. My favorite filling is red bean paste. You cook these in a sweet soup and have it as a dessert. It's customary to have tong yuan on lunar new year's eve as tong yuan sounds the same as togetherness or reuniting.
New Year's Day
Like many other major cultural celebrations, the Lunar New Year is all about being together with your family. This year, we had a Lunar New Year gathering with my siblings. A lot of the younger generation was able to join us as new years day falls on Sunday. Our family gatherings are always big events, and this year there was nearly 20 of us.
Normally, families would put up some new year decorations, like flowers, or Chinese calligraphy writing couplets or posters, such as these I did from back in 2020. Can you guess what animal is in the two squares? It's the name of that animal for 2020 written like the animal itself.
This year I haven't prepared anything, so I cheated and printed some posters off the internet. I know, it's a bit meh, and even though it's only a few drawings, I think it still adds to the ambience.
Dinner was mainly made by my sister in law who started the preparations the day before. We were treated to tea time first with an assortment of Chinese pastries
My brother in law did a roast goose,it smelled so good when it came out from the oven.
And here's a table full of food for 20! It's nothing fancy, just hearty home cooked food to celebrate everyone being together at the turn on of the new year. You may have noticed the table was laid with knives and forks and not chopsticks. Not sure why that is. We only noticed when we sat down and it's was quite funny as even the few westerner other halves commented they forgot how to use knive and fork at my brother's, because everytime they come for dinner they're always treated to a proper Chinese meal complete with chopsticks. Anyway, nobody was bothered about that and we couldn't wait to tuck in immediately.
After dinner, there was more food to come - dessert. We had a sago pudding in coconut soup, a batch of freshly baked egg custard tart, a mango pudding shaped like a corn (yeah, random I know) and a sugar glutinous rice cake traditionally eaten at lunar new year called lin go. Lin is year in Cantonese, and go is a type of cake and also sounds the same as high. So having lin go at new year has an auspicious meaning to start the year on a high.
With so much food, needless to say everyone went away armed with takeaway boxes.
If you don't celebrate lunar new year, I hope you got a little insight into how it's celebrated. And if you're still in the midst of celebrating lunar new year, how was yours?
