Monday, February 3, 2014

Chinese New Year 2014

Went to my brother's house on 2nd day of Chinese New Year to celebrate chinese new year with my siblings and family. But firstly, the most important is to pray and make offerings to remember our late parents during Chinese New Year.

As my brother (being the only son)is taoist, he need to make food offerings to my late parents.

After prayers, it was our turn to eat. All siblings help prepare the numerous food either by cooking or purchasing.

Beside the normal home cooked food, we had japanese sushi too.

Pizza was favourite with the kids.

Highlight of the lunch was the yusheng or prosperity Toss, also known as lo hei (Cantonese for 撈起 or 捞起) is a Teochew-style raw fish salad. It usually consists of strips of raw fish (most commonly salmon), mixed with shredded vegetables and a variety of sauces and condiments, among other ingredients. Yusheng literally means "raw fish" but since "fish (鱼)" is commonly conflated with its homophone "abundance (余)", Yúshēng (鱼生) is interpreted as a homophone for Yúshēng (余升) meaning an increase in abundance. Therefore, yusheng is considered a symbol of abundance, prosperity and vigor. You can read more about the history and origin of yusheng from wikipedia.

Dessert for the day is this mango pudding in the shape of a Koi Fish made by me.

Friday, January 31, 2014

Chinese New Year 2014 - Reunion Dinner

Last night, being the eve of Chinese New Year, the family have to gather together to have reunion dinner to celebrate the new year of the Chinese Calender.

Decorate the dinnerware with DBS Bank's ang pow with female ang pow (red packet) for myself and the male ang pow for the three guys in the house. The ang pows looked lovely as decoration.

We had steamboat dinner. Steamboat is not really a boat is actually like a hot pot, over here we refer the hot pot as steamboat.

The photo looked strange hahaha, the plate nearer to me looked bigger than the rest of the plate and the plate even looked bigger than the steam boat. The ingredients for the steamboat are instant noodle, glass noodle, raw eggs, wongbok vegetables, prawns, assorted yong tau fu, meat balls, cocktail sausages,button mushroom, bacon, prawns,cuttlefish ball,quail eggs, salmon fish, cod fish,pig's liver. Fried some chicken wings too.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Happy Chinese New Year 2014 - Year of the Wooden Horse

Here wishing all who celebrate a very Happy Chinese New Year. This year being the Year of the Wooden Horse and is the green horse. Those interested in reading fortunes can check this out from website.

It is for fun reading and I dont believe much in it cause there's so many millions of people born in the same zodiac so it does not represent each and everyone of them.

Bought some titbits for guests visiting but my two sons have been eating much of them hahahaha.

I did not buy much cookies, only baked some cookies. Every year I bought so many jars of cookies but guests are not eating much cause there's so much eating in each visiting that everyone afraid of eating more cookies lol.

Getting angpows ready for distribution to family,relatives and friends. Different designs of ang pows represent different amount of money contained inside so that I wont get mixed up and giving the wrong ang pows.

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Chinese New Year 2014 - Ang Pows (Red Packets)

Every year without fail I went to collect some ang pows or red packets from the various banks. We need these ang pows to put gifts of money. These angpows are then given during Chinese New Year to unmarried family members and friends and our elderly relatives and parents.

The reason to have different ang pows is to differentiate the angpows because value of the angpow is different. The closer the relations the higher the value of the gift money.

The above photo are angpows from POSB Bank, they comes with stickers to seal the ang pows.

The above ang pow is from DBS Bank that comes with stickers too.

Ang pows from left to right are from United Overseas Bank, May Bank and Standard Chartered Bank. Love the colour of red ang pows.

The above angpows are given when we dine or purchase from the respective shops.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Chinatown Chinese New Year Celebrations 2014 Street Light-Up Ceremony - Part 4 - Writting Chinese New Year Couplets

Saw a stallholder writting Chinese New Year Couplets for his customer. It is traditional to hang couplets during Chinese New Year.

They usually contain words of good wishes and greetings.

Short video of his works.