恭喜发财!

Happy Lunar 牛 Year to one and all.

I know it's been a while. Thankfully for Firefox, otherwise i would have forgotten my password.

I never quite liked CNY except for the food. Back then as a kid, the whole novelty of helping my folks to pack ang baos/receiving ang baos was a big deal. Not until you've started working, then you realised, you could still do without the angbaos but definitely not the food.

I love CNY food. I never really had proper homecooked food except on special occasions. CNY being one of them. The closest thing to homecooked food to me is probably the typical B-grade chap cai peng at kopitiams.

To me, homecooked food is the real deal. The time and effort taken to prepare a feast is simply commendable. Each year, we gather at my maternal grandparent's place for reunion dinner/CNY lunch &/CNY dinner.

Reunion dinner is the usual steamboat. Did i mention that i love steam boats? This year was a disappointment because there wasn't fish dumplings. But i could still do with the fishcake tofu, fishballs, abalone etc etc. And there's something so special about my grandma's steamboat soup. I think it's the spoonful of fried garlic and shallots that make me want the soup more than anything else.

I've always wondered if everyone ate the same thing as my family on CNY. By that, i don't mean the typical love letters/pineapple tarts/hay beehiam. I mean proper food.

On CNY, my grandma always makes her 'to-die-for ngoh hiangs'. Literally! I could eat that for like...eternity and never get sick of it, unless my Na level decides to shoot up rocket high all the way to my brains. Besides the ngoh hiangs, there's always the chap cai with black fungus and mushrooms, stewed pork, steamed chicken and sometimes curry chicken. Oh there's also fishmaw, sea cucumber and pig's intestine soup aka ti tor soup (which i like because it's really peppery, but i don't eat inerts) I'll definitely choose all that to the usual bah kwa.

Speaking of bah kwa, my family didn't buy any this year. It could be because a) no one can be bothered to queue b) we stopped getting bah kwa for gifts c) it was too unhealthy. I'm proud to say that this CNY, i barely ate a piece of bah kwa. hooray for me. Then again, you might say, what is CNY without bah kwa. Please lor, you get bah kwa all year round, it's not like the shops open during the festive season.

My grandma takes pride in her dishes. She never believed in eating out because she thinks that the ingredients used are inferior. I always remembered her telling me not to eat wantons/sausages from hawker because they made of dog meat instead of chicken/pork. Yes, to that very extent. She often tells me that she chooses lean meat, or how she cleans the tau ki (for the ngoh hiang skin) over and over again. And how she scrubs the pig's intestine so that there won't be any smell (clean or not, i still don't eat them)

It also occurred to me that the older generation folks are like chelating agents. They help to bring all family members back to gather on CNY. What would we do without them??

CNY went by just like that. It was quite an ordinary day. I wish i made it special. Maybe next year i shall capture everything in pictures. But for now, i shall go count my ang baos, and focus on my 2 weeks long detox program by utilising the copius amount of fruits (mandarin oranges, mangoes, peaches) that i have in the refridgerator.