Chinese New Year 2011 Celebration

We began the Chinese New Year celebration early this year by having some friends over on January 29th. Since none of us were overly traditional, we celebrated with an assortment of non-traditional food like pork stew, baked salmon marinated with miso sauce and shrimp with lobster sauce. But we did pass out red packets for the kids and I made some stuffed bunnies to give out, in honour of the Year of the Bunny Rabbit.

The next day, we visited my mom and we brought her some Chinese candies and mandarin oranges. I also prepared some coconut red bean pudding (molded like flowers) and baked her some bunny butter cookies filled with red bean paste.

Later in the week, we visited my in-laws and as usual, my mother-in-law treated us to a huge home-cooked meal. The meal was very traditional and included a fish served up whole (symbolizes prosperity), a soup consisting of dried bean curd (happiness), rice noodles (long life) and black moss seaweed (wealth) and many many other delicious dishes.

For the remainder of the week, we made some steamed turnip cake (lo bok goh), pigs tail stew and some mochi ice cream balls. None of these dishes are really traditional Chinese New Year food but we were just in the mood to try something a little different, but still has Asian roots.

I sewed these 2 bunnies to give away to the Nakamoto girls.

This bunny is posing in a clay pot which can be transformed into a carrot. I will do a separate post on "Transformer Toys for Girls" on another day.


Butter cookies for the Year of the Bunny. (Those darn turtles keep popping up every time we bake cookies).


The Bunny cookies were filled with red bean paste for that asian touch.

Coconut red bean pudding flowers

Some goodies we received from my in-laws. Red packets, tangerine oranges (luck & wealth), deep-fried coconut-filled dumplings (wealth), roasted pumpkin seeds, egg with black vinegar soup (fertility) and sweet dough soup (wealth & prosperity).

Mochi ice cream balls failed. Didn't form them fast enough. The ice cream started to melt and leak out.

This was the best looking one. Ugly but they tasted really good.

The ingredients I used for a steamed turnip cake.

Freshly steamed turnip cake

They tasted even better the next day, after they were fried up.

Defrosting some pigs tail and pork bones for a yummy stew

These are the dried ingredients that went into the stew

The dried ingredients are soaking.

Mmmmm.... pigs tail stew.