Happy Chinese New Year

It is the Year of the Rabbit!  This year's Chinese New Year really snuck up on me.  It was in February last year but since the new year is based on a lunar calendar, it always changes!  But thankfully in my wave of panic, I was able to find our Chinese decorations from last year.  Phew!!

My few plants that are doing well - here's our lucky Chinese bamboo:

With MLK Day being a holiday, we decided to head out to Chinatown for a quick visit:

Found the Nine Dragon Wall, which supposedly is a miniature version of the one that they have in China (at the Forbidden City). And this cute blow-up rabbit :-D

Yes, it is colder than I had expected today. And it's drizzly too!

Here is just a small section of Chinatown:

I believe this is the old section:

Love the intricate tile design on this wall and ceiling of this building!

We find a place for Dim Sum.  YUMMM!!

I'm glad Charlie is my foodie partner.  He likes most of the same things I like :-D

We decided to try out this place for some Japanese dessert.  They unfortunately didn't turn out like we thought they would :-/

And we thought these would be filled with chocolate, but instead a chocolate batter was used:

Nevertheless, a fun day at Chinatown! I was hoping to buy some more traditional Chinese clothing but they didn't really have much of a collection in any of the stores.  Perhaps we will have to go to the newer part of Chinatown.  Next time!

For Chinese New Year this year, I wanted to try and make some egg tarts.  First, trying to take the rings off my finger. I forgot to take them off the night before as most of the time, my knuckles are quite swollen the next morning. OUCH!

I bought some disposable egg tart trays:

Only using egg yolks and mixing it with evaporated milk and condensed milk. Took me 2 trips to find those ingredients!

Okay... looking pretty good:

I bought round cutters and this wooden thing to help flatten it in the mold:

Well, after all that effort - looks like my dough is not cooking all the way through.  Booo!!!

I guess it didn't help when the custard overflowed while baking.  Noooooo...!!

We ended up eating the custard off with a spoon. Can't waste all those eggs!  So far we haven't been impacted with the raising price of eggs.  Probably just a matter of time!

And while all this commotion is happening in the kitchen, I told the boys to clear up the dining room and living room. Okay, not too shabby :-D

And as for the next assignment, we have been invited to a friend's house to celebrate Chinese New Year.  I have been tasked to bring an appetizer.  I decided to make some egg rolls.  It's been a while, so here goes!

Instead of ground pork, I decided to use ground turkey.  We will be wrapping dumplings with ground pork later in the week, so I didn't want to overdo it. And since Graham doesn't like anything green, I also thought I'd try chopping some water chestnut and mixing that in - to give it that nice crunch.

And with a new air fryer from Christmas, why not try that too! But after cutting up into a few egg rolls after air-frying (I couldn't quite figure out at what temperature to cook them at and for how long), it came to my realization that the egg roll wrapper was not cooking all the way. Oh no!

This is getting pretty tedious!  I'm not going to deal with 2 failures in one day!  Thankfully, I had a half bottle of vegetable oil.  So into the hot oil the egg rolls go.  I guess there's nothing like frying food the traditional way:

I tried to oil-fry the previous ones that I had air-fried, but nope - that did NOT work! Thankfully I had just enough to bring to the party:

And I'm so happy to share that the egg rolls were a hit at the dinner party! Yay!!!  It was great meeting some new friends, all whom had lived overseas as well.  Lots of stories to share :-)

And looks like it's Dumpling Sunday!

Technically, on the very first day of Chinese New Year, we are suppose to have a vegetarian meal.  But that will not flow so well with Graham, so hope our ancestors are forgiving on this new generation. Ha ha!

And Graham decided to skew off the traditional way of wrapping and made a couple of ravioli-shaped dumplings. Hopefully my grandmother is not rolling over in her grave. Ha ha!!

Well, all in all, the boys are definitely getting better at wrapping dumplings:

I asked if they would continue the tradition when they get older, and there was some hesitation.  Hmmm, so I guess only time will tell!

Bobby loves to eat his dumplings with lots of garlic.  And he loves using this garlic grinder:

I guess I should have taken a photo of his portion of garlic, but here is my portion.  No kissing tonight! LOL!!

Happy Chinese New Year everyone!!

Graham and Charlie are still using chopstick trainers.  I hope they graduate to regular chopsticks eventually some day!

Another good batch of dumplings! 

And we didn't lose a single one in the pot this time. Yay!  Sometimes, when the boys are wrapping the dumplings, they are not sealing the dumplings properly - which means water is able to get into it/to the meat. And when that happens, the dumpling pretty much disintegrates while being boiled.

Time to wish Mommy and Daddy "Gong Xi Fa Cai":

The boys are always happy to receive these ang pow/red packets.  Obviously, because they are filled with money:

Charlie is already talking about buying different baits and hoping to still go fishing in this cold weather.  Brrrr...!!

By the way, I didn't have the heart to throw out all those egg rolls that didn't work out.  So I peeled them all off and save the meat:

It made for a good mix for fried rice yesterday! :-D

One of these days, I'm going to figure out that egg tart!!!I attempted to make a 2nd batch of egg tarts since I had some leftover dough.  And nope, still a big failure!!

I even tried using a muffin tin.  It did seem that the dough was browning and cooking a bit more.  At this point, I'm guessing it's the dough recipe??!

This past week, while shopping in a Japanese supermarket, I noticed that there were lots of restaurants inside.  So we decided to check that out this past weekend.  We are definitely getting our fix of Asian food this week:

There was a really long line at one of the Japanese noodle restaurants, so we'll just have to try that next time.  I did buy some noodles for our own home meal, so probably try and do that this weekend. Long noodles for long life, as they say in Chinese :-)

May the Year of the Rabbit bring prosperity, good health, and fortune to all!!