CNY - Year of the Dragon

Happy Chinese New Year! It's the Year of the Dragon this year - that's my year and also Charlie's!  Can't believe I'm going to be 48 years old this year.  And Charlie will be 12.  He's a Water Dragon and I'm a Fire Dragon (based on the 5 different elements within the Chinese Zodiac).  It's no wonder we butt heads so much!

Thankfully Charlie likes to make dumplings though.  He's a great helper!

Where as Graham only made like 3 dumplings.  Ha ha! At least he is still helping somewhat.  I guess that's all that matters at this point.

Good batch of dumplings!

I found out that a friend of Graham's is in the Chinese Immersion program at school and so we made extra and gave them some. I also finally found some black vinegar - to be mixed with soy sauce as the dipping sauce. Made such a huge difference!

I also made some pineapple cookies this year. Chinese New Year coincided with Valentine's Day this year, so I figured it was best to make some heart-shaped ones:

The round ones are still so much better somehow.  I guess there's just something about how the entire batter of butter & condense milk melting in your mouth, combined with the pineapple puree of course: 

I don't know how I ended up with so much pineapple puree this year.  I made a lot of cookies!

I haven't made Chinese Pancakes in ages and the dough was really fighting back! Graham did help me flip the pancakes:

Not too bad,... somewhat edible. I was so sore the next day though from all that dough kneading - arms and abs. Who knew! LOL!!

My sister bought this dice game for us.  If I were to literally translate it from Chinese, it would be "Prawn, Crab". 

Graham was the banker - yeah, it's gambling in some way.  We did use Monopoly money instead.  There's 6 different items on the board (or piece of paper in this case) -- a gourd, crab, fish, rooster, prawn, and a coin.  You put your money on a specific item and you get paid out accordingly to what shows up on the 3 dice:

It's all obviously a game of chance and luck.  You get paid double if you have 2 of a kind on the dice and triple if all 3 show items show up on the dice.  We used to play this game so much as kids and we would use our money that we received in our "ang pow" or red packets.  It can get pretty serious because if you're not careful, you can really lose all your money!

Chinese New Year was really quiet this year as we are not suppose to celebrate it due to the recent passing of my dad.  No dressing up in anything red, no ang pows to give the boys, no CNY decorations. I think everyone was just glad we were still able to eat dumplings though :-)