Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Steamboat!!

As usual, every 2nd day of the Chinese New Year, we will have steamboat....
Look at the amount of food.....fishballs, fish, meatballs, prawns, sausages, beancurd, vege...whatever you name, we have it....
Well....just the amount to fit a huge number of people....
*Granny has 7 daughters...hahaha....*
Enjoy feasting your eyes:)


The art of peeling the quail eggs:)
Guess whose hands are these:p
End product...bravo Daddy and Uncle:)



Close it to cook....
Look at the food...
COOKED....ready for eating!!
EVERYBODY, EAT!:D

2nd Day of Chinese New Year - Welcoming the New Year

The 2nd Day of Chinese New Year is known as the welcoming of the New Year; in Cantonese - Hoi Nin.
It is the day where married daughters return to their families and celebrate together. As such, this is usually the start of the New Year.
Granny hails from Cantonese clan as well and she observes traditions and superstitions related to the festive occasion.
Following her tradition and being the devoted religious person, granny typically makes a lot of preparations to pay respects to the deities and gods before commencing with our meal.
So, no....all these are not for us to eat......it is to worship the deities:)
And this will be for the lion dance....or rather, the auspicious lion to bless and roar in the New year!!!

Don't my Ah Ma look like the Sang Choy too?:p Lighting the joss sticks to begin the ceremony...

Vegetarian on First Day of CNY

No food photos for the first day of CNY; usually Mummy and Granny will observe the first day as a day of solemnity and will be vegetarians:)
So we also followed them and went to vegetarian restaurants....somehow, I also forgot to take pics of the food:p
Stay tune to the 2nd Day :)

Chinese New Year Reunion Dinner

After an 8-hours journey through the rain, my family was finally here!!! Safe and sound; thanks to God for blessing them throughout the journey:)
We went over to granny's place for a late reunion dinner....and after greeting and unloading the luggages, we had our dinner at about 9pm; and poor Mummy, Daddy and bro....they were hungry and cold...but we felt warm to meet each other!!! :)
And reunion dinner was even warmer with the heat dissipated from the boiling steamboat....hehehe!!!
Yeayyy....time to dig in with my beloved family :D
Look at the food; there were more actually; but everyone was already busy eating and I had to join in...as Dad always says, "A family that eats together STAYS together"
So...eat!
Additional dishes; Stir fried cabbage by 4th Aunt and also roasted duck

Lunch in Cottage

It's Chinese New Year Eve.....instead of having the conventional Chinese cuisine for lunch, I went for Western instead.
Guess why?
It's also due to the festive season; most Chinese restaurants are closed already by the Eve of New Year and those that remain open; they are charging exorbitant prices for the normal food you have. Simply because it's Chinese New year season....blueks:p
Went to the Little Cottage where I had my farewell 1:1 lunch with Jaycee the other day before her last day.
She recommended me to this place for set lunches at reasonable prices. I only know about this place for dinners; they serve pretty good fish sets at reasonable prices:)
Again, I didn't order the set; FoodBuddy did; and we both went for the 19.90 set; I opted for the Dory fish fillet with Oregano sauce and recommended the Little Cottage's special sauce to FoodBuddy:)
Mushroom soup for starters
Think it's just normal out of the Campbell soup can:P
FoodBuddy mentioned it was rather bland and diluted already:P
Not forgetting the bun and butter
The Fish fillet cooked in Little Cottage's special sauce....
Basically just tomato sauce....but not bad:)
Mine; the Oregano sauce
It was actually just normal black pepper sauce...why such a fancy name ya?:p
And since I was gloomy that day (since my parents have yet to arrive), FoodBuddy ordered the Special Fruit Cocktail which costed RM4.90.
Quite worthy; since this is a size of a Banana Split bowl and there were generous servings of peaches in syrup, papaya, pineapples and even longans....there's a little red cherry on top:)
And Honeybee Pooh is just right beside me:)
What more can I ask? :D
Yes, just for my parents to arrive as soon as possible for a reunion *prays*

Dim sum on Chinese New Year Eve

Yeah, since I was stranded on this island waiting for my parents to come for the festive season, I woke up early to prepare myself and ready for my breakfast.
Decided to try out a new place the other day; this was near the road leading to the Padang Brown; after the 8th Row carpark.
It is a newly opened place (and as I have heard, only began its operations during the Chinese New Year:)
It was already packed though we reached there early; like about 6.30a.m.
We had to help ourselves to the array of dim sum baskets stacked on top of each other a the main counter.
The following were what we took; they had a pretty wide variety of seafood items as well; and I should say in terms of the food taste; it is a combination of all my favourite dim sum places in Penang:) - Ji Deshi(Sg Ara), Leong Kee, and also Tai Thong :)
Fish balls; of course (never missed in trying out most dim sum places:p )
Hmmmm....this is definitely disappointing; bland and tasteless....think there's more flour than fish:p
This is something like what we had in Leong Kee; shrimp dumplings with vege...
Okay; not bad as well but Leong Kee's was still better:p
Prawn dumplings wrapped with vege-like wrapping (it's greenish...)
Okay only; not too good and nothing special:p
This was the shrimp dumpling and those were the long sliced carrot strips wrapped together.
Not properly wrapped though; the dumpling crumbled when you snap it with your chopsticks:S
Lastly, the har mai (shrimp dumpling)...which was a little like Leong Kee's xiao long pau-styled shrimp dumplings....with that little green pea on top of it:)
All our dim sum....
And note; the uniform of the workers here were pretty unique....bright green with linings of bright orange...ain't that striking?
Hehehe.....nice colours:)
One thing though, that I just recalled; the uniform may be nice but the service was definitely not up to the standard as they were not attentive. We raised our hands to ask for the bill but they pretended not to heed us. Then we were told to pay at the counter....but to me, even if customers were supposed to pay at the counter, you could at least be gracious or courteous to point that out to the customers and not leave them waving their arms like madmen in the air....
Still long way to learn....