Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope everyone is enjoying a lovely holiday season with their families. Please stay safe and eat lots of good food! Here’s a snapshot of the Christmas Eve dinner that my mommy cooked. She has some cuh-raaaazy culinary skills, so I am very very lucky.

Shrimp!

Meatballs and young soybeans and wood ear

This is meatballs with young green soybeans and wood ear木耳, which is a type of fungus often used in Asian cooking. Wood ear is one of my favorite things in the world.

卤牛肉

卤牛肉 is kind of like roast beef. The best kind of 卤牛肉 has lots of tendon, which you can see in the slices.

Chicken gizzards

Chicken gizzards! Yummy!

Spinach and radish

Salad of spinach and radish slices, which is my Dad’s favorite.

凉粉

凉粉is a type of jelly noodle that’s served cold and with lots of pickled vegetables, cilantro, and spicy chili peppers. My mom is so good at making this dish. She takes it to parties all the time, and people devour it.

Asparagus

Regular old stir fried asparagus.

豆腐皮和鹌鹑蛋

This is tofu skin with quail eggs. Mmmm! Do not get me started on my love of quail eggs. For some reason, I think they taste ten times better than chicken eggs. I remember going to preschool in China, and there were stands on the street outside my school selling skewers of quail eggs in the winter. Yummy delicious memories!

Duck!

蚂蚁上树

蚂蚁上树’s direct translation means ants going up a tree. It’s describing the ground pork as ants and the vermicelli noodles as trees, so the dish looks like ants (ground pork) climbing up trees (noodles). This is a very famous Chinese dish and one of my favorites. It is also usually really really spicy. This was probably the winner of night since it was one of the last dishes to arrive at the table but one of the first ones to be finished by everyone.

糖醋排骨

And last by not least, sweet and sour ribs!!!

The whole table!

This is a shot of the whole table. My mommy is amazing!! Hahahaha There was soooooo much food! Merry Christmas everybody!!!

 

A Cville Thanksgiving

Right before we all went home for Thanksgiving, my friend DC organized this huge food-coma-inducing Thanksgiving potluck to take place in his apartment. He is pretty much the bomb because he cooked soooo much food for this. He even cooked (or should I say CREATED haha) this ginormous turkey!! And then on top of that, each of us brought something too, so the end result was an apartment bursting with people and food. I think there was some miscommunication there because he didn’t know that everyone else was bringing something. In fact, I think our little group here often has these moments of terrible miscommunication. Hahaha Fun times!

This was probably the closest that I’ve ever had to a “traditional American” Thanksgiving meal. My family always just ends up with a feast of Chinese food because we like that better. So this was my first taste of some classics that I’m sure most of you have a lot of experience with such as green bean casserole, sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top, cranberry sauce, and stuffing. I had to ask CM what a green bean casserole was…

Chipotle Chicken Cups

Mini Mushroom Arugula Quiches

Here is what I brought: mini mushroom arugula quiches and chipotle chicken cups. The recipes worked out well .The chipotle chicken cups called for wonton wrappers as the cups, but I had a box of puff pastries for the quiches, so I used those instead.

Table wobbling under our weight

This is our table overflowing with people and food.

Italian Soda

Delicious, refreshing Italian soda!! This was very quickly demolished between all of us.

Vegemite

Vegemite!! Courtesy of MC all the way from the far and distant land of Australia. Oh not the bowl on the right. That’s just gravy. I meant the sandwiches. Vegemite, for those of you who are not Australian, is sandwich spread that’s kind of like peanut butter except it’s made of yeast extract. The taste was a mixture of salty and…I don’t even know. The flavor is very difficult to describe. I don’t know how I feel about it because it’s all very strange and foreign to me, but I have a feeling that Vegemite is one of those things that will grow on you as you eat more of it. What a strange feeling…

Meatloaf, Green Bean casserole, biscuits

And meatloaf and green bean casserole and biscuits. Yummy!

Panera Bread

And a giant loaf of delicious bread from Panera! We had so much bread that night.

Chinese Pancakes

Chinese pancakes dipped in soy sauce courtesy of the wonderfully talented IJ.

MAAaaarrrrshmallows!!

Sweet potatoes with marshmallows. I have to say, I was pretty much in love with this dish…

Stuffing, mashed potatoes

Stuffing and potatoes! I love potatoes of all shapes and size, and I didn’t even know what stuffing was until now.

Poofy Bread!!

PL has this awesome recipe that creates these poofy bread rolls that are amazing. They have a slightly sweet tinge and then the texture is bready but light. I’m not a huge fan of bread, but I love PL’s bread. Notice the spot in the pan that’s missing a piece of bread? Yeah, I ate that one.

Turkey!!

Don’t forget the turkey!!!!! DC did a great job with the turkey. The meat was tender and not dry at all. Paired with the gravy, and it was a winner!

Mochi

IJ also made different kinds of mochi. I think there were white sesame, black sesame, and coconut.

Battle of Pumpking Pie Tarts

And now, this is the counter full of pumpkin pie tarts. Half are by JW, and half are by DC, and they duked it out over who made the better tarts. Haha Oh goodness! I think that’s all the food. I didn’t even take pictures of the cakes and ice cream and other desserts. We didn’t even touch half of the desserts because as you can see, by the end of dinner, we were all sprawled in various positions on the floor unable to move due to massive food comas. Hmm…I think this whole eating too much thing is starting to become a theme in my blog.

 

Some Things Never Change

This actually happened over a month ago, but I will blog about it.

I used to think that these giant potluck “Chinese parties” only occurred within my parents’ circle of friends. It wasn’t until I started reading blogs and meeting friends from other places did I realize that this strange phenomenon of “Chinese parties” takes place everywhere!

I guess I should start out by explaining exactly what these parties entail. It is a basically a humongous potluck where we’ll have 15 or so families over to eat, play cards, sing loud karaoke, and gossip about the kids until the wee hours of the night. The adults are always downstairs while all of the kids follow some unspoken rule to quickly organize themselves into various age groups with each age group claiming a different room upstairs. Sometimes, there are too many people that my parents have to invite that they have had to split this into 2 or 3 consecutive parties because the house would have surely exploded if they tried to fit EVERYONE in one party.

I have a love hate relationship with these parties. On one hand, I grew up with them, so there is a sentimental quality attached to once again going to this Ah Yi’s (auntie’s) house or that Ah Yi’s house just like before. On the other hand, I have to endure the scrutinizing gazes both positive and negative from all the Aunties as they gush about my academic achievements, tell me that I’ve grown into a beautiful young lady, or slap me on the butt to say that I seemed to have gained weight. There is the feeling of being judged. But no matter what, I do end up, at least for the most part, having fun at the parties. And of course, one of the most important parts is the food. Food food food.

I somehow always end up sprawled on the floor unable to move due to the frighteningly large amount of food that I have pigged out on. I’ll first go downstairs to fill up my first plate buffet style, trying a bit of each dish. Then, I’ll probably go get seconds of my favorite dishes. After a while, one of the aunties will bring up a huge dish of fruit. Then, there are the cake and pastry desserts. And finally, we’ll end the night with some type of tian tang (Chinese sweet soup). It’s pretty ridiculous.

Just my first plate