Happy Chinese New Year!

I think my penmanship (or should it be brushmanship?) was better two years ago. And strangely I cannot find any pictures of last year's. (Though, I composed the Lian myself this year, as opposed to previous years when I just wrote fairly standard texts that everybody else and his dog know about.)

Mom's are a lot better looking this year than mine, a reverse of past trends. She also made little mock-up firecrackers... she went rather overboard this year preparing for the Spring Festival. I may have some pictures posted later on.

Last night we (as in S and I) went home (as in to mooch dinner off of mom). And a nice stroke of luck with interview schedules and what not landed T home also for the New Year's Eve celebration. Therefore mom made way more food than necessary (we had something like 10 dishes, with the requisite dumplings, a steamed duck, a steamed fish, baked-fried-stuffed tofu, radish cakes, a pot of mushroom-mushroom-bamboo-shoot-mustard-green-and-meat-stuff soup, more mushroom-mushroom-bamboo-shoot-mustard-green stir-fry, lotus-roots stuffed with sticky rice, a cold plate made from mixing shredded chicken with fried eggs and various veggies, and marinated hard boiled eggs with veggies. T even stuffed some Pistachio into the dumplings [similar to the baby-in-a-King-cake Mardi Gras tradition, the Chinese often stick coins into the dumplings in the Spring Festival. But T was worried about S's poor teeth, so she used something less likely to chip the crown].) For dessert there were Nian Gao (this year mom baked it, which is rather different from past years and quite exciting) and sweet-powdered-milk stuffed buns (mom even made one of the buns in the shap of a mouse). Dinner was so exciting and ... so filling.