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Sunday, February 10, 2008

Happy Chinese New Year - Year of The Rat

This post is slightly late, but officially, Chinese New Year runs for like 15 days until the full moon is gone. When I was young, Chinese New Year in Vietnam is huge. The whole country stops basically and celebrates the event. It is getting bigger and bigger each year here in Australia as the Asian population increases, but nothing will match the celebrations in Asia.

For our family, we celebrate Chinese New Year by eating. We also visit relatives and friends, but eating is a huge part of it. There is lots of little candied treats, like candied coconut, lotus, sweet potato etc.

On New Year's night, we had a big meal of lobster. Lobster is very expensive so we don't get to eat it often, but Chinese New Year is one time to splurge a little. The lobster was bought live from a fish shop in Box Hill. It was a massive 3kg beast, flapping about all lively still. We killed it by putting it into the fridge and letting it go into a sleep. I hear that is the most humane way to kill them. But since I can't communicate with a lobster, I can only assume that is the case.

Mum cooked the lobster with ginger, spring onion, chilli, soy sauce and oyster sauce. The flavours of the lobster made the noodles taste so good. She also did some lobster sashimi, equally fantastic with soy and wasabi. I stuffed myself with lobster until I could eat no more. The meat was so firm and sweet. Mmmmmmmmmmm.

I hope everyone has a Happy Chinese New Year. May the new year bring you luck and fortune, good health for you and your family and lots of joy.

5 comments:

  1. Fat Do and his expensive taste.

    I think that Shoya place pays more for the service than for the food. I still can't get that taste of empty space in my mouth.

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  2. Sticky, I actually don't understand a word of Vietnamese. I assume you wrote Happy New Year though. I was born in Vietnam but my family is Chinese and we speak Chinese at home. I forgot all my Vietnamese when I came to Australia. I wish I remembered some still.

    Anonymous, I will write up about Shoya soon. Patience.

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  3. Happy New Year, darl.

    May we all prosper!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Purple Goddess, may we all prosper indeed Ella. Hope the year brings you good luck.

    ReplyDelete