We had a wonderful time on Sat. (Too bad I forgot to take some pictures.) We hosted Chinese New Year party at our house, we all had a great time. This was the first party since I got pregnant, and it's for the chinese new year, so I was quite nervous. I prepared the menu for days, and cooked from Fri night till Sat dinner time. Of course something had to go wrong, lucky it was not my party. My car broken down a week before, and it was supposed to be fixed totally after two days at our dealer's. But Friday morning on our way to my train station, it felt weird again. And of course Stubborn (a.k.a. my DH) didn't listen to me to go home and switch cars, he drove it to work. So, on his way back home at the end of the day, it broke down again, and this time it was on a super busy highway. He had to towed it to a dealer, and I had to take a taxi back home and grabbed the other car and picked him up. Since it was Friday night, my nanny was going home, so I had to take little caterpillar with me. She is such a sweetheart, didn't cry and very cooperative. Anyway, that trip wasted me some very precious cooking time. After dinner, I ran out of the house and drove to the nearest Chinese grocery store to get the rest of things I needed for the party. And of course I was too late, I got there only 20 minutes before closing time, and the fish department was already closed. I finally got back and started cooking around 10pm! I chopped and diced till midnight, and fried stuffs the whole Sat morning, while Stubborn went to Chinatown for the live fish and other things I didn't get. I was exhausted but quite excited. A couple of my friends offered to bring some dishes, so I had some help. But to cook for 4 families, the traditional style, it was not easy! We had 1 appetizer, 5 cold dishes, 9 hot dishes (including pork, chicken, fish, shrimp, tofu and some vegetable dishes), 4 desserts, and a big pot of HongKong style sweet and sour soup. On top of that, we had to have dumplings for the Chinese New Year (it's tradition), and I prepared the dough and fillings from scratch. Lucky one of my friend also knows how to make the skin, and the other knows how to make dumplings, so I was free to cook. At the end, every one was so stuffed, no one touched the snacks I prepared. Since we still have our old dining table and chairs (as my cutting table in the basement), and have a open kitchen dining room, we had a sit down dinner. We all watched the Chinese New Year party DH recorded that morning, it's tradition to eat dumpling and watch the party for Chinese people all over the world. Just to show you how big the party was, I cleaned for almost a whole day afterward! I was exhausted, BUT, the party was a success, and we got to have some fun with our friends. Little caterpillar had a great time too. One of my friend's son is 5 months older than my girl, guess they can understand each other, so they were busy 'talking', laughing, touching, and kissing each other! They made us laugh so hard, our tears came out. =) 
Oh, almost forgot, I wanted to show you an easy Peach Crunch Cake recipe. I saw it on my favorite baker's website Bakerella and thought it would be perfect for the party. And she was right, it was pretty easy, and delicious too. But it's just a little bit too sweet for me, so next time I might twist the recipe a little bit. To our family and friends, and all Chinese people around the world, HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR! And GONG XI FA CAI!
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