A Very Late Chinese New Year Post

Well, you might noticed that I kind of diappeared for a while. That's because all of us has been sick for about a month! Between taking care of a sick baby and even sicker hubby (more like a little kid then) while I was not totally recovered, and shovelling the crazy amount of snow once or twice a week, I was totally exhausted. Now that everything back to normal, and we finally have some sunshine outside to melt all that yard deep snow, I thought it might be time to catch up.

Little caterpillar looked so cute in this traditional top my best friend gave me last year. She got her first red envelope from her nanny. She was too curious to be polite, opened it immediately, when mommy was trying to take some pictures of daddy and her.

Even though most of us was still bothered by the infection in our mouth, couldn't really chew, I still made some dishes on Chinese New Year's Eve. Not as many as it supposes to be according to traditions, but we are a small family, don't have that many people to finish the food anyway. I made those backrib so tender, even Stubborn ate some, despite the pain (he lost more than 10 lbs in a week!). Little Caterpillar loved it too. But she prefer mommy's shrimps. We were happy to see her ate 3 shrimps and a piece of rib. Poor thing was in pain for days, refuse to bite or chew, only survived on milk. I was very glad she felt better and didn't miss the new year's eve dinner. Of course we made some dumplings from scratch, just forgot to take pictures.

My hometown has a list of food you should have during the 15 days of Chinese New Year. But I only can remember about 6, dumplings for New Year's Day, noodle for the second day, different kind of dumplings (giant dumplings flattened, more like a calzone) for the third day, Chinese style pancake (we made scallion pancake) and eggs for the forth day, dumplings again on the fifth day, but this time you have to chop the meat and vegetable. Then the next one I can remember is to have sticky riceball (with sesame seed paste or peanut or lotus seed paste, or whole bunch of other delicious fillings) on the 15th, the last day of the New Year. Other than these traditions, I remember my mom and grandma used to make the special steamed buns in these funny animal shape. So I made some hedgehog buns for little caterpillar, with sweet red bean paste stuffing. She absolutely loved it. Too bad I didn't have the camera around when she pinched off all the little spines.

Just to show you how much snow we got, here are some pictures of little caterpillar playing around the yard. Keep in mind little caterpillar is more than 34" tall, and the top layer of snow was very wet and heavy and compact.