Birthday Party

Children these days are very blessed with yearly birthday celebrations.  Usually, these celebration lasted for the entire day! or even over couple of day.  1 celebration in school with school friends, and 1 celebration at home with family and friends.  Year on year, I realised that I am always wondering how to celebrate Ricco's birthday.  Should I throw a major party inviting family and friends?  Or should it be a small celebration amongst family members?

Ricco's birthday always falls around the Chinese New Year dates and thus, this is really busy times for me.  Almost straight after the CNY celebrations, I need to prepare for his BD.  Cake must be ordered (sometimes prior to CNY since shops open for business only 3rd day of CNY and some even later), menus decided, format of party decided. 

As like the past, I get a cake for him to celebrate with his school friends in school.  This year, I get a Bengawan underwater theme-3D cake.  Its a vanilla cake with strawberry.  Compared to many places who provides 3D cakes, the ones sold at Bengawan are really value for money.  For 110SGD I get a 2kg cake.  The cake is really YUMMY.  I prepared some nuggets and sausages and nuggets for the children too.  With the intention of making it like a real party.  The kids had fun singing BD songs and blowing candles (yes, the candles went off couple of times even before the song sang).  This is really one of the most organised BD parties that I have seen.  The kids go to crowd around Ricco when the teacher call them by their groups.  So green, blue, pink...they take turns.  They were then positioned nicely in a semi circle around Ricco (so that nice pictures can be taken).  Than they sing... and clap.   They were then asked to queue up for the cake... WOW.. what organisation! Its not easy being a kid!

The Underwater World theme 3D cake for school

Ricco singing loud and clear!

And the queue for the cake

Another cake is organised for a small celebration at home.  The plane cake is a vanilla longon cake.  It tastes really GREAT.  Something adults will enjoy.  As this is still the Chinese New Year, Ricco's yearly celebration always include "Lao Yusheng". 

The 'Plane' - Vanilla Longon Cake

Before we cut the cake, we need to LAO AH

Happy with his cake...before unwrapping the gifts!

Chinese New Year Gathering

Chinese New Year (CNY) is really a time to go visiting families, extended families and friends.  1st and 2nd days of CNY is usually reserved for families whereas the rest of the CNY will be time for friends!  And what do you do during visitation?  Eat, chat and catch up! I missed a long time friends gathering party on Sat.  Friends who meet just once a year.  We all thought that major gatherings should be organised more frequently! I have a "Pai Nian' Party at my place on Sunday.  For long time friends. I did some very simple dishes - fried bee hoon and baked chicken wings for the group.  Good reviews on both items :)

Preparing the Lao Yusheng Ingredients

Lao ah... heres good luck and prosperity to everyone present!

We have a cake for the BD boys too!

while we have a lot of fun catching up, I cant help but wonder why is it that with many friends (especially old time friends) that we meet up ONLY once a year (yes, during CNY ONLY).  Are we all soooo busy with our everyday life that we do not even have that 1 or 2 evenings to meet up for a meal, for a chat, for a catch up?  Don't we all used to meet up like 5days in a week in the past, yaking about everything and nothing?  OK friends, we should meet up more this year :)

Chinese New Year

This year, there is more rain than usual on the days building up to the Chinese New Year.  This did not dampen the Chinese New Year mood however.  Families are still out buying loads of goodies and food to welcome the year of th Rabbit.  Just that with the rain, more shopping are done in shopping centres and indoor rather than outdoor shopping at places like Chinatown.


Packed with goodies



Pamelo - a sign of prosperity

 Chinese New Year eve dinner is a big thing in the chinese culture.  This meal signifies reunion of the family when families gather for a big huge meals.  We call this the reunion dinner.  A chinese steamboat dinner is the norm in my family.  The "Yu Sheng" is also tossed.  The "Yu Sheng" (raw fish) is also a symbolic dish in the chinese culture.  The "Yu Sheng" is tossed together with many ingredients including the fish (signify 'nian nian you yu' - abundance), pamelo (da ji da li - luck and auspicious value), pepper (zhao cai jin bao - attracting monies), oil (cai yuan kuang jin -wealth from everywhere), carrots (hong yun dang tou - blessing of good luck), green raddish (qing chun chang zhu - eternal youth), white raddish (feng sheng shui qi - prosperity and promotion), peanuts and sesami (sheng yi xing long - business prosperity) and flour crisp in shape of golden pillows (pian di huang jin - everywhere filled with gold).  The action of tossing this mixture of ingredients signifies tossing of the good luck.  While you toss the 'yu sheng', you are supposed to shout out words of prosperity.

After adding the Golden Pillows

Yusheng before adding the 'golden pillows'. Yummy aint it?