Chinese New Year in Lincolnshire

Today we celebrated Chinese New Year with our Chinese daughter-in-law and the rest of our family.

Chinese hot pot! 

A delicious way to enjoy a long and leisurely meal. 

Select what you want, put it into the pot of boiling and spicy stock, then chat while you wait for it to cook.

The round brown things are not potatoes, they are gluten balls, doughy puff balls of delight.

Loads of vegetables, salmon, prawns, non-meat meatballs, thinly sliced beef, greens, beans and mushrooms.     Lots of crunchy salad to nibble while you wait.

It is difficult to keep track of just how much you eat. 

Conversation and laughter flows as chopstick skills are put to the test when some bits sink without trace and have to be fished out.       Luckily we had a few wire net scoops on hand, just in case.

Much, much later  we cleared the table and put out fruit and sweet treats, trying to stick to auspicious red, gold and round shapes as much as possible.

Somehow we all managed to squeeze in an extra treat or two. 

I made sure that everyone took home all the tempting goodies, so that the only round thing left in this house is some fruit, and me.   

Double exercise for me tomorrow.

Happy Chinese New Year!

February is Fun

Far from being dull, February is always a jolly and celebratory month for us. 

It begins with middle grandson's birthday and ends with our wedding anniversary.   In between, we have plenty of other occasions to celebrate.

This coming week will see us celebrate Pancake Day - Shrove Tuesday.     Apart from when I was a child, I have never really enjoyed eating pancakes, but I suppose that could say quite a lot about my pancake-making 'skills', rather than about pancakes!

Nevertheless, my grandchildren will be fed plenty of pancakes.  One likes them with lemon and a tiny sprinkle of sugar, the other prefers that they should be annointed with liberal amounts of golden syrup.

Then we have Valentine's Day, a celebration of love and affection.    More importantly, it will see us celebrate the wedding anniversary of these two.

Then we look forward to a couple of weeks of celebrations during Chinese New Year, we'll be hanging out the Chinese lanterns as we have a big family feast planned.      Chinese food, of course.       MingMing is a wonderful cook,  so it will be delicious as well as beautiful. 

As the month draws to a close we then celebrate our own wedding anniversary. 

This takes us quite nicely into March which I always associate with spring flowers, lambs, and the possibility that spring may be around the corner and another winter is almost behind us.

Village Elders and Food Art

Our tiny village hall was brought to life this afternoon as my daughter in law, Poppy, gave a demonstration on food art, Chinese style.

First she had to prepare the vegetables - no puny vegetable knife for Poppy!   

Fair to say that we all held our breath as she sliced and shaped the vegetables with her Chinese chopper knife.   

We were happy to note that she had brought plenty of pre-chopped vegetables for us to use, no need for plasters and first aid.

This picture gives you some idea of how much fun we all had as we were given the go-ahead to get decorating a platter for ourselves.

This is one of Poppy's demonstration pieces, luckily we didn't have to do anything quite that complicated.
Even so, faced with a blank platter, we all had a brief panic.

  
Luckily Poppy was there to lend a helping hand, a tweak here, a tidy there and suddenly our designs looked a whole lot better.

Poppy charmed everyone as she worked her way round the group,

so much, so that she has been invited back next month.

She's really going to spice things up - she'll be cooking and presenting some Chinese food, to be eaten with chopsticks, although alternative 'eating irons' will be available for those with stiff fingers.

Once Poppy gets cooking, and the aroma of her authentic Chinese food wafts around the village, I reckon we'll probably have a few extra mouths to feed.