Our family had our reunion dinner on the eve of the Chinese New Year and it was a really sumptuous one. As usual, my mother will prepare the steamboat dinner with a lot of seafood ingredients such as fresh slices of fish, whole prawns and fresh scallops. She will prefer her soup for the steamboat to be brewed with chicken bones and dried fish maw, or yu piao 鱼鳔. Definitely, there will be some leftover of ingredients which we will have them again on the first day of Chinese New Year, or chu yi 初一. Since the ingredients are uncooked, storing them back into the fridge using plastic containers is easy. It is our tradition on every reunion dinner to have food leftover for the next day. Like what my mother says, having leftover food is important because it symbolizes there will be an abundance of food for this coming new year.
New clothes for ushering the new year symbolizes a brand new beginning. Kayden has his share of new year clothing too. We got for him a new pair of red sneakers by Crocs, a new red shirt by Cotton On Kids and his favorite pair of skinny blue jeans. This will be worn by our cheeky boy on his first day of the year of the horse. As for the second day of the Chinese New Year, Kayden’s grandmother bought him a set of traditional red Chinese costume with oriental embroidery designs. Seeing young children wearing traditional Chinese costumes makes them really adorable especially when they hold their hands together and say “恭喜恭喜，新年快乐。”
With all those house to house visiting on the first 2 days, it is really inviting to munch those Chinese New Year goodies like pineapple tarts, chocolate cookies, love letters, fish crackers, bak kwa and nuts. All these goodies are known to cause “heaty” effect on our body, if we overly consume them with the lack of drinking enough plain water. Again, when comes to food, Kayden definitely will have his share. With all those munching of goodies from the eve of the Chinese New Year to the second day, Kayden constipated for two consecutive days! Luckily enough, he was back to his normal “schedule” after the third day.
