Happy Chinese New Year of the Adaptable Snake...

 

The Lantern Festival is the grand finale of Lunar New Year celebrations that occurs on the 15th day of the lunar month, celebrating the first full moon, symbolizing family reunion and togetherness. 🏮🌕

Tangyuan (Glutinous Rice Balls) is a must-eat for the Lantern Festival! Whether you prefer the classic sweet tangyuan filled with black sesame, peanut, or red bean paste, or the savoury version, everyone has their favourite!

My grandmother used to make savoury tangyuan, served in a rich broth made with pork, dried shrimp, and napa cabbage. Now, this beloved family tradition has been passed down to her father, keeping the flavours of home alive.

My friend Jenny, when she was little, her family would gather to roll tangyuan by hand. A bowl of warm, sweet soup with red and white tangyuan was a must. This year, she tried fun flavours like crème caramel and purple sticky rice taro from a package. Not only were they delicious, but the graphics featured Sanrio characters like Pompompurin and Kuromi, which the kids absolutely loved!

Back home in Taiwan, after enjoying tangyuan, she looked forward to lantern walks in the park, filled with colourful decorations and a lantern riddle contest offering small prizes. They were the best memories!

Chinese New Year celebrations was at my parents with my siblings and I each making a few dishes to contribute. My go-to is pan-fried beancurd rolls stuffed with vegetables or mixed mushrooms, and also soy sauce eggs sans tea. We even make clean up easy by covering the tables with newspapers and plastic liner. Keeping it casual makes it comfortable as we just focus on enjoying the food and the lively conversations 🏮🐍😋 

On Saturday, February 1st, my friend Jenny and I attended the North York Recipes for Healing: Leftover Ingredients to celebrate Chinese New Year with a fun collage workshop on leftover food brought to us by Heritage Toronto. The session was kicked off by our lovely Willowdale councillor Lily Cheng.

In traditional Chinese culture, fish (鱼, Yu) is a dish typically eaten during the Chinese New Year celebrations, symbolizing the wish for a year of abundance. The dish and the character also sound and look like words for surplus and leftovers (余, Yu). 

Participants used waste and surplus materials (boxes and magazines) to create a collage that represents their own stories about leftover food. We did a creative 3-D collage on hot pot ♨️🥘, a Chinese communal meal to represent family reunion and bonding traditionally enjoyed on Chinese New Year Eve 🏮!

As we slide into 2025, the year of the adaptable snake, we wish you shed the useless old and realize a year full of hope, good health and abundant success 🐍!