Festive In The Air…..

Taking the opportunity and cyberspace here to wish everyone a BERRY MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Will be back to Subang to celebrate with my in-laws. (My parents are away for holiday and wont be back until 26th Dec)

MERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Happy Winter Solstice 冬至快乐!

Happy Winter Solstice to everyone!!

Since today is such an important day in the Chinese calender, I’ll be cooking something less ordinary tonight. Not a feast…. but will take more time for preparation, like making popiah (preparing the fillings take quite some time) , frying nyonya noodle and fried chicken and not to miss out the glutiounus rice ball.  Taking an extra effort on this day to prepare a meal is because it’s just once a year affair and I want my kids to understand that it’s an important day in a chinese culture.

Most family would have rolled the glutionous rice ball a night before, but I didn’t do so because I’m not preparing it for prayer ( prayer to the ancestor)  early this morning and also hubby wont be eating it until he got back from work later… if I make it too early, it will become sticky and soggy.

During my childhood day, I have never got a chance to be involved in the activity of rolling the ball. My mum didn’t practice that at home. Since both my paternal and maternal grandparents staying quite near by to us, it’s just a phone call away and we already get yummy food to eat. So all I knew was TO EAT!! We would have feasty lunch at maternal grandma house and later dinner at paternal grandparents place.  To me it’s just another special and important day which there would be ample of good food and also glutinous rice ball.

Last year was the first time I try my hand on make the balls, mainly because I want to instill this cultural awareness in my kids. Suffice to say I have nil knowledge on that. Prior to that I didn’t even know the existent of glutinous rice flour and where to get it but I was ambitious enough to want to make glutinous rice ball with fillings in it. During the process, I made endless SOS calls to my mum and at the end it still end up a failure and mess.

This year I have learned from my past experience.

 Occupy the kids with some “work” while I was busy in the kitchen. Caught this pic when I check on them later.

 JS helped me to roll the balls

 WH also wanted to help

 Playing with left over dough.

 The glutinous rice ball ready to be cooked. The big white ones with peanut fillings.  I didn’t make it according to the tradition/restriction of 6 big white balls and 6 big red balls, all make in fun filled sizes and colours.

 Put the balls into boiling water. Once the balls started floating on the water surface, scooped it out and then soak the ball in ice cold water. (mum said that by doing so, the ball will have a better texture (QQ taste))

 This is the rock sugar for the sweetened soup. It’s called “Pin Tong” in cantonese. Some would prefer to use Gula Melaka and some Cantonese will prepared red date soup based.

 Boiling the sweetened liquid using the above sugar and Pandan leaf.

Ready to be served. When hubby comes home, I just need to heat up the sweetened liquid and then put in the glutinous rice ball.

 A savoury version that my neighbour brought over. The liquid is actually chicken soup. The Hakkas usually prepare savoury glutinous rice ball while the hokkien and cantonese the sweet version.

Xmas Craft

Some Xmas crafts that JS had done yesterday.  It doesn’t really look like a small girl’s work, because I’m the one who prepared the materials and drew the outline. All that she does was to cut and paste and decorate with my supervision and some suggestion when nessesary.  The fun thing to her is to get to work and at the same time having mummy spending time with her.

 Paper plate angel.

  Toilet paper roll angel.

  Xmas tree made of gloss paper and recycle cardboard

 Proud with her work

Source of craft ideas from here and here

Suppose to make more crafts so that each of the family member will get something on Xmas day, and also need to make another birthday card for SIL 2, unfortunately I haven’t really got the time today. Hopefully tomorrow morning we can do another batch before we head home for the holiday.