Monday, February 15, 2010

祝各位虎年進步, 萬事如意, 心想事成!!


Because Randy and I created our own Love-Love Day, we spent the weekend celebrating the Chinese New Year which fell on February 14th this year.
As it is the Year of the Tiger it is extra special for me since my birthday year was 1986.

Friday: Chinese dumpling party
assembling and eating pork dumplings with a lovely group of people


Saturday: Dumpling experiment and Asian flick
Randy and I had a brilliant idea to make Gyro-style dumplings. We thought dumplings were easy-peasy after our Friday experience, but it turns out there is more to it than we thought.
We mixed lamb meat, mint, feta, minced garlic, chopped red onion, and chopped mushroom to use for the filling which actually turned out to be quite delicious. The problem came when we had to quick thaw our frozen dumpling wrappers. When we boiled our dumplings, the meat shrunk up way to much (I'm thinking the lamb was too lean) and the wrappers bust rather than wrinkle up and stayed gooey and limp. We ended up with what looked like alien eggs in broth.
We did successfully cook rice, a delicious broth, and steam edamame.

But as for the dumplings:
Our idea- A+
Our execution- D

Watching Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, a Park Chan-wook film made up for it, even though it is a Korean film so does not quiiiite fit in to the Chinese theme.

Sunday: Chinese New Year celebration
I am the Art 2 teacher at the Austin Great Wall Chinese School. We had a New Year celebration on Sunday instead of usual classes.

I hosted a Paper lantern and Lucky Red Envelope origami booth. Thanks to Randy for drawing the dragon on my poster and helping cut hundreds of red paper into squares for the envelope making.

The kids were so adorable in their traditional outfits. I hung up a long chain of handmade lanterns above the prize table and it was great seeing the students from my class excitedly show their parents the lanterns they had made.

While I could not understand the speeches being made or read the signs posted on the wall, there was a warm fuzzy feeling floating around the room and it was lovely seeing several generations of families celebrating their Chinese traditions together.

I definitely got more out of this weekend than simply going out to an expensive restaurant with my boy. No matter what holiday you celebrated or who you chose to share your love with, I hope you all felt loved and continue to feel warm as this cool weather comes to an end and Spring slowly rolls in.
Happy Monday!

2 comments:

Shaela said...

Yay! I wish I'd been there. Randy: What a fantastic dragon -truly, you are an art'eest!

TexasDeb said...

Love can be celebrated in so many ways!

How about a tutorial on the envelope making? It looks like adding a colorful envelope would be a fun way to add a pop of color and a personalized message to gifts.... Hmmm? Pretty please??