I always have my Chinese New Year reunion dinner at my grandma’s place. It’s just our family and my grandma with a few aunts eating some great home cooked food.
I traditionally also let off a string of firecrackers before eating. 🙂
I love the hearty Heng Hua dishes that my grandma and aunts cooks – it’s what I ate during my formative years and I’m very fond of chai bo (a preserved vegetable), the sea cucumber + razor clam mix and the pork + chicken stew.
Here’s everyone! My grandma is the one to my left, my mom is on my right. The chick that looks like me is my sister, who flew off just now headed for New Zealand. My dad is on her right and that’s Kara, my niece, on her left.
I also brought along a Bushmills 10 year old single malt whiskey from Ireland for drinks. Almost finished the bottle, it’s a lot more fun drinking like this.
My cousins all came later – this is also a tradition of ours, I’m the banker and we played Blackjack and later a crazy version of Baccarat where there’s no edge to the house (me). My uncle was telling me I was doing it wrong. Haha! I don’t mind, all of my cousins are younger than me and I want them to win.
I lost a few hundred from our gambling session (which I actually have to budget my losses each year coz I do stuff like giving extra payouts for audacity e.g. hitting up to 5 cards and not busting in Blackjack) and everyone went away happy.
Happy CNY everyone! Gong Xi Fatt Chai! 😀
Wow, it’s so shiok to play with firecrackers! Happy New Year!
Yeah, it’s a lot of fun!
I still have more than half left though – didn’t get a lot of chances to let them off at night this year.
Happy CNY bro! 🙂
Wow!!! Nice! Hey! I can recognise that handsome cousin of yours – the one in Singapore. Oooo…so much food! Slurpssss!!!!
Yup, that’s the one! 🙂
Indeed, it was great to see you and eat the muesli cookies that you made! Let’s go out for dinner soon!
Happy CNY, my friend! 😀
woah, so many dishes!! How many plates of rice have you taken? HAHA! Next time gamble with me la (with ur rule of blackjack applies) LOL! 😛
Haha! I can’t do that bro, that’s for cousins only, and they’re all younger than me. 🙂
I don’t eat rice during CNY eve – Heng Huas (or maybe it’s just us) eat longevity noodles tossed in lard.
It’s dry, never in soup coz there’s a tradition in our culture that states it’ll rain if you do that. I don’t believe that but I do like longevity noodles cooked this way. 😀
Gong hei fatt choy!
That’s a good way to share the whisky. Which come to think of it, I have not had a drop of whisky or any alcohol for that matter this entire cny!
Indeed! It was good to drink with my cousins and uncles – polished off the bottle real quick with so many people drinking. 🙂
OMG! Really? I think I drank every single day.
I didn’t drink a lot though, except for last night. It was a lot of fun though.
Happy CNY Eve! 😀
Glad to hear that you’ve had a fun reunion, HB!
Ah, Blackjack. I have always loved the game, would bleed my online acquaintances to play it with me on Yahoo in those days. =D
Thanks Ciana! 🙂
CNY is always fun for me, although it wasn’t good just now coz my grandma’s house got broken into. 🙁
I’m not really good in Blackjack but surprisingly, I played for fun in the airport at Frankfurt to use up spare Euros and ended up coming back with *more* Euros than I went in with. Haha!
Happy CNY! 😀