What a great weekend! We spent the better part of it at a wedding on the in-law side. Friday night, it was raining elephants and gorillas. Visibility was poor and parts of the highway was flooded when we drove out to the bride’s open house.

As usual, each time we see the clan, there are the exclamations of how big the kids have grown and the repetitions of names, ages and school year to jolt everyone’s memories. Now that my teens are old enough to answer those questions themselves, my days as a human tape recorder may be numbered .

Saturday morning, we were off to the church wedding and reception. The bride was radiant, of course. Thankfully too the service was short and sweet, and the day got noisier as more of the clan crawled out of the woodwork whom we’ve not seen in ages.

The hotel dinner party that night was huge. There must’ve been at least 800 guests. In the midst of camera flashes and toothy hugs, Steev bumped into a guy from college that he vaguely knew. Someone he would say hi to as they passed each other in the hallway between classes.

In the small talk that followed, that guy turned out to be a cousin (?) Steev never knew he had. Can you imagine that? Right now, we still have no idea who he is but I’m sure with a little nosing around, we’ll soon find out he’s related to us. It’s the first time we’ve ever encountered something like this. Have you ever found a long-lost family member through casual conversation?

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While it’s the same old, same old every house we visited this year, ours isn’t. We’ve got a star attraction to show off and he has, so far, got everyone we know going ga-ga…

… yep, that would be Tyson, our beauty king of a baby beagle. Isn’t he cute? He smiles too and yelps when he hears his name. Tyson’s been with us for only about 5 months now, so he wasn’t around last Chinese New Year. This year, our visitors were surprised to see happy little Tyson at their feet.

Hip2bDad’s best buddy dropped by with his family. Their 2 teen boys are around the same age as our 3, and as young families, we’ve spent many fun times together checking out new playgrounds, comparing toys, wondering which baby jogger city mini to buy and trading child-proofing stories.

We could easily tell that Hip2bDad’s buddy was quite taken with Tyson and was indicating to his boys that they too should probably get a pet when they return home. The only problem is they live in a condominium where space may be a constraint. We don’t think that’s going to stop him though .

Anyhow, back to Tyson. He’s getting all the attention from our festive visitors as well as from Raine and Skye. Since they have a week off from school, they have all the time in the world to pamper, sneak him forbidden snacks, spray him with water to cool him off in this heat, take him for walks and of course, Tyson is only too happy to pose for photos. We love you, Ty. You’re the cutest!

We had a small trickle of visitors yesterday so it was all nice and manageable, nothing like the hordes of 20-30 relatives who used to descend on us like a swarm of locusts. Most of those cousins are now either working or studying all over the globe.

Today I’m going to be cooking our Kickoff Lunch. It’s the first meal of the new year that traditionally business families and their staff would enjoy as they kick off the new business year. It’s a tradition in our family as far back as I can remember.

So yep, Chinese New Year is, as some of you may know, one big feast stretching over 15 days so you can imagine how much food is involved . From big meals at restaurants (which we try to avoid unless invited) to crunching cookies, cakes and all things sugar-laden at every house we visit.

After lunch, we’re off to visit a couple of relatives and as usual, there’ll be lots of gossips and thank goodness conversations will typically stay clear of problems and negative stuff like checking out jointsupplementreviews.net for minor ailments.

It’s pretty quiet this year. I like it this way. At least we have time to savor the week-long school break, laze around all day, gobble heaps of mandarin oranges and tangerines, watch some movies at home, have a few laughs.

Admittedly I’m not a very good Chinese chef. Blame it on me not being very Chinese-y, I’m actually much more confident cooking Western food than I am Asian food. I would’ve loved to bring my entire brood out to Friday’s for pasta and pizza, but I have to instill some appreciation for Chinese customs and traditions in my young ‘uns, don’t I?

So this being Chinese New Year and all, I have to at least pretend to whip up a few simple Chinese dishes to make my ancestors proud . So here’s what I cooked for our CNY reunion dinner lunch (find out how our dinner became lunch) today.

Stir-Fried Kai-lan with Crispy Scallop Bits

An everyday dish of stir-fried Kai-lan (Chinese kale) funky-ed up with crispy dried scallop bits became a big hit with my say-no-to-veggie teens .

Claypot Pork Ribs and Tofu

My kids are big fans of Claypot Tofu (recipe is at my food blog) and I cook this quite often. But Claypot Tofu and Pork Ribs with carrot flowers and a sprinkling of wolfberries? Now that’s something different. Raine loved this and said it’s a brilliant idea to use pork ribs.

Spicy Thai-style Crispy Chicken

And my very popular Spicy Thai-style Crispy Chicken (recipe is on my food blog) with shredded carrots, cucumbers and onions is a hit with the kids as usual.

Braised Mushrooms with Phoenix Claws

And then we have Hip2bDad’s and my favorite Braised Mushrooms with Phoenix Claws. The name itself is enough to invoke sheer horror in my kids’ eyes. Phoenix? Actually there’s nothing pre-historic about this at all. Phoenix Claw is just a nice name for chicken feet !

Lotus Root Soup with Japanese Baby Scallops

And finally, we have my Lotus Root Soup with Japanese Baby Scallops which turned out so sweet and flavorful I would’ve hidden the entire pot to savor when no one’s watching .

There! Are we going to need diet pills later? I doubt it since there’s nothing very fattening here. And I think I might just have saved us a couple of hundred bucks cooking at home.

Here’s wishing all who are celebrating, A Happy and Prosperous Year of the Tiger. If you’re traveling out of town, have a safe journey. And to those who are not, have a Happy Valentine’s Day and a great weekend   .

I’m up early this morning to start preparing for my Reunion Dinner which incidentally became Reunion Lunch somewhere over the course of yesterday. The story is this. I invited two of my favorite aunts to join us for our Reunion Dinner tonight.

Yesterday they got a call from my uncle (the one who excluded my kids from attending his son’s wedding dinner recently) inviting them to his Reunion Dinner. He said he’d booked his dinner reservation at a restaurant two months ago and that he’ll send his son to pick them up at 5:00pm today. When my two aunts told me about it, I said, fine I’ll reschedule my reunion to lunchtime so they can still join us.

This morning, my uncle apparently called my two aunts to say he’ll be picking them up for lunch. Er, say what? Theirs was supposed to be dinner which is why I shifted my reunion to lunchtime to accommodate them . My two aunts were surprised too and reminded him what he’d told them earlier. He brushed them aside and insisted they should’ve called him back yesterday to confirm.

I’m like, err, are we playing some sort of game here?? Am I sensing a complete lack of sincerity here in his invitation to these two old folks? So yeah, see what I mean about family politics stress and Chinese New Year? Well, whatever! I’ve got everything ready to start cooking my Reunion Lunch now and my two aunts have decided to join me. Lunch will be fairly simple so no worries about the need for stomach fat loss later . Catch you guys later.

So here we are, sitting around in sauna weather waiting for the Year of the Tiger aka the Big Food Fest to begin. Dare I say the sun is a ridiculous 95+ degrees that feels like 120 degrees and I’m sweating like a pig (do pigs even perspire?) from a humidity of, oh, only 95% ?

To all the ladies who wanted to trade in their snow for my sauna in my previous post, great choice! This here is the best natural weight loss system ever. Yes, this is typical Chinese New Year weather tailor-made to counter the effects of the Big Food Fest!

So while I’m languishing in perspiration wishing I could dive right into that,

let me just say I can’t believe how laid-back I am about Chinese New Year. I didn’t bake a single cookie this year because my oven’s kaput since Christmas and I haven’t gotten around to buying a new one yet. Talk about procrastinating.

I’m so glad I only have two traditional meals to cook for the five of us – the reunion dinner on CNY Eve which is tomorrow night, and the kick-off lunch on the second day of CNY – and that’s it. Easy-peasy! Stay tuned for more updates and pictures when I’m done slaving and serving, or follow me on Twitter for fat, juicy titbits on the fly .

Okay, so Chinese New Year is just around the corner and it coincides with Valentine’s Day this year. This time every year, we’d be trying to catch every lion dance performance in town. But not this year! Seems my teens have finally outgrown the obsessive lion chasing though we’ll still be picking a few spectacular ones to watch.

As usual, we won’t be traveling out of town like most folks. We prefer to avoid the rush and just visit some friends and relatives here in town. Now if we were going on vacation in Orlando, that would be a different story.

I’ll be cooking a simple reunion dinner at home on New Year’s Eve. Customarily daughters having been married out of the family are not welcome to have the reunion dinner with their side of the family because it’s believed that it’ll impoverish the family. Hahaha, I call it poppycock and fiddlesticks!!

They could, of course, ignore the superstition but my Dad celebrates it with his ‘new’ family and I’m technically an ‘orphan’ who never gets invited so… That leaves Hip2bDad’s side of the family where we’re customarily supposed to be having the reunion dinner with. But since his Dad also celebrates with his ‘new’ family, us ‘orphans’ decided to heck with all this nonsense and just have our own reunion .

On the first day of Chinese New Year, we observe a vegetarian diet. On the second day, I’ll be cooking the first meal of the year. As usual, we’ll be avoiding Chinese restaurants like the plague for the 14 days of CNY, away from the crowd and having to pay through our noses.

And that’s about it. Got a whole stash of festive cookies, mandarin oranges, drinks and flowers for the altar. Not much left to do except finalize my two menus. We don’t traditionally decorate the house with festive symbols, plants or lanterns. The kids have some new clothes which we bought over the Christmas holidays. Hip2bDad and I don’t bother with new clothes. No trips to the salon for any of us either, yay!

And we’re set for a whole week off school, that’s all we care about . Call us boring, call us weird but we’ve always done our own thang much to the horror of our extended families. We’re not your typical family. So the way we celebrate Chinese New Year shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone !!

We received our first wedding invitation of the year. The second daughter of Hip2bDad’s cousin is getting married at the end of this month and we’re all invited. Contrast this to my cousin’s wedding last December when we were told out loud that our 3 teens were not invited. I’m almost ashamed it was my side of the family that did something like that .

We will be attending all 3 events, i.e. the catered dinner at the bride’s home on the night before the wedding, the church wedding and lunch reception (? we’ll decide at the last minute), and the dinner reception at the Sheraton.

I’m not sure if the couple will be leaving on one of those destination weddings immediately afterwards. I hear the Riviera Maya is very beautiful and just perfect for honeymoons. We’ll be visiting the bride’s family during Chinese New Year so I’m sure we’ll find out more about the wedding then .