GK+HK: Happy Chinese New Year!

We're a week away from the actual start of the new year on the Chinese calendar, but yesterday we celebrated early with a very nice family gathering at our place. As usual, Katherine's mother (and, this time, with one of her aunts) crafted a delicious feast. I'm not going to run through all the dishes, but I thought I'd highlight two...

As part of her traditional Indonesian satay meal, Katherine's mother prepared lontong. What you see above is the first stage: rice is partially cooked, packed into banana leaves, tightly wrapped, and steamed.

The second stage involves unwrapping the lontong and slicing them into bite-size chunks. The result is a very fragrant base for the meal (used much like standard rice or noodles would be).

We had a few different kinds of spring rolls, but I thought these were the cutest: they are simply fresh shrimp that have been peeled and deveined (with tails left intact), folded into spring roll wrapping, and pan-fried.

Here's the whole gang! Starting from Katherine and moving to the right: Katherine, Katherine's aunt (her father's younger brother's wife), Alice (Katherine's brother's fiance), Katherine's brother, Ting (Katherine's father's younger brother's daughter), Katherine's uncle (Katherine's father's younger brother), Katherine's uncle (Katherine's father's older brother), Katherine's cousin (Katherine's father's older brother's son), Katherine's cousin (Katherine's father's older brother's son), Carmen (Katherine's father's older brother's son's wife), Katherine's father, Katherine's mother, and me. Writing all this out in English sure takes a lot of space! For each of these familial relations, Cantonese (well, Chinese in general) uses only two characters...so the same description would take a whole lot less space in Chinese. ;>