Happy New Year!

This weekend, we attend a beautiful wedding on Saturday, listened to (and hopefully learned from!) an incredible sermon, and spent the entire afternoon with Hon's parents for Chinese New Year's Eve.  Definitely plenty of fodder for my thoughts here.  But since today is Chinese New Year's day, let's start there...

Warning: anyone squeamish about food or animals might want to skip this one...


Hon's dad told me to come to the kitchen so I can learn how to cook.  It's a very specific, very special meal.

First of all, everything must be whole.  Every part of the chicken..

and the fish...

must be present.  Yes, even the blood.

A Chinese butcher killed this chicken on the spot for my future father-in-law and proceded to poor the blood into this container for him.  Once congealed, it makes a decent paté.  Or so I assume, sorry guys...I didn't have the heart to try it this year.

The chicken is to be cooked with side pork-- both marinated and fresh --along with the liver and gizzards.

the innards and side pork

And then there was the "little boy" tubers.  There is no English translation that any of us knew, so we named them after the Chinese medicinal property: they supposedly help you have male children.  Something about the shape....But I'll leave that up to your imagination.

Anyway, it's somewhere between a potato and a water chestnut and grows in marshlands only around the new year.

Hon and I finally had the brilliant idea of videoing his dad as he cooks.  His dad, retired chef that he is, spend the whole day preparing.  So this could all be for naught since we won't know what he soaked in what for however many hours.

It was a fabulous meal.  The best part about it?  I get to cook this all next year.  Gong hei fa choy!

get ready, chicken...here I come!