CNY Reunion dinner

It is an important tradition for chinese all over the world to have the family get together for a feast the night before the Lunar New Year.

As we are far from my family and friends this year I decided to make steamboat for my MIL and her partner, Roger. I'd shipped over a steamboat contraption and have yet to try it.

This year the Lunar New Year also coincides with Valentine's Day so its a double celebration for us. I asked for red tulips instead of the predictable red rose; and got some beautiful tulips from Fred.

I'd started on the soup for the steamboat early so by the time dinner came around the soup was already nice and tasty. My MIL turned up without Roger who was not feeling well as he'd started his radiation therapy for his cancer. This is my MIL's first chinese steamboat, and I'd set the table with new blue and white chinese cutleries (from China, naturally) and chopsticks.

For the steamboat, I added tiger prawns, unpeeled straw mushroom, sliced chinese mushroom, pork, chicken, tofu, chinese cabbage, mussels, crabstick, calamari and fish. After we finished eating we added egg noodles into the soup. Lucas was on his best behavior last night. He loved the soup. He drank a lot of my soup which was liberally laced with chilli.

We have a lot of food leftover which we will have today. Fred said we should have invited a few other friends and I had to remind him that our table only sits 4. When we move to Auch mid year we will have a big reunion dinner there to usher in the year of the Rabbit instead.

I found rambutans and pinepple in a can and we had that for dessert. After that (so typical french) we had yoghurt and coffee.

Lucas was happy as he was allowed to stay up til 9 p.m and he slept throughout the night (thanks to the antihistamine the doctor gave for his cold) waking up only at 8 this morning!