goodluck

Happy Lunar New Year!

2 Comments

It’s Lunar New Year and I’m reminiscing back to my trips to Singapore with my dear friend and her family. I got to experience two Chinese New Year (CNY) celebrations with them over the past four years. It was awesome! I’m not very familiar with CNY celebrations, as I’m not Chinese and celebrate the New Year on January 1st. I love experiencing different cultures, especially around the world. The CNY celebration is Singapore is definitely different from the festivities here in Hawaii. Singapore goes all out, especially in Chinatown and their shopping malls and restaurants. It’s decorated to the max! They also celebrate for at least a couple weeks, visiting families and whatnot.

It is a tradition in Singapore during CNY to eat a raw fish salad (also called Yu Sheng) and toss the salad ingredients together with your family, as it symbolizes abundance, prosperity, and good fortune.

Here’s an interesting article about this famous CNY salad: http://www.noobcook.com/yu-sheng-chinese-new-year-raw-fish-salad/

img_1248

The salad is very organized at first…

sg-trip-2011-150

Here is another version of the salad, where you can clearly see all the ingredients.

img_1261

Finally, the tossing! The fun part!

Here’s a recipe I found: http://www.mercurynews.com/2011/01/31/lunar-new-year-recipe-yu-sheng-singapore-raw-fish-salad/

For those celebration the New Year, *cheers* Have a blessed New Year!

FS x

Ozoni New Years tradition!

Leave a comment

Happy first Thursday of 2017! Hope the first five days are treating you well.

Every New Year’s Day, I get excited because I get to eat ozoni, a Japanese mochi soup. It’s been a tradition for my entire life. My grandmother used to make it and then my auntie took over after she passed. My grandma used to say that we eat ozoni because it would bring us good luck for the new year. The mochi was what brought good luck and we would have to eat all the mochi that was in our bowl.

Everyone makes their ozoni differently. Some use a shrimp or fish base to make the dashi (or soup), some use chicken broth, like we do. Some add only veggies, some add meat, some add seafood. It’s very interesting to taste other people’s ozoni. I’ve tried two of my other aunties’ ozoni. They both were very different from the one I grew up eating.

Here’s an article about ozoni: http://jpninfo.com/40490

Happy upcoming weekend.

FS