We survived the first week of 2017! Yahoo! Hope everyone is having a great start to the New Year!
The food we consume during the New Year is awesome! I get excited for all the wonderful, ono food, as we only get to eat them once per year! I find myself eating more on New Year’s Eve and Day, than any other holiday.
For the entire life, we’ve eaten homemade saimin on the Eve. “Saimin” is a local term we say in the islands. It is very similar to ramen. My grandmother used to boil the broth for hours on the Eve and then serve it at night. After she passed, my dad took over. One of my aunts prepares the sides to add to the saimin (i.e., Chinese cabbage, fishcake, and cha siu pork). We also prepare soba, buckwheat noodles, as it symbolizes good luck in Japanese.
Doesn’t this look mouthwatering?!
My boyfriend prepared fresh ahi blue fin and hamachi sashimi. It was so good! Especially the hamachi, since I don’t have that too often. Our family whacked it out of the park!
Oh man! Look how shiny that looks!
One of my other aunts makes her homemade mochi and manju, a Japanese confection made with flour, rice powder, and buckwheat, and filled with azuki beans. She even added butter mochi to the platter this past year! She also leaves some kinako powder, roasted soy bean flour, mixed with sugar to dip the mochi in. Yum!
Ahh, it’s almost gone! It’s THAT ono!
But not to worry! There’s another platter that a family friend gave us to enjoy! Yummy!
And there ya have it! Our New Year’s Eve tradition!
