All We Did was Eat!

This weekend ... all we did was eat! On Saturday, we celebrated Chinese New Year's Eve at our friend, Zuly's, place. She lives in a really nice gated complex and her home was so bright and spacious. Also, she was a wonderful host, making us feel at home right away.

For dinner, Zuly made a steamed fish with ginger and scallions. It's been a while since I've had this dish and it reminds me of the steamed fish we usually have at lauriats back home. I liked the home-cooked taste of the dish and could tell the fish was very fresh. Zuly also made a stir-fried bok-choy dish that went very well with the fish.

The crispy duck was delicious. I liked how it was still juicy inside but very crispy on the outside.

We also had a kung-pao chicken dish. It was also really good.

Here I am posing with Zuly our wonderful host and a marvelous cook!

Jojo is getting ready to dig in!

It was a great evening. We had good food and lots of good stories to tell. Thanks again to our super wonderful host! Next time dinner will be at our place and hopefully I can impress Zuly with some of my cooking too =)


Then on Sunday we celebrated Chinese New Year and Valentines Day with a potluck lunch, that turned into merienda, that turned into an early dinner at home.

Let me start with pictures of the food. We had sotanghon (glass noodles.

We also had another noodle dish (chow mein). I suppose having a lot of noodles is not a bad thing since it's suppose to bring you long life!

We also had a lot of "round" food which is supposed to be good luck. We had buchi filled with sweet red bean paste.

Siomai (pork dumplings) which is always a crowd favorite!

And hakaw (shrimp dumplings). We also had another shrimp dish this one with caramelized walnuts (but I didn't get to take a picture of it).

We had two kinds of siopao (meat buns). Some were filled with asado (barbecued pork) while others were filled with bola-bola (meatballs).

It was a surprisingly sunny day today and we got the chance to eat outside. This is one of the reasons why people love living in Southern California, while so many states are experiencing record snowfall, we are having outdoor parties in the middle of winter! Of course as the weather got cooler, we had to move back inside.

My nieces did several song and dance numbers. They are super duper entertaining to watch. All of them are extremely talented and none of them are shy!

Then more dancing in the garage where there is more space - this time with the adults too.

We ended the day by getting the whole group to pose for pictures by our front porch. This is no easy feat because we are a big group and there are a lot of kids running around. It's kind of like herding cats =) We did manage to take some good pictures ... but unfortunately not with my camera cause all I have are shots like this one.