{ Sunday, December 23, 2007 } 2:21 AM

Dong Zhi

Ok, I don't know how to translate Dong Zhi to English. It's a day when we eat tang yuans. Hmm. Gonna be tough to illustrate without pictures. (Picture from Wikipedia.)


Checked out Wikipedia and found out Dong Zhi is Winter Solstice. I don't really know why it exists, but my mum strongly thinks that Winter Solstice is of greater importance than the Lunar New Year. But I don't really care, as long as I get to eat my tang yuans. I know they are available all year round in supermarkets but my mum don't really buy them and eat them at other times of the year.

Ok, anyway, today I had tang yuans of different sizes and colours. Small ones and big ones. LOL. Small ones have no filling. Fillings include red bean paste, sesame paste and sugared chopped peanuts. Colours include green, red (they look more like pink though) and white. Hmm. Reminds me of the picture I took earlier this year during Lunar New Year.


Then we had steamboat for dinner. We had so many types of food that the table was not enough to hold the plates. Let me think what we had.

Japanese Udon (the type which you have to add ingredients and seasoning yourself)
Squid
Cuttlefish
Prawns
Toman fillet (sliced)
Pork slices
Chicken breast meat (diced)
Cabbage
Lettuce
Baby sweet corn
Straw mushroom
Chicken abalone mushroom
Shitake mushroom
Button mushroom
Chicken cocktail
Chicken meat balls
Pork meat balls
Fish balls
Mushroom balls
Fish cake
Fried fish cake
Imitation fish pieces
Imitation crab stick
Dumplings
Tofu
Wonton
Bitter gourd slices filled with minced pork (Ok, I know it sounds weird. Something like Yong Tau Foo.)

There's still one or two more which I can't remember at this hour.

Sitting around the steamboat was so hot. I wished it were snowing... Haha. Then I would have felt the need for the Chinese to have steamboat in winter.

Happy holidays! =)