[Sca-cooks] So... Lunar New Year coming up again!

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Hullo, the list!

I've been disgustingly busy and my computer is dying slowly (a  
replacement arrives Tuesday, I hear), but the show must go on. The  
Lunar New Year arrives in less than 24 hours, and this time I'm not  
doing the cooking.

We went to a sort of preview at my sister-in-law's house this  
evening, and had a family-style dinner with winter melon soup with  
Smithfield ham shreds, followed by stir-fried watercress with  
fermented bean-curd sauce, chopped-up roast pig with hoisin dip, soy- 
sauce chicken with ginger-and-scallion oil, shrimp and roast pork  
stir-fried with asparagus slivers and black mushrooms, plain blanched  
bok choy, more shrimp stir-fried with garlic chives, red-cooked  
cuttlefish, and, for some unaccountable reason, chopped pig's feet  
braised with white radish.

With the exception of the roast pig (bought at a restaurant, I  
assume), my mother-in-law did the cooking.

Tomorrow we're going to get up early, see what looks good at the  
markets (if we can find a Chinese market open) and go over and cook  
dinner at my Mom's house. We brought home a whole soy-sauce-braised  
chicken from this evening, so that's one dish, then we have to come  
up with a shrimp dish, jai/Buddhist Delight, 2 fried fish and at  
least two steamed sweet Chinese sausages, and probably a pork dish  
and maybe cilantro egg-flower soup, which is a favorite of my mother's.

Normally, at home, we do a minimum of nine dishes, but my Mom's  
kitchen is a little small and we're not ultra-familiar with  
everything there, so keeping it just a tad simpler seems like a good  
idea.

We'll do our usual household dinner next week; I'm not sure yet what  
we'll serve.

Happy New Year to all, and to all a good night!

Adamantius



______________________________
Dr. Moreau: Ouran, I want you to follow that man, and put your  
fingers around his throat and squeeze it until he dies.

Ouran / Ape Man: But the law!

Dr. Moreau: No law tonight...

                 -- Island of Lost Souls, RKO Studios, 1933