The Year of Ox (just hopefully) will usher in an economy recovery. This is my first Lunar New Year celebration in London. With the usual family reunion dinner (except this time round it's celebrated with friends), snacking on new year goodies non-stop (compliments from my friend who received a good supply of pineapple tarts, my favorite BBQ pork etc etc shipped all the way from Singapore by her super considerate buddy! Hmm...time for me to start hunting for such type of buddy too! :P), we had a superb time stuffing ourselves with friends. It's definitely good to hear there are some people who decide not to fly back to their home country during this festive period.
We rolled up our sleeves and went through the annual pre LNY routine of spring cleaning (not that there are many visitors anyway but let's be safe rather than sorry cos' the last thing I wanna is some hidden dirt and dust attracting some buggy visitors instead!), stocking up the house with fresh food and ingredients (for our steamboat dinner), and snacks (Ah Moy cookies of course - a substitute to LNY goodies, pineapple tarts etc etc), getting ready our new clothes and lastly searching high and low for some red scrap paper and hmm... where did I put my silver and black markers? Yah lah..trying to spice up the house a bit to create that LNY festive mood by DIYing some LNY decorations.
And finally..I am proud to present my finished product! That little cow happened to come in really handy while she carries my 'fu'! And just imagine there are a pair of oranges beside her...(What to do? I only shipped one orange over..)
And another creation of mine for my main door - a golden inverted 'fu' ! Gong Xi Gong Xi!
With our spic-and-span humble little home, we are now all ready to welcome the arrival of the Year of Ox!
The weekend of our Lunar New Year eve was packed with glutton sessions (in UK style with all our dinners served with wine!) from Dim Sum lunch (such indulgence that left us little room for afternoon tea), tea break (wonder how we manage to stuff ourselves with more food and the delicious hot apple tea!), home cooked dinner (3 course meal in Chinese style!) at a friend's house and steamboat dinner with friends at the comfort of our home...
Following is our very own steamboat dinner and shots of none other than - FOOD!. Btw, there are more food on our kitchen counter. The dining table has already reached its maximum capacity! In case you are wondering why the spread... there are four mouths to feed lah..I, YF and our 2 buddies rounded off the warm steamboat dinner with black sesame seed tung yuen (bought off the shelf kind and made in Singapore one!). London does sell such food stuff just that it costs easily twice or more...Well..festive period is the time to indulge meh!
Btw, that mug at the left hand corner of the below photo held one of the most delicious aromatic red spicy mulled warm wine I have ever tasted! This was served with a slice of orange bringing out the full aroma of the wine. Britions typically drink this wine for Christmas but I guess there's no rule stating that Chinese can't have it during CNY, right? :P
Monday - first day of LNY. YF gets ready for work in his new shoes. Work and not bai nian which we already did the day before with our family members (on line of course!). Thanks to modern day technology.
Without the luxury of any public holidays being granted to the working force of London, we had to schedule all our New Year activities during the weekends. London being such a metropolitan city does house quite a substantial population of orientals (Btw, do Note that 'Chinese' are either termed as 'Chinese' or 'Oriental' and not 'Asian' over here!). Hence, the festive mood of Lunar New Year can also be widely felt by Londoners with the streets of Chinatown lighted with thousands of red lanterns and Trafalgar Square hosting its Year celebrations and various performances.
The lunar new year work week has just passed (for YF). This weekend, we went to Trafalgar Square just to experience what it feels like to be spending LNY in London.
Lunar New Year celebration performances at Trafalgar Square.
Incidentally, it also started to snow. Notice the little white dots on the photos? You didn't really think we are such poorly skilled and shaky hand photographers, did you??
Feeling slightly hungry (must be the effect of the snowing and chilly wind!), we left Trafalgar Square and headed towards Chinatown - a mandatory destination during Lunar New Year - to hunt for our favourite subject - food.
The decorated streets of Chinatown
Chinatown in London like any other Chinatown in the rest of the world is just bursting with activities during this festive period. Operating with the mind of true businessmen, most shop owners are quick take advantage of huge crowd turnout as potential business opportunities. Temporary stores with spread of snacks, Chinese pastries, cookies, goodies etc etc are set up outside the shops or eateries. Some tea houses even converted their usual dine in space to fast food concept offering take away Chinese pastries, snacks and dim sum. It's people mountain and people sea (read Chinese idiom) but slightly lesser people compared to the one back in Singapore. Having said that, there were enough people in the eateries, dim sum places and Chinese restaurants to deter us from stepping into any dine in places! I wasn't in the mood to queue up and wait to be fed so we opt for the next best alternative. A Chinese bakery (Hong Kong style) that provides a little seating area (which is usually quite empty as customers need to pay a good 20 to 30% more to dine in instead of doing a take away!). With the freezing weather outside, I guess paying an occasional premium for a temporary 'fireplace' is worth Feng's hard earned pounds!
After our so called lunch', we decided to pack back some western tea break and head home for our own home made English tea accompanied by our newly acquired croissants - (which we picked up from a supermarket). Btw, we bought 3 different favours - plain old butter, almond and chocolate twist. The kiasuism at work again - buy 3 at a discount meh. I am advocate of FOOD and celebrating Lunar New Year with an Ah Moh style twist (inclusive of these yummy croissants!) is certainly something I find it very welcoming!
And if you think that's about all for our Lunar New Year celebration, there's more to come. Afterall, Lunar New Year isn't complete without 'Lau Yu Sheng', right?
Our first Lau Yu Sheng in London! This practice (as u know!) isn't practised by all orientals so it took a while for one of our friends (who is also a big fan of Yu Sheng) to locate a Chinese restaurant with this festive dish in their menu. We had a lovely time 'Lau'ing with friends and savouring the Yu Sheng and every much enjoying the generous portion of salmon provided.
Our first Yu Sheng in London. 年 年 有 鱼..Abundance year by year!
And the glutton sessions continue throughout the period of the Lunar New Year. We had dinner at a friend's place the every next day..comfort food of Singapore's chicken rice accompanied by lots of greens (too much in fact..enough to feed a herd of rabbits!).
We rounded up our last day of the Lunar New year with our favorite black sesame seed 湯圓 (Glutinous Rice Balls) in our home made red dates, sweet potato gingery sweet soup! Those 湯圓 are bought off the shelf (made in Singapore kind of course!). Relatively more expensive over here but at least these are available over here in Chinese supermarts..
May the Year of Ox brings lotz of luck, prosperity and peace to all! And most importantly, bulldoze us out of this recession and economic turmoil..... :P
We rolled up our sleeves and went through the annual pre LNY routine of spring cleaning (not that there are many visitors anyway but let's be safe rather than sorry cos' the last thing I wanna is some hidden dirt and dust attracting some buggy visitors instead!), stocking up the house with fresh food and ingredients (for our steamboat dinner), and snacks (Ah Moy cookies of course - a substitute to LNY goodies, pineapple tarts etc etc), getting ready our new clothes and lastly searching high and low for some red scrap paper and hmm... where did I put my silver and black markers? Yah lah..trying to spice up the house a bit to create that LNY festive mood by DIYing some LNY decorations.
And finally..I am proud to present my finished product! That little cow happened to come in really handy while she carries my 'fu'! And just imagine there are a pair of oranges beside her...(What to do? I only shipped one orange over..)
And another creation of mine for my main door - a golden inverted 'fu' ! Gong Xi Gong Xi!
With our spic-and-span humble little home, we are now all ready to welcome the arrival of the Year of Ox!The weekend of our Lunar New Year eve was packed with glutton sessions (in UK style with all our dinners served with wine!) from Dim Sum lunch (such indulgence that left us little room for afternoon tea), tea break (wonder how we manage to stuff ourselves with more food and the delicious hot apple tea!), home cooked dinner (3 course meal in Chinese style!) at a friend's house and steamboat dinner with friends at the comfort of our home...
Following is our very own steamboat dinner and shots of none other than - FOOD!. Btw, there are more food on our kitchen counter. The dining table has already reached its maximum capacity! In case you are wondering why the spread... there are four mouths to feed lah..I, YF and our 2 buddies rounded off the warm steamboat dinner with black sesame seed tung yuen (bought off the shelf kind and made in Singapore one!). London does sell such food stuff just that it costs easily twice or more...Well..festive period is the time to indulge meh!
Btw, that mug at the left hand corner of the below photo held one of the most delicious aromatic red spicy mulled warm wine I have ever tasted! This was served with a slice of orange bringing out the full aroma of the wine. Britions typically drink this wine for Christmas but I guess there's no rule stating that Chinese can't have it during CNY, right? :P
Monday - first day of LNY. YF gets ready for work in his new shoes. Work and not bai nian which we already did the day before with our family members (on line of course!). Thanks to modern day technology.Without the luxury of any public holidays being granted to the working force of London, we had to schedule all our New Year activities during the weekends. London being such a metropolitan city does house quite a substantial population of orientals (Btw, do Note that 'Chinese' are either termed as 'Chinese' or 'Oriental' and not 'Asian' over here!). Hence, the festive mood of Lunar New Year can also be widely felt by Londoners with the streets of Chinatown lighted with thousands of red lanterns and Trafalgar Square hosting its Year celebrations and various performances.
The lunar new year work week has just passed (for YF). This weekend, we went to Trafalgar Square just to experience what it feels like to be spending LNY in London.
Lunar New Year celebration performances at Trafalgar Square.Incidentally, it also started to snow. Notice the little white dots on the photos? You didn't really think we are such poorly skilled and shaky hand photographers, did you??
Feeling slightly hungry (must be the effect of the snowing and chilly wind!), we left Trafalgar Square and headed towards Chinatown - a mandatory destination during Lunar New Year - to hunt for our favourite subject - food.
The decorated streets of ChinatownChinatown in London like any other Chinatown in the rest of the world is just bursting with activities during this festive period. Operating with the mind of true businessmen, most shop owners are quick take advantage of huge crowd turnout as potential business opportunities. Temporary stores with spread of snacks, Chinese pastries, cookies, goodies etc etc are set up outside the shops or eateries. Some tea houses even converted their usual dine in space to fast food concept offering take away Chinese pastries, snacks and dim sum. It's people mountain and people sea (read Chinese idiom) but slightly lesser people compared to the one back in Singapore. Having said that, there were enough people in the eateries, dim sum places and Chinese restaurants to deter us from stepping into any dine in places! I wasn't in the mood to queue up and wait to be fed so we opt for the next best alternative. A Chinese bakery (Hong Kong style) that provides a little seating area (which is usually quite empty as customers need to pay a good 20 to 30% more to dine in instead of doing a take away!). With the freezing weather outside, I guess paying an occasional premium for a temporary 'fireplace' is worth Feng's hard earned pounds!
After our so called lunch', we decided to pack back some western tea break and head home for our own home made English tea accompanied by our newly acquired croissants - (which we picked up from a supermarket). Btw, we bought 3 different favours - plain old butter, almond and chocolate twist. The kiasuism at work again - buy 3 at a discount meh. I am advocate of FOOD and celebrating Lunar New Year with an Ah Moh style twist (inclusive of these yummy croissants!) is certainly something I find it very welcoming!
And if you think that's about all for our Lunar New Year celebration, there's more to come. Afterall, Lunar New Year isn't complete without 'Lau Yu Sheng', right?
Our first Lau Yu Sheng in London! This practice (as u know!) isn't practised by all orientals so it took a while for one of our friends (who is also a big fan of Yu Sheng) to locate a Chinese restaurant with this festive dish in their menu. We had a lovely time 'Lau'ing with friends and savouring the Yu Sheng and every much enjoying the generous portion of salmon provided.
Our first Yu Sheng in London. 年 年 有 鱼..Abundance year by year!And the glutton sessions continue throughout the period of the Lunar New Year. We had dinner at a friend's place the every next day..comfort food of Singapore's chicken rice accompanied by lots of greens (too much in fact..enough to feed a herd of rabbits!).
We rounded up our last day of the Lunar New year with our favorite black sesame seed 湯圓 (Glutinous Rice Balls) in our home made red dates, sweet potato gingery sweet soup! Those 湯圓 are bought off the shelf (made in Singapore kind of course!). Relatively more expensive over here but at least these are available over here in Chinese supermarts..
May the Year of Ox brings lotz of luck, prosperity and peace to all! And most importantly, bulldoze us out of this recession and economic turmoil..... :P
