March 23, 2015

Smells So Good

After Chinese New Year's at my aunt's house, my family arrived home to the smell of yummy barbecue.


Can you guess who's who?


It seemed to be emanating from the apartment upstairs and my mom and I couldn't stop exclaiming over it.



Even though I'd just gorged on a huge feast, my saliva glands were starting to go into overdrive from the overpowering onslaught on my olfactory nerves.




After marveling at what the lovely aroma could be, we stepped through the door to our apartment, and realized: We were the fantastic cooks we were giving raving compliments to.

The smell wasn't wafting from upstairs, it was coming from our own stove.

My mom was making 蹄膀 (tí páng) earlier in the day.




But, when we came home, it had become this:




Cooking Lesson #1: The best way to produce mouth-watering food is to forget to turn off the stove when you leave the house.

March 20, 2015

Chinese New Year, Part Deux

Remember when I talked about my lovely bout with photography-fail before?

Well, it happened again.

At Chinese New Year's.

I tried to get pictures of all the food and fun we were having, of family and friends, of games we were playing that night.

But, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't capture any of the goings-on the way I wanted to.

It might be because I was doing too much of this:


But, I did manage to get these three little gems:



My cousin, Jessica.

And, that's pretty indicative of how the night went.

March 10, 2015