Happy Year Of The Horse! (2014)

Happy (early) Chinese New Year everyone! Only 2 more days to go before the Chinese Lunar New Year Celebration begins on 1/31!! This year, is the year of the Horse (which just so happens to be my mom's zodiac sign as well!) Our family does celebrate the New Years a bit, and even though we don't go all out with a 15 day celebration, I'm still super excited for the day to come! Usually on these days, we spend our morning calling our family to check in and chat. In the afternoon, we begin cooking our meals for night and at night, we have our huge feast!!
To prep for our feast, my mom went out on Monday and brought lots of delicious Chinese food and treats for us! She also stopped by our family's restaurant and picked up some more food!!

This photo was taken on the spur of the moment!  So excuse any mess/tiredness looking.

I personally am a huge fan of the snacks that my mom picked up since they are the best! We don't get to have them that often so I am always quite excited when we have them in the house. Personally, I don't like a lot of the restaurant food since I honestly feel that it taste quite different from the Chinese food I grew up with hehe. I also am very limited when it comes to Chinese meals/takeout since I am a vegetarian. A lot of the foods contain meat and even the vegetables are mixed with meat! Thankfully, my family knew this and they prepared an entire container of just fried tofu for me =)

Here are some of the foods that we picked up at the restaurant!
1. Fried tofu- this is delicious and my favorite thing ever from the restaurant. It's basically tofu that is deep fried hehe. Chinese New Year only comes once!
2.Fried Rice- This is pretty delicious too though I don't really eat it. It's fried rice with eggs, ham and shrimp!
3. Sweet and Sour Soup- I like this soup a lot and I actually did not really know the american word for this food item. It turns out that the translation for this soup to English is very similar to it's chinese name!
4. Rice Noodles (?? maybe) - These are super tasty. I love eating these when they are meatless and I actually have these for breakfast sometimes. The noodles that I have for breakfast aren't drenched in sauce. Instead they are wrapped around something called "oil stick .. Youtiao in chinese.. it sounds a lot better in chinese than english hehe!"

I was so excited to see that my mom had brought these items! You might not know what these are, but the red bags actually contain tapioca pearls. These pearls are the ones that are used to make Boba tea!!! My mom buys these pearls to use to make her own boba tea! If you've never had boba before, it basically is a sweet tea with these "balls" on the bottom. The balls are squishy and remind me a bit of eating mochi.

In the green bags here, there is what is called glutinous rice flour. Baking with this flour gives a result of a treat that is super sticky. I guess that is what the glutinous stands for?? My mom uses this flour to make something called "Nian Gao." Nian means sticky in chinese and gao means cake so I guess Nian Gao translates to sticky cake!

This is another huge favorite of mine. They are called "green onion pancakes" and I actually had these a lot when I was in NY. They are similar to pancakes, but different with the fact that these are more savory than sweet and much. It's contains leeks and after cooking, it becomes very crispy and thinner than pancakes. You can eat these pancakes the way that they are (which is what I do) or you could choose to wrap it around other vegetables/meat. 

These cookies are another big favorite of mine ever since I was a child. I asked my mom to get these and I'm happy that she got two bags of them. These cookies are called "wan wan" cookies and they are a combination of sweet and savory. The cookies itself it very crispy and has a salty flavor to it. However the white pieces that you see on top of the cookie is pure sweetness. The combo of sweet and salty when you take a bite into this cookies is what makes it taste so good to me!! 

These two items here are both types of tofu. I'm sure you guys know what tofu is, but you might not have heard of these types. The first one is a fried spice tofu. In my opinion, this is a heavily seasoned tofu that is fried and than frozen. It's very salted, but it taste so good!! My mom usually pan fries it with some vegetables and it makes a pretty good dish! 

The 2nd picture is of something called bean thread. I honestly think these foods sound 10x tastier when said in chinese rather than english. These is basically tofu that is dried and packaged. As you can tell from the ingredients, the bean thread only contains two ingredients, soy beans and water. In order to cook these, you have to first soak them in water for a couple of hours to soften them. We typically cook these by pan frying it with either vegetables or noodles! =)

The last two items that were purchased are some vegetables and soy sauce!! (hehe yes, soy sauce is a must for us!) We picked up 3 different vegetables- chinese cabbage, taro/yam, and a white carrot. I love chinese cabbage and taro so much. (I could care less for the white carrot!) I love using taro in desserts and steamed buns!

It's been very busy lately in our house as we prep for Chinese New Year. We want to do everything from cleaning to paying bills to shopping before Friday hits. The reason for this is because we want Friday to be completely stress free! It's not good to have stress on this day because that means you will be stressed for the entire year. Before I go, I wanted to share with you some of our Chinese New Year Traditions  =)  -

Have A Clean Home- This is essential since cleaning on Friday = sweeping away your money! 

Eat Sweets- The more you eat, the sweeter your year will be! 

No Arguing/Bad Words- If you argue on this day, it means you will have a bad relationship with that person for the rest of the year! 

No Napping- This is a sign of laziness! 

Don't Wash Your Hair- Like cleaning your house, washing your hair symbolizes washing away your 

wealth!

Wear Red- Red symbolizes luck and fortune so it's best to wear as much of it as possible! 

As you can tell, there are a lot of things you must and mustn't do on Chinese New Year. I don't firmly believe all of them, but I still follow them just because...! The main idea behind all these rules is basically to be on your best behavior on that day and relax. It is believed that what you do on the first day is what you will be doing for the rest of the year! 

With that being said, I wanted to wish all of you a Happy Chinese New Year (if you celebrate it)!! 

Have you tried of any of the foods that we got?

Do you celebrate Chinese New Years?

What are some traditions that you have?