CNY dinner

Come to think of it, this would be our first reunion and Spring Festival in Beijing. Sherry and Yee Wee invited us to their place for reunion dinner. Ci Tong and hubby Chiam joined us as well!
Sherry prepared a huge spread of steam boat dinner. plenty of meat, toufu and vegetables (quite healthy!).
Robina and I contributed a "pen cai" dish which we "tabao" (took away) from a Cantonese restaurant. this popular dish from Hong Kong, evolved from frugal habits of peasant families. They would dumped leftover festive dishes from the reunion dinner and steamed it over rice in a wooden basin to eat over the rest of CNY (those days don have frig!).
Ci Tong brought Taiwanese sausages which was estatically delicious! it's next to impossible to find good Taiwanese sausages in China. I had to bring back two packets from our last trip to Taipei.
dinner was great and we ate too fast! we went downstairs to let off some fireworks (see next post). it was a mild affair compared to the rest of Beijing...
Ethan got his ang pows! we played cards and had "tang yuan" dumplings before we welcomed the CNY at the stroke of midnight and skyline was lit up by fireworks!