Chinese New Year Dinner: January 22nd, 2011

These are about two weeks late since Chinese New Year was on January 23rd but we celebrated it on January 22nd since it was a Sunday. I left the camera at home and forgot to stuff it hastily in my bag without my dad noticing bring it with me. The camera is basically divided between my Dad and I, usually dependent on our flip-flop interest in photography. Since I need it more for blogging fun / product reviews, I get it for the next few months.

Yay!

So this is the middle section, it all looks very sterile actually. We had more meats on opposing sides but this part was basically all veggies. There are some beef balls (excellent) and fish balls (blaugh) on the left hand side. The lotus slices (1o points if you can spot it!) were really yummy and had a nice sticky / crispy consistency. We also had a few plates of mussels (not my fav but popular amongst adults), some seaweed and squid. I was seated to the right side of the table so many of these veggies were lost to me. I ended up with more meat-y things.

Om nom nom.

Sauces!

Usually, my mom buys 2-3 flavors. The blue one is the plain seasoning and the red one is for spicy seasoning. We also had some peanut butter dipping (which you can mix with the sauces, it tastes amazing) but I couldn't find it at the time. I can't deal with spice so my side was the plain seasoning. I ended up getting a little -_- at the end because everyone deviated to the hot side and I was salvaging goods for the plain side. T_T

#foreveralone

Ah scooping.

We ran into the slight issue of accidentally using the same scoop for both side (why -_- WHY) and my side (on the right of the silver divider) ended up being spicy anyway.

Searching searching.

The most "tedious" part of hot pot would be finding the object you want and trying not to ruin it (the meat slices are thin and sometimes stick together) on the way to your plate.

Aha! Target acquired!

I really enjoyed a lot of the veggies on the "hot" side, actually. It doesn't soak in (so to speak), it just coats it lightly so you get a bit of flavoring but it doesn't cause me to hack up a lung.

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All in all, I had a really nice Chinese New Year weekend. The only downside was that I had so many things due that Monday that I was flailing everywhere. I also left my glasses on campus so I had to complete everything before my eyes started shutting down on me.

I'm very happy that I have ~ my ~ camera back. I haven't shot anything in months. Shall start practice again!