I Love a Reason to Celebrate!

You don’t have to be Chinese to celebrate Chinese New Year. You just have to love a great party and having fun! It doesn’t hurt if you adore the culture and foods as I do.  Chinese New Year is the 23rd of January this year. I think a small get together to bring in the lunar year is in order : ).

I love the vibrant colors of red black and gold and I love that this is the year of the Dragon. The most colorful symbol in all of Asia. I’ve always wanted to run and jump under the giant dragon as it passed : ).

 I love the culture so much and when we lived in Los Angeles, My husband and I visited China town often. We actually made a couple of the parades. We had a special restaurant there. Quan Mann’s. It's where we had gone since we had dated. And we always planned and devoted an entire day and an evening to enjoy all it had to offer. Those were special and very romantic times. We loved walking through the town during the day and dining on the restaurant's beautiful balcony at night.

This year I’m planning to celebrate with a spread of “good luck” dishes that include, fish, oranges and lots of noodles. I have a beautiful new wok I’ve been itching to try out.

I’m going to dress the table with a black cloth and some gold confetti. I think adding some red candles will just set it off. I’ll place red envelopes (leisee) stuffed with chocolate coins and my wish for good luck at one end of the table. I’ll wrap the chopsticks in a red napkin and tie them together with gold and black skinny ribbon. Add a bowl of fortune cookies, some balloons and paper lanterns and I think the table will look great. I have miscellaneous oriental dishes I never get to use, so this is the perfect occasion to pull them out.

For cocktails I can’t go wrong with Mai Tais.
And for games, find your partner is fun. I found this game on line. But instead of buying cards, I will just print duplicate Chinese pictures of zodiac signs, animals or other symbols. You Pin one of each of the pictures to each guest’s back and send them off to find their partner. But they can’t tell what's on each others backs. They must first figure out who they are by asking questions which can be answered only by Yes or No. How fun is this?

Another fun game is teaching your friends and family to use chop sticks. Those that have already mastered this won’t be worried, but they better hope they are skilled in eating rice with them, because that’s the trick. Once everyone thinks they have it down, you serve the rice. The guest that has the least amount of rice on the table and their bibs, wins! " Chop Stick Wars" : ).

I can't wait!

You know, I have this sudden craving for sweet & sour plum seeds, humm... ; )

“Gung Hay Fat Choy!”

(Happy New Year!)