Eating through Chinese New Year

Have you ever seen these before?


Rat shell pastry (no, seriously)
Originally uploaded by Tym.

Apparently, it's a Teochew snack with a name that translates to "rat shell cake/pastry"; small wonder it's only produced once a year for the Chinese New Year season. The filling tastes like ang koo kueh, while the "rat shell" was pretty bland, like any other plastic-looking Chinese kueh staple. This overhead view made me think of rats' ears myself.

So that was the surprise food amidst the otherwise typical spread at the aunt's place: vegetarian beehoon (rice vermicelli), fried chicken wings, yam cake, pumpkin cake, bak kwa (pork jerky) and assorted New Year cookies. At grandmother's house, there was fruit and New Year cookies, some of which I felt compelled to eat since the grandmother was mildly perturbed that I'd lost weight.

On the second day of the new year, I decided to give Chinese New Year goodies a miss and finish the Cocoa Krispies instead. It occurs to me that eating Cocoa Krispies is a lot like eating chocolate-flavoured air.

However, seasonal snacking resumed over mahjong, washed down alternately by Green Spot or some kind of vodka beverage. (We should've had Malibu pineapple prepared --- that would've been the perfect thirst-quencher mid-afternoon, during the weather's baking-in-an-oven phase.) I'd had a first Green Spot the night before, shared with Terz, and even so, my teeth started to hurt when we were about two-thirds of the way through it. However, the second and third cans (shared with BoKo this time) went down more smoothly. Maybe my teeth have simply given up and caved (ha ha) in.

Proof positive of my achieving auntie-dom:

Me: Want a Green Spot?
G: You have Green Spot? Where did you get Green Spot?
Me: Sheng Siong.
G: You went to Sheng Siong? With all the aunties?

For dinner, there's nothing more traditional on a public holiday than delivery fast food. Look how Sarpino's personalised the occasion for us:


Gongxi facai from Sarpino's Pizza
Originally uploaded by Tym.

(This is not to knock Sarpino's Pizza, by the way. They're the best delivery pizza around; we've given up on all competitors ever since they started delivering to our area. If they don't deliver to your neighbourhood, then you need to move to someplace where they do.)

Today, I declined an invitation to stuff myself silly on non-Chinese New Year food at Kuishin-Bo's Japanese buffet. Instead I came home to leftovers, and will continue to detox, in preparation for my third lo hei at tomorrow night's dinner...

For all that I blog about food, notice how I never actually make any myself?