On 30 January, as most Chinese households do, my family celebrated the Pai Ti Gong day. Unlike those previous years, no meat and sugar canes were used this year. Well, firstly, mom wants everything to be VEGETARIAN and secondly, everyone in my family is of Cantonese descent except for mom.
The Preparations for this event are nowhere easy. In fact, they were ridiculously tedious and exhausting, especially the sweetmeats, such as mee koo and kuih angku. My mom even told me: "Without you, I would have slept when making this much of kuih!"
I say: YES!!! Why? Well, making mee koo demands the strength of both shoulders. You have to knead the dough by pulling and pushing either side of the dough alternately until the mee koo dough was elastic. The dough is then ready to be shaped before being left to rise and later, steamed. It sounds easy, but in fact, it takes a long time! Until today, the intense pain is still constantly haunting me...
It's OKAY! I will not fear of mee koo because of this!!!
(For how the Mee Koo looks like, click here.)
http://sharonnghy94.blogspot.com/2009/07/roti-cina.html
How about the Ang Koo? Mom did most of the jobs, of course. Anyway, she was the "sifu", right? I was the rookie. All I did was to oil the steamed ang koo and trim the leaves which are the ang koo kuihs' base. Sounds easy, right? Yeah, you got it right, it SOUNDED easy. The ang koos were indeed steaming hot and carrying them using bare hands was no easy feat indeed! Besides, I had to do the oil job really quick because the cakes would taste gooey once they were oiled when cold. (Imagine a gooey ang koo kuih, God bless...!!! )
Come midnight, it was the long-awaited God's birthday! I did not need to fear much-I am no longer a high-school student! Who cares about sleeping late, then?
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| All-vegetarian fare this year. Great! Go-Green at the same time and kill less animals! (P/S: the stickers on the offerings, ang koo and mee koo-are part of my "masterpiece", hehe... |
Having firecrakers beating the otherwise calm and murky night azure is all in a day's work. For that night, WOW! It was-emm, maybe- a fireworks parade in a moderate scale. However, it rendered me considerably awed. (Sorry for my terrible skills in photography, though...)
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| My relatively messy home. |
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| My sis and mine's masterpiece! |
Huh, what a tired day indeed!
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