New Year in Taipei 2013: making dumplings
since everyone stayed up waaay past midnight the other night, we decided to all sleep in the following New Year's Day. granted Taiwan celebrates the Chinese New Year, but there's still a day off on January 1st as the day the "R.O.C." (Republic of China) was founded. since it landed on a Tuesday this year, the Monday before it automatically becomes a day off. it's a system they have for longer weekends and holidays ^_^;;
we'd already way in advanced that we'd make dumplings on New Year's Day. it's actually good luck to make dumplings over the Chinese New Year (the shape of the dumpling looks like a gold nugget that was used in the past as money; thus eating dumplings brings in wealth and luck), but since i won't be there on February 10th, we decided to do it earlier ^_^ since most of the morning was spent sleeping in, we spent the rest of the day at home just prepping and making dumplings. :)
dad took me through the whole process of mincing the meat, chopping onions, garlic and ginger, and then mixing in the seasonings. it seems quite easy since all you're doing is mixing everything in, but it takes a lot of time to prep. :P
after my dad mixed up the magic, it was time for us ladies to fold those little dumplings! my mom took me through folding dumplings 101, which you can see in the vid below:
so, my first few tries were horrible, but after about 30 some dumplings later, my dumplings started looking half decent!
4 hours later of just folding dumplings, my mom said that i'd gotten up to their standards, which i thought was just her being sweet because my dumplings looked pretty decent, but they looked down right ugly next to my mom's beautifully shaped and folded ones on the plate ^_^;; i'm not sure how many dumplings we actually made since dad kept on cooking the plates that we had finished filling up. guessing by how much we all ate, we definitely folded over 80 dumplings ^_^;;;
they of course came out deliciously yummy and had so much juice inside that i thought i was eating Tang Bao! XD
so, where was Kay through all of this? well, Kay had a playdate that day with one of her old friends T-kun. he's the son of an old friend of hubs, and he's also like Kay, half Japanese and half Taiwanese. the day before, i'd made Kay's hair wavy by letting her sleep in braids. she liked it so much that i decided to try curling her hair using the paper bag curling technique. i saw Michelle Phan do it once, and thought it was pretty nifty :) so on New Year's Eve, me and mom curled Kay's hair as she sat in front of the TV and she went to bed with her hair all up in curlers. the end result: Asian Shirley Temple hair!!!! XD
since some of the curlers were loose or had fallen off during the night, some of her hair didn't curl right, but over all it looked pretty cute ^_^ it lasted pretty much the whole day and Kay looked really cute with her hair up in two big curly pigtails. ^_^
the day seemed to go by so fast from all that dumpling business. the next day wasn't going to be that fun though since there were more errands we had to do, not to mention Kay still had one more vaccination to get. so, we turned it in early that night to wake up bright and early the next morning.
we'd already way in advanced that we'd make dumplings on New Year's Day. it's actually good luck to make dumplings over the Chinese New Year (the shape of the dumpling looks like a gold nugget that was used in the past as money; thus eating dumplings brings in wealth and luck), but since i won't be there on February 10th, we decided to do it earlier ^_^ since most of the morning was spent sleeping in, we spent the rest of the day at home just prepping and making dumplings. :)
dad took me through the whole process of mincing the meat, chopping onions, garlic and ginger, and then mixing in the seasonings. it seems quite easy since all you're doing is mixing everything in, but it takes a lot of time to prep. :P
after my dad mixed up the magic, it was time for us ladies to fold those little dumplings! my mom took me through folding dumplings 101, which you can see in the vid below:
Click to viewso, my first few tries were horrible, but after about 30 some dumplings later, my dumplings started looking half decent!
4 hours later of just folding dumplings, my mom said that i'd gotten up to their standards, which i thought was just her being sweet because my dumplings looked pretty decent, but they looked down right ugly next to my mom's beautifully shaped and folded ones on the plate ^_^;; i'm not sure how many dumplings we actually made since dad kept on cooking the plates that we had finished filling up. guessing by how much we all ate, we definitely folded over 80 dumplings ^_^;;;
they of course came out deliciously yummy and had so much juice inside that i thought i was eating Tang Bao! XD
so, where was Kay through all of this? well, Kay had a playdate that day with one of her old friends T-kun. he's the son of an old friend of hubs, and he's also like Kay, half Japanese and half Taiwanese. the day before, i'd made Kay's hair wavy by letting her sleep in braids. she liked it so much that i decided to try curling her hair using the paper bag curling technique. i saw Michelle Phan do it once, and thought it was pretty nifty :) so on New Year's Eve, me and mom curled Kay's hair as she sat in front of the TV and she went to bed with her hair all up in curlers. the end result: Asian Shirley Temple hair!!!! XD
since some of the curlers were loose or had fallen off during the night, some of her hair didn't curl right, but over all it looked pretty cute ^_^ it lasted pretty much the whole day and Kay looked really cute with her hair up in two big curly pigtails. ^_^
the day seemed to go by so fast from all that dumpling business. the next day wasn't going to be that fun though since there were more errands we had to do, not to mention Kay still had one more vaccination to get. so, we turned it in early that night to wake up bright and early the next morning.