Toss to a Prosperous New Year!

This chinese new year was real fun! Family gathering and house visits were never a miss. The Lunar New Year is one of the most important occasion of the year in Singapore, most shops would stop operations for a week, so visitors please avoid coming for holiday during this period! LOL

On the eve of the Chinese New Year, most families would have a union dinner at home with their family. Steamboat and ingredients were prepared by my dad and mum. Common ingredients are meat, seafood, vegetables etc, the more we add the soup taste sweeter.

Steamboat Image from yahoo images

One other practice we had on the eve is having the children stay up late at night. It is a myth that the later the children sleeps the longevity the parents would have. I usually stayed up till 3 or 4am and what I normally do is play games and watch tv but what I did this year was sewing... Hahaha....

What are these? These are red packets which are also known as "Ang Baos". Cash notes were inserted into these Ang Baos and given to the children and singles by our married elderly. It's a form of blessings given to the young, I am happy that I am still entitled to received them!

Ang Baos have different designs on them. They comes in different colour, shapes and sizes, most importantly is how much money that is inside...LOL
Do you know that the cash amount in them must be an EVEN amount?

One of our Chinese Traditional here is to have "Yu Sheng", it's a mix platter with shredded carrots, ginger, green and white radish, deep-fried flour crisps, crushed peanuts, sesame seeds, cinnamon and salmon. Lastly, a generous portion of plum sauce was poured in. Each family member holding chopsticks would stand around the table with the Yu Sheng in the middle, once shouted 1-2-3, we would begin tossing the Yu Sheng. The higher we toss, the better the new year be. We will mix and toss with new year greetings and pharses, you can imagine it like the way u toss the salad.

Yu Sheng preparation

The aftermath after tossing

Look at the mess!

This year we have close to 20 members tossing so it's a mess! Yu Sheng can be found on the floor as well, you can imagine how sticky it would be... LOL
Watch my youtube video below of our toss!

I hope you enjoy reading what I wrote today, Happy New Year!

Hugs, Wayne