Lunar New Year @ BISHAN

John and I slept with Swissotel Stamford when we went back to Singapore to spend Lunar New Year with my family. We got a generously-sized room on the 56th floor and this is the view we had. Not bad, huh? 

We even had breakfast at Cafe Swiss a couple of mornings, very enjoyably civilised. Naturally I indulged and gorged myself through the brekky spread although I couldn't persuade a ten-year old German girl on the culinary delight of eating croissants with kaya and butter, she was happy with her bread (brot?) rolls.

As you might already know from my previous blogsite, Lunar New Year in our household revolves around three F's - Family, Food and more Food. This year is again, no exception. Mom cooked up a storm and we have food coming out of our ears. I mean there is only so much we can eat before we have to wave the white flag. And that's just the New Year cakes and cookies!

The feast started with Reunion Dinner where we had steamboat complemented by black-pepper crab (John's favourite!) and lup-mei (a hodge-podge of winter meats like dried sausage, dried duck, dried roast meat). For the steamboat ingredients, we were treated to abalone, prawns (both pond and sea-water varieties), fishballs, mushrooms, pork livers (my favourite!), fish, squid, crab claws, yong tau hoo (literally stuffed bean curd), and seven kinds of vegetable of which I can't even begin to 

translate into English here. And so I won't.

And honestly I lost track as we ate our way into the first two days of Lunar New Year. But I do remember we had yu sheng (Mandarin) aka lo hei (Cantonese) on the second day. This is the New Year tradition where we toss the stuff on the lo hei dish into the air, signifying "tossing up good fortune", a notion very popular in our household. Very messy, very noisy but very good to eat too, i.e. if you have a sweet tooth. Mom has her secret ingredient which she adds to the dish, and she ain't telling any of us. 

Anyway, I won't worry about it. Some things are best left secret. I plan to enjoy every morsel of it. In fact I have to fight mom off for the last bits that were lingering on the yu sheng dish long after everyone had their fill. 

I love spending Lunar New Year with my family.