Spring Festival – Our Celebration
A few things I’ve picked up from my talks with people:
- Like Christmas, part of the memories here are of the whole family being present.
- Food prep is a huge part of things.
And these two things are a huge part of our own celebrations now.
The cool thing I’ve discovered is that we actually have more family present for our Spring Festival celebrations than we do for Christmas. Cousin’s who spend Christmas with their husband’s families in another city don’t have a conflict for CNY. Nieces and nephews that spend Christmas with mom one year and dad the next can spend CNY with us every year, not every other year. I’ve had over 30 people present for Spring Festival. My dining room table is meant to hold 10 people comfortably, but we can get 18 at it if we use a bench for the kids and squeeze a bunch of them onto it, and then use extra chairs at the sides and corners for other people. But for over 30 people we have to set up tables in the kitchen and the kids and a few adults have to eat in there… but that’s okay. It’s still a very fun day. And everyone should be relegated to the children’s table at least once during childhood, right?
One concession we make is that we celebrate it on a weekend day if it happens to fall during the week. We usually go out to eat on the actual CNY, just us and grandparents, when it falls during the week, and then have the big celebration that weekend.
As for the day of our celebration though, as I said yesterday, we now make everything from scratch. The jiaozi have a stuffing that includes fake ground sausage, there are veggie eggrolls, the stir fry has fake chicken in it along with a ton of veggies, the rice is cooked in the rice cooker and sticks together so you can eat it with chopsticks, RK has finally found a noodle recipe that tastes like some of the noodles we got in China, I have a great aunt who learned how to make egg drop soup from scratch in a cooking class a few decades ago so she makes the soup, and, well, there is a whole lot of food.
I set stations up around the kitchen (I have a large kitchen, thank goodness) and at each station are the ingredients and directions for each item. For something that gets prepared later than other things and has refrigerated parts, the parts are all together in a labeled gallon sized Gladware container in the fridge. There are notes on on each paper to say what time that item’s preparation should begin, and I have a master sheet so I can keep an eye on everything and make sure it’s on schedule and step in to help on things running behind schedule. As someone finishes something they get herded over to either help roll eggrolls or put the jiaozi together – this is done at the extra table brought out, and those doing this sit around doing eggrolls and jiaozi towards the end. (I still can’t roll an eggroll and get it to stay together right, but I feel like an expert with the jiaozi. Luckily, we have a few people who are good at rolling eggrolls.) The first couple of years of this took a whole lot of planning, but we do the same recipes every year now and it’s not that hard anymore. The family is all in the kitchen, working together, asking for things, teasing each other, telling stories. Our den is just off of the kitchen, and the kids play in there with a few adults to help supervise them. The food prep is fun, even if it is a lot of work, and it makes eating it that much more of a family thing.
RK and I have had to accumulate a few extra things in order to pull this off. I’ve never owned a deep fryer before, but we bought a large one so we could properly make the eggrolls. We already had a rice cooker, but I ran across a humongous rice cooker on closeout a few years ago and bought it, so we can now make a lot of rice when we need to. The deep fryer and large rice cooker basically get used once a year, but they were well worth it.
We also have enough chopsticks so everyone present gets a set, though most of our family doesn’t even attempt them anymore, they go straight for the fork. We’ve got cheater chopsticks
The kids love to eat noodles, as they get to follow Chinese table manners, which means they get to slurp their noodles. I am very clear with all of them that when eating American noodles they must follow American table manners, but while they are at my house eating Chinese noodles, they can slurp all they want.
And when it’s all done, there are oranges. Lots and lots of oranges.
Do I think you have to do the food from scratch? Nope, not at all. I think it’s perfectly okay to buy frozen dumplings and eggrolls and one of those big stirfry kits and do it all the easy way. I think it’s even okay to buy it all from a Chinese restaurant and bring it home. I’m lucky that I have one of those families that loves any excuse at all to get together, and they love that we’ve now got a new tradition that is so much fun. Also, we didn’t do all of this at once. The first few years we had frozen dumplings that went in the steamer and frozen eggrolls that went in the oven, and egg drop soup that came from an envelope, though we did the rice ourselves, and attempted various noodle recipes from scratch, and did the stirfry ourselves. We’ve gradually built on it until we have what we do today. Do whatever works for you. And, if you’re going to attempt some of this from scratch, experiment around with one thing at a time for dinner. Eggrolls are seriously hard to roll and make stay together. And there is an art to folding the dumplings over and crimping them down.
Okay, so that’s my discussion of food. And this has been pretty long already. Tomorrow I’ll talk about our other traditions around the Spring Festival holiday.
January 9th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
This has made me very hungry!!!! Might need to post some recipes! I am still learning about all things Chinese to get a better understanding and to the Spring Festival, what is the actual day?
Thanks, this has given me thought, I want to start some traditions before as well.
L
January 9th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
My sister’s husband is Chinese and therefore we have celebrated Chinese New Year and other traditions for many years. She is an awesome cook and makes great Chinese food all year long. For Chinese New Year we have a large celebration with the whole family.
January 9th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
This sounds like a fun tradition to start. Homemade eggrolls – yum!
January 9th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Master schedule?? Wow you are organized.
I would also second that you don’t have to cook all this stuff from scratch. Trader Joe’s makes very good dumplings/potstickers. They also make a very good shumi (sp?), which is another type of dumpling. You can also go out to a restaurant and have a big meal there. Actually there are lots of Chinese families that do that. If you live near a Chinatown, you can also order whole roasted chicken, duck or pig for your feast.
Our first year, we marched into a Chinese bakery and just started pointing at things we wanted to try. The clerks also gave us suggestions and shouted out instructions like fry this, steam that, eat as is. It was not a very balanced feast, but it was a ton of fun and we learned a lot about various Chinese foods.
January 9th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
I stumbled across an excellent summary of the myths that non-Chinese Americans have about Chinese food.
http://adopttalkcanada.com/forum/index.php?topic=331.0
For example, fortune cookies are not common in China.
January 9th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
What I find interesting about fortune cookies is that they are not Chinese, but they definitely are part of the Chinese American culture. At several Chinese events (not adopted families), they hand out fortune cookies to the kids.
January 9th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Oh my…rice cookers are one of the handiest kitchen items around and are great for much more than just cooking rice.
The larger ones are great for steaming all kids of veggies (broccoli, potatoes, hard squashes, artichokes and such). It is also great for cooking grains, steel cut oatmeal and soups. One on my favorite uses is for making quick and fast polenta and steaming eggs in their shells which come out like poached.
I would be lost without my rice cookers both large and small. They get used several times a week.
So dust off your rice cookers and give these kitchen work horses a try…
samba in sac
http://www.talesfromthebigtomato.blogspot.com
January 9th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Oh, my goodness. It always amazes me how much you get done, RQ. I thought I was organized and able to accomplish quite a bit, but you take the cake! And you seem to accomplish everything so perfectly. Are you sure you’re real? Have you pinched yourself lately?
Thanks for all the great info and advice; it is truly appreciated. You’re an inspiration and a reference to boot!
January 9th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Agreed, Tresordasie! Thinking that RQ is in constant motion until she drops off to sleep at night.
Samba, was looking at rice cookers just yesterday. Thank you for listing all the other uses! There were a few different sizes so is it better to get a bigger one or a smaller one?
January 9th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
WOW! I am impressed. But I admit it, I’ll never be able to pull off Christmas and 2 sons birthdays in January & February AND CNY…Will I be okay to raise my daughter with American traditions? Yes, I think it will, but i aplaude those who can do it all.
January 9th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
I LOVE LOVE LOVE your last two posts RQ. We have celebrated the last 3 spring festivals by going downtown for the events by the large Asian organizations in our community. We dress up in our clothes we bought in China and do the games, eat the food etc. I think having a family gathering is a great idea. A fond memory I have from the past is when I was 8 years old and Mrs. Wong, my fourth grade teacher gave all of her students lucky money in red envelopes and served us oranges. You do not forget the fun traditions. How wise of you to start this for your kids.
January 9th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
Wow you’re organized! Would LOVE to take a peak at your master lists:) Also, would love some great recipes. Do you share?! Also, are there foods that are traditional for Spring Festival or is any type of Chinese food ok?
January 9th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
Katri: We celebrate Chanukah, Christmas, DD’s b-day (today) and DH’s b-day (next week). It is tough this year because CNY is so early, but we would never dream of not doing CNY. Would our DD be OK if we didn’t celebrate it? I don’t know. One thing we have learned from adult Korean adoptees is that many of them resented not learning about Korean culture. Plus we have really come to love this holiday.
January 10th, 2009 at 10:12 am
The master schedule just shows what time each item’s preparation should begin, and for some items gives times that steps for an item should be complete so the next step can start. Someone has to keep an eye on the big picture and try to have completion of the various foods finished about the same time. I’m the host, so that’s me.
I should also say that two years ago I didn’t have the time, the nerves, or the energy to put it all together. We did a very simplified version of it that year, with various family members bringing a dish (some made themselves, some picked up at a restaurant). And the dishes we were responsible for were bought frozen at the Asian Market and then placed into the steamer for very simple preparation. If you can’t put it together without over stressing yourself then simplify it. Seriously, holidays are supposed to be fun, if they aren’t, make changes until they are.
We do use our small rice cooker probably once a week. It’s the big one that only gets used once a year.
As for traditional foods, that would be the jiaozi, though they are eaten on New Year’s Eve in China. Noodles seem to be pretty traditional, too. And fruit to end it. The main thing is that you want to start the year off with prosperity, so a huge spread is what you’re going for. I’ve seen some families say they have to have one of every kind of meat (so, pig and chicken and fish and I don’t know what else, since we don’t do meat).
We also have two birthdays in January and February, and sometimes CNY hits at the same time as a birthday, which can complicate things. We’ve always figured it out, though.
January 10th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Sounds like an amazing celebration at your house! I don’t suppose you’d part with your recipes? I’m a vegetarian too…
Thanks!
January 10th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
RQ: I think a lot of families have pork, fish and duck (or chicken)–which is a lot of meat. This year we are responsible for bringing the duck to someone’s house for CNY.