When I think about it, I celebrated New Year's Eve with Mystery Man! Ha ~ after so many New Year's without a man or with one who wished he wasn't with me. And tonight I had a wonderful family New Year's dinner by candlelight...
I was transported tonight back to another time that my stepfather made a Chinese feast, only it was when I was a child and he wasn't my stepfather then. You see David and his wife had 6 children and my mother and her second husband had 6 children. We rented their barn on an island in Maine in the summer and visited each other in either Providence or Lincoln during the winter.
On the particular night I'm recalling, David had made many fillings for egg rolls to be cooked in pork fat. I believe there were vegetarian, fish, chicken and pork fillings. I'm guessing with four fillings and 12 children that the assembly lines consisted of three kids per filling. I remember music, lively conversations and hours of stuffing, folding and sealing egg rolls. The parents drank and conversed and made dipping sauces (per David's directions. He was born in China and knew how things should taste).
I can remember the smell of the hot oil, seeing the smoke over the wok (a first for me at age 10 or so) and being told we were going to eat with our fingers or chopsticks. This was all wildly exotic and oddly familiar; as both families loved cooking and experimenting. I remember being really hungry by the time all food was cooked, and the crunch of the fried wrapper and spices in each filling.
Tonight's Chinese dinner was just as delicious, but no assembly line was required. Just David and Mom in the kitchen, with our minimal help with prep. Chicken with ginger and garlic. Shrimp with pea pods, and cilantro. Green beans with garlic. Fancy Thai jasmine rice. Sesame oil and soy sauce on the side. We all had seconds. Dessert was very New England; Indian pudding, brownies, turtles (from me to Mom for Valentines), Vanilla and Coffee-heathbar crunch for ala mode options.
Long conversations about college (my daughter is a Junior), middle school kids (son in Jr. High, daughter coaching Jr. High Speech & Debate team), our weekly events, winter weather and it's terrible grip on our vacation/houses/state of mind, Valentines/President's Day/Mardi Gras/Ash Wednesday and finally Chinese New Year! My mother is the queen of holiday installations. Minimalistic and yet always natural and beautiful.
The Goat above is actually from Crete, the island in Greece. My mother bought it there after seeing the Cretan goats in the wild, the Kri-kri. David taught classical Chinese at Brown University for decades...his father, Owen Lattimore, introduce Mongolia to the Western World; so the knowledge that the word for this year's animal can mean Goat, Sheep and Ram was well known at the table.
So a simple meal, with an elegant and simple centerpiece, shared slowly together was the perfect way to bring in the New Year, especially on the heels of a night out with Mystery Man on New Year's Eve.
Good Night, HaPpY NeW YeAr, G'night!
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