Actually, even on any other day of the year, Chinese people are crazy about food. Whenever I visit my relatives in Shanghai, I notice that they go grocery shopping (at the open air market, always) at least three times each week. Freshness and variety are priorities on a daily basis.

And then when this holiday rolls around, meals become extraordinary! I’ve always wanted to visit China during this season, because I hear people’s lives just revolve around food for fifteen days (the length of the holiday).

On this past Chinese New Year’s Eve, I had dinner with my parents and some family friends. Here is about half of what we ate:

It would take hours to describe all of these dishes because many of them were very intricately prepared. For example, in the bottom picture, one item inside the stew required the cook to stuff a ground pork mixture into fried tofu balls by hand without breaking the shape of the tofu or cutting a hole too large, lest the ground pork falls out during simmering. And let me add that the pork mixture itself had to be prepared with many ingredients through a series of steps…

1. pork noodle soup with potatoes and dried scallops (my mom’s recipe)
2. frozen yogurt with mango and mochi
3. chicken and rice soup