HAPPY VALENTINE'S/CHINESE NEW YEAR!

February 14th. Ah, what a day. It's been good so far. I've spent all weekend watching the Olympics and baking, which I will get to later. But first, a recap of the day before.

Feb. 13...Saturday.
Traditionally, the night before Chinese New Year, you are to cook a meal containing specific dishes and then enjoy them that night and also the next day. There is to be no cooking or chores of any sort on the actual day of the Lunar New Year. I'm not sure if the meals we had were traditional Chinese fare but it's the dishes I've been served year after year, ever since I was little.

I went out for brunch in the morning with Sean, Theresa and Marc (a couple of our friends from high school who are now engaged and getting married in October). We met up at Cora's, where I had the 1990's Harvest: one piece of brioche bread with a sunnyside-up egg on top and bacon and then a piece of French toast loaded up with fresh fruit. Sadly, the brioche was used for both pieces of bread and it wasn't as good as the first time I remember having it. I didn't finish the bread but finished everything else on my plate. It was too much food though. Plus I messed up when attempting to take the photo. I need more practice with my iPhone.

Later in the afternoon I decided to enjoy a few sweet potato balls with salsa:I didn't want to spoil my appetite for dinner but since it was a little after 2pm and I had eaten since 10am, I was getting kind of noshy.

Here's a spread of dinner that was ready four hours later. The plates had been a little picked at already so that's why the plates look a little bit empty ;)Here's a breakdown of the plates individually. Chinese vegetables with mushrooms. I have no idea what these vegetables are called. I can never remember.
Chinese sausage. This is one of my favourite things to eat even though I know it's really bad for you. Steamed free-range chicken. Chicken and fish are both very prominent during the Lunar dinner but since dinner was going to be served for just one of my brothers and I (my parents had a party to attend and my other brother was going out), it would have seemed quite ostentatious to cook yet another dish).More mushrooms stuffed with ground pork and some kind of algae on top. I can't remember the name of this algae but it's supposed to represent good luck.
Thousand-year old egg with pickled ginger:Stir-fry of pork with a bunch of veggies (snowpeas, bamboo shoots, straw mushrooms, shitake mushrooms, baby corn).
And that's all six dishes. Tomorrow we'll be eating the exact same thing for dinner plus a steamed fish.

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Feb. 14...Sunday.
The morning started off a little wonky but things picked up when Sean invited me out to lunch. He brought me flowers (yay!) and then we went to the mall where we spent money we shouldn't have (isn't that always the case) and a few hours later, ended up at McDonald's where I had a Quarter Pounder meal and Sean had a Big Mac meal. I totally forgot to take a pic of lunch. It's probably a good thing though ;)

In the afternoon I headed out to the Chinese mall with my dad to see if we could catch a glimpse of the traditional dragon dance but we arrived too late. So instead we just walked around, did a little bit of shopping (I got an iPhone case, a couple of sketchbooks and groceries) and then headed home. And that's it. No photos from today but food will be the exact same as you see above.