Preparing for CNY 2018 ~~~ Super fruitful day with Huat Kueh, Lobak and handmade pillow case!!!

It's a day before Chinese New Year eve. Usually on Chinese New Year eve, Buddhist and Taoist will pray the "Ang Kong" and Buddha. We usually prepare a lot of food items for the prayer. Today, I helped out my mother to prepare Huat Kueh and Lobak.

To prepare Huat Kueh, the procedure was quite easy but time consuming. First, mix all the ingredients including rice flour, coconut water, sugar and coconut wine (Tuak) together. then let it sit for a few hours. 

We used a pot with transparent lid so that we can look at the condition of the mixture. Usually my mom left the mixture sit for 5-6 hours but due to the hot weather today, my mom actually shortened the time to around 4.5 hours only. My mom said that the mixture will over-fermented and cause the Huat Kueh to become sour. There was once an elderly told us that children should not to get involve in making Huat Kueh because of some taboo.

After sitting for 4.5 hours, we stirred the mixture again and add in the food colouring to make it pink. Then we poured the mixture into a jug to ease the following process. My mom first heated the plates in the steamer then pour in the pink mixture, this is where the jug come in handy. These Huat Kueh were steamed for 10-15 minutes depend on the sizes. Look at this cute mickey shaped Huat Kueh. Hehe^^

Besides Huat Kueh, we also made Lobak (Five Spiced Meat Roll). My mom marinated minced pork with salt, five spiced seasoning powder, pepper powder, diced water chestnut, carrot and yam. Then, we wrapped it up with dried bean curd skin. It was ready to serve after frying. It smelled and tasted delicious.^^ We stored some of it in the fridge after it cooled down.

As for the Chinese New Year decoration, we planned to reuse the pillow case we bought last year.

However, most of them were in very bad condition.

Instead of buying new pillow case, my mom suggested to make our own pillow case out of the new curtain she bought that shrunk after rinsing. So, I measured out the size of the pillow and cut out the fabric to the size needed for the pillow case.

Then I sew it with my mom antique sewing machine and sent it to the nearby tailor shop to serge the sides. The results were very satisfying. The fabric prints looked well with our wooden furniture. Right?

Happy Chinese New Year everyone!!!