Hello! Such a belated post, but I still wanted to share. I’ll combine Lunar New Year and Valentine’s Day, since we celebrated them on the same weekend. We had a small game night with some friends this year for Lunar New Year which turned out to be super fun! I think part of the reason I enjoyed it so much was that I was finally able to relax because I only cooked a couple of things and tried really hard not to beat myself up over not making everything. We held it potluck style, so everyone brought something. That way we got to try a bunch of different dishes, but I wasn’t chained to the stove all night. I ended up developing a really awful migraine the day of the party and so spent two hours attempting to nap it off and lost a lot of prep time. But the world didn’t end and everyone got enough to eat.
I was so busy eating and having fun that I forgot to take a picture of the whole table, but I’ll tell you what we had at least. We had: Egg Drop Soup, Fried Rice- veggie and chicken, veggie lo mein, and fortune cookies, of course. I made bao- pork and chicken and 5 spice fried donuts. There were also egg rolls, but they were pork, and we had enough food, so didn’t end up serving them.
These were baked chicken bao. A friend asked me for the recipe on social media and I had to laugh because I made my own chicken filling and used a steamed bun dough, but then baked it, guessing at the time and heat. They turned out really good! If I was going to follow a recipe though (ha! but it could happen!) I would use the Woks of Life recipe. They have a veggie recipe and a chicken one too, I think on the website. Here’s the baked pork bun recipe though, to get you started. https://thewoksoflife.com/chinese-bbq-pork-buns-cha-siu-bao/
I made traditional steamed pork buns as well. Some of our friends have an exchange student currently and he made my little Scandi heart just burst because he looked so excited about all the food and just ate everything. He’s very fun to cook for! I also found out that he knows the krumkaker recipe and since a friend from work gave me a set to make them, I’m totally stealing him one day to help me learn to make them. (So excited!)
Here’s a picture of our mantel decorations. It’s really fun to try to make them cool without repeating too much. I think I’m going to have to get some more décor soon. My paper lanterns are looking a bit shabby and we can’t have that! It’s bad luck! The little hanging lanterns in the picture are thick felt actually, with little gold paper scrolls in the middle. I had ordered a felt dragon too, but I didn’t get it until the day after, so we will have something fun and new next year. We forgot to get singles from the bank for the red pockets, so we used $1.50 in quarters (because 6 is a lucky number) instead. I’m sure my younger brother appreciated it at least. That’s at least part of a laundry load!
Here’s a picture of some of my plants! We had the Lego piece up near by, but I forgot to grab a picture. The white plant stake in the cactus is a serotonin molecule. 🙂 Everyone needs a little extra some time. The winter themed table runner is one I made and I love how it turned out. It just needs two little snowflake buttons. K brought me the little plant in the pink pot for Valentine’s Day and it is still alive!
So on to Valentine’s Day! We typically don’t do much, although this year, we did get each other presents. The Husband gave me a really cool canvas garden tote this year with tools that were so fancy I had to look them up to see what they were. Of course, I was super excited about them, but paused, looked at him and said suspiciously “This is so I stop leaving my tools over in the garden overnight, isn’t it?”
“It was part of the reason,” he said, but mostly it was so I would have proper tools to work in the garden. We have hand me down tools from a relative which work great, but I don’t have that many and we definitely needed duplicates of a few. I gave him a book of weird maps. There’s a bunch about video gaming and how far it’s spread, another about the internet, and all sorts of other ones. It’s very fun to look at!
Since Valentine’s Day was on a Monday this year, we both worked a full day, and both of us completely forgot what we had planned for dinner. We had canned soup and biscuits because we were both forgetful. I did try to get the cheese biscuits to have hearts on them at least!
The next day, I made our Valentine’s day steak dinner with butter herb noodles and stir fried bok choy, carrots, and mushrooms with Asian seasonings. It was really good!
We had heart shaped lava cakes for dessert! They came with raspberry sauce, but I would have liked a little more of the sauce. Excuse the terrible picture. We were probably playing our game at the times.
Well, I hope these pictures made you smile! Have a great day!
