Right after our food marathon came to an end, my cousin and her hubby all the way from the UK came to town and thus, I had another round of feasting…right before Chinese New Year.
Oh gosh!!! This was so so so embarrassing! They contacted me sometime ago to ask me to help book them a hotel room and I got down to that right away. Before they left England, they contacted me to let me know when they would be arriving…and I said I would meet them upon arrival. I just got home at around 5 p.m. that day and was settling down for the evening when my cousin called me. Good grief! She was at the airport in Sibu and I had forgotten all about it! Oh dear! Oh dear! In the end, they caught a cab to get to the hotel and I met them there…and after they had checked in, I took them here for dinner…
Of course, I ordered the favourites and they thoroughly enjoyed everything, including the desserts…
My cousin kept saying that she would want to go back there for another round but there simply was not enough time – they were here for two nights only.
The next morning, I thought I would let them have something different from what they can get quite easily elsewhere and took them here for breakfast…
Ooooo…they loved everything that I ordered including the celebrated Fuzhou fish balls…with minced meat filling and a bit of ginger soup inside. My cousin said they were just like those Shanghai dumplings that she had in Hong Kong or some place – in the end, I found out that she was talking about the very popular xiao long pao.
Among all the items that we had, they also loved the yam puffs…
…though we thought we liked the ones with char siew filling (that we also had) much more than these with the prawn filling…and they even liked the egg custard tarts…
…that are easily available anywhere. After breakfast, I took them to places around town and other than that, we also visited some of the members of the family in town that my cousin had not met for a long long time.
More on the visit in the next post, and in the meantime, I really must thank them for these lovely gifts that they brought all the way from England…
…and talking about thank yous, I would also like to thank my niece for these…
…all the way from Singapore and this too…
– I promise I will eat just a tiny little bit each day.
My dear friend, Mandy, went through all that trouble to send this yee sang from KL…
…for Chinese New Year, thank you so very very much. We do not usually have this here as if I’m not mistaken, this is Cantonese and Sibu is a predominantly-Foochow town. I think the belief is that all the mixing of the various ingredients together will strengthen the bond between all involved…
…and the tossing, the higher the better, will bring good luck and prosperity in the coming year. Fingers crossed!!!
These came from 1sun3…
…who comments regularly in my blog, thanks to you too, my friend, and I was out that night, the night before Chinese New Year’s Eve, to join my ex-students, Form 5 1993, at their reunion here…
…when another ex-student of mine, working in Penang, sent this to my house…
– his mother made this delightful acar timun (cucumber pickle) that I particularly enjoy eating with keropok (prawn crackers), thanks to you as well, Pek Hong. It’s really so sweet of you. I’ve tried it already and it is really very very good – everything’s just right, perfectly made. I sure would want to book a few bottles next year but of course, I will have to pay for them. Can’t be expecting freebies all the time, eh?
And no, that wasn’t all! Huai Bin dropped by my house on the eve of Chinese New Year to pass me these…
Gosh!!! I had been so very busy that I did not realise he was back in town and he was so nice as to remember me in his list of who-to-give-what and brought them all the way from KL to give to me. Very much appreciated, buddy, and a big big thank you. He said he would be home for a while so probably, we would be able to go out sometime for something nice – and of course, it would have to be my treat. Hopefully, he would be able to make time for that and I certainly would blog about it.
So, thank you very very much to one and all for everything. I do hope you all had a great time ushering in the Year of the Horse. Hopefully, I will be blogging about that in the days to come, we’ll see!
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 