The time has come…

Gosh!!! I had had such busy weeks preceding the Chinese New Year festival so much so that I did not really have much time to get down to the preparations. That is why the decorations at my house were pretty minimal this year…

…using ang pao packets, mostly and some stuff from last year…

We had a simple reunion dinner at home – me, my missus and Melissa and my missus insisted on cooking a few dishes even though I told her not to bother – we could just go and tapao a few things that we all liked and that would be good enough.

She steamed this fish…

…as it is the customary practice that one must have that for the reunion dinner and she also cooked this five-spice braised duck…

…for the two of us. She does not eat duck herself so that is why she would not be cooking that on ordinary days.

She also made these lokan…

…and added some of her pounded chili, hence the stains of red that you can see in the photograph.

I fried this dish of bamboo clams, with tom yam sauce…

…and for the vegetable dish, my missus cooked this mixed vegetable dish with mushrooms and clams…

Those were the dishes we had that night – nothing much really, nothing elaborate but at least, Melissa felt delightfully thankful that she could spend the new year at home and we could all sit down and enjoy this very significant meal together.

So how was your reunion dinner? Bet it was a lot more grand than this and impressive to the max.