A lot…

I wouldn’t say that we had a lot for our Chinese New Year Reunion Dinner but unlike those days when we would invite my brother-in-law and his family over and the other one from Bintulu and his family as well, nowadays, a little was already too much for the four of us.

Of course, we had the sweet and sour ikan bawal hitam (black pomfret)…

…and yes, I sure enjoyed that. We had two in the freezer and initially, we thought of cooking both. In the end, I decided that one would be more than enough and yes, we only managed half of it so as tradition would have it, we did have some left over for the following day.

In view of the current situation, my brother-in-law and his wife were not all that keen on joining us for the dinner (their daughter, my niece in Singapore, is stuck there and not able to come home) so my missus cooked this chicken curry…

…to give to them and there was some left so we served it alongside the satay beef…

…that I cooked.

We also took out the kacang ma chicken…

…from Payung and my sister brought this platter of braised duck…

…from this chicken rice shop in town.

My missus bought this rack of pork ribs sometime ago and I really did not know why as I felt it was way too big for the three of us. That was why I told her this would be a good time to take it out and cook and she did…

She said she cooked it in the exact same way in which she cooked the lamb rack that we had once and enjoyed very much BUT she added some Korean sauce to it. The ladies insisted it was nice but no, it was not to my liking so I only had a bit.

Yes, we liked her mixed vegetables…

…cooked with canned Pacific clams. Good grief! Those were twice the size of my thumb once but now they are about the size of my little finger and are so so so expensive! Tsk! Tsk!

Everyone sang praises of her fish maw soup…

…and yes, I loved it too! Initially, she was thinking of something thick and cornstarch-y  like sharks’ fins soup but I said I would rather have it in clear soup.

For dessert, we had this peach & longan combo…

…and these pretty cakes…

…that my girl’s good friend gave to her for Chinese New Year.

I shared the photographs like what I always did on Facebook and somebody curtly remarked, “Don’t show off!” Honestly, I don’t see what is there to show off as it was just as I had captioned it, “Our simple Chinese New Year Reunion Dinner“. I saw what the others had – they too flaunted theirs on Facebook and they had lobsters, abalone, sea cucumber, sharks’ fins, crab, huge prawns, salmon, yee sang and poon choi and one even had the unforgettable wang poo liao/ ikan empurau. Why! We did not even have prawns!

In comparison, I would still say ours was simple, nothing really special and yes, we did manage to stick to what I had in mind and just used things that we had in our fridge and freezer, no need to venture out in the dreadful current situation to buy anything special for our dinner.