Chinese New Year’s Day, 2021, came and went quietly. Other than the fireworks and firecrackers at the stroke of midnight, noticeably a whole lot less than in previous years, and sporadically throughout the whole day, it was just like any other day. In our lane, I think only a couple of my neighbours bothered.
We had our traditional Foochow longevity mee sua…
…in the morning and we asked my sister to hop over for this so she would not have to cook her own.
Even though we did not hold an open house and was not expecting anybody to drop by (and of course, nobody did), I took out the cakes and the cake serving tray, sliced them and arranged them nicely like what I would do every year in the past.
We did not bake/make any of our own but we sure had a lot to go round. There was the intoxicating fruit pudding…
…that my cousins made, from my uncle and his family in Kuching. It was so very strong on the liquor that I could not resist asking them how much they poured in when the mum was not looking. Yes, it was very nice, soft and moist and not hard and dry like some fruit cakes and I bet many would love it a lot! “Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!” LOL!!!
My girl loved this prune layer cake…
…that Daisy and her hubby, Tham, and son and Daisy’s mum, Mdm Chua, gave me and we got this from my in-laws – the berry berry yogurt cheese cake…
…which was very nice too, something lightly fruity and not sweet.
We also got this…
…from my paternal cousin.
I was told that it was the steamed kek hati pari/parek Sarawak but upon opening it to slice, I was quite sure it was kek belacan, our favourite – it did not have any raisins nor prunes in it and no, for the uninitiated, it is NOT made from belacan (dried prawn paste) – it only looks like it and some not-very-creative people saw it fitting to name it kek belacan when they could have given it some very nice names like Black Magic or Black Beauty or even, Hitam Manis. Maybe some of you would like to try making it – it really is very very very nice and definitely not as tedious to make as those gaudily-coloured kek lapis Sarawak!!!
Of course, we still had those left over from the Reunion Dinner the night before and we also had all the cookies and tarts that my missus made and those given to me, all the snacks, the keropok and the acar. Yes, it sure was very quiet this year but we sure were not short of things to munch and enjoy!
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 