Chinese New Year Eve FEAST! Year of the Ox

I think my Mum has outdone herself this year! The poor woman has been preparing 2 days for our CNYE Feast. And to make things more difficult, my cousin insisted on buying us a Lobster to contribute towards the dinner. As nice as that was, it just meant an extra dish for my Mummy to cook. But damnnnnnnnnn it was good!!

Our $180 Lobster monster being sized up

Please don't eat me...!

But you're too delicious!

We turned the huge Lobster into a tray of Stir Fried Lobster with ginger and shallot sauce sitting on a bed of e-noodles. We made sure it was extra saucy so the noodles could soak it all up. No one ate any rice tonight, only the noodles.

2 Dozen oysters

HUGE Jumbo oysters steamed with XO sauce on a bed of vermicelli

Salmon and Tuna Sashimi

The fish mongers at the markets really took advantage of the double holiday whammy this year. Oz day and CNY meant everyone was out to get seafood. The tuna sashimi price got jacked up to $80/kg?!

Nin Nin Yow Yu - Steamed whole Barramundi with ginger and shallots

Lettuce - To Signify growth of wealth

Whole roasted duck

Ham-less and chicken roll

For a bit of a twist to celebrate CNY, we replaced the ham in a ham and chicken roll with a whole Chinese sausage.

Fat Choi Ho Soi

This was a slow braised dish of pork trotters and tongue, mushroom, black hair moss and dried oysters. This is a must have dish to signify fortune and good luck.

What's the hidden surprise?

Flipped upside down...

Another slow braised dish of Roast pork, sea cucumber, chestnuts, mushrooms, dried oyster and dried scallops.

Whole white boiled chicken

Tong Yuen - Glutinous Rice Balls in soup

Part of the feast

We couldn't actually fit all the dishes onto the lazy susan. Nor could I fit the whole thing in the photo without me having to climb onto the kitchen bench. Oh, there was one other dish which we had forgotten about until everyone was full. Total of 13 dishes! To say I was stuffed like a Turkey was an understatement!

Happy Chinese New Year everyone! May the year of the Ox bring you love, happiness, prosperity and good health!

Our Xmas feast

For the last few years, we've had a massive xmas. This year is no exception with a total of 121 presents under the tree!! That's right, 121!!! It took me a good hour to stack everything under the tree. All my years playing tetris finally paid off.

The littles ones giving me a hug to thank me for all the presents I got them!

All of my nephews and neices have figured out that I am Santa. I guess they can consider me that as I buy about half of the presents under the tree. I also hide all the presents until they're asleep xmas even before I bring them out and stack them under the tree. They love waking up and running up to the tree to see how many presents are stacked under it.

So what did I get this year? I actually got stuff I love!! Firstly, I got the new Canon 980 IS IXUS camera. 14.7 mega pixels of goodness! The new Jamie Oliver Ministry of Food cook book and a new Takoyaki pan! Woohoo!!

Oh YEahhhhhhh

My neice also used up their entire fortune of $40 to buy me a butterfly necklace. When my sister offered to give her extra money to buy the xmas present, she insisted that she wanted to pay for the whole with her own money. She also made me various jewellery boxes as well. What I didn't know was that on the day I came home with a new pair of dangly earrings from Prouds I bought for my neice, was the same day she went to Prouds to get my xmas present. She was so grateful and shocked that I bought her something from Prouds (which in her eyes, costs her entire fortune), that the next day, she dragged my sister to the nearest florist to buy me a bunch of flowers. Awwwwww!!!

Once all the presents were unwrapped, it was time to get the party started. We fired up all the BBQs, yes, BBQs. We had 3 BBQs going. One BBQ had 2 hot plates and a grill. We borrowed the specially made satay BBQ stove I got for my brother in law last year as a xmas present and I bought a mini weber like one to make my BBQ Pork.

Here are the none meat dishes:

My special tabouli

My extra light coleslaw

My sister's potato salad

Mum's singapore noodles

My bean salad that makes you go toot toot!

Dad's home made nem nuong

I couldn't get a decent shot of this as people were eating them faster than we were cooking them. The tray barely makes it to the table with people grabbing a few sticks as the tray goes past them.

Vietnamese and pork sausages

This is what happens when you let the guys man the BBQ. We also had quails, steaks, pork chops, lamb chops, chicken wings and ham and pineapple skewers. I didn't get photos of that since I was too busy eating and manning my own special BBQ. Besides, people were walking right up to the BBQ and grabbing the food straight off it!

My BBQ Pork

I bought a mini weber like BBQ with the domed lid so I could roast some BBQ Pork for the day. Lets just say, this got the double thumbs up from my parents! We basically used to make our own BBQ pork for the restaurant, so if they approve, it means its good enough to sell in a restaurant! haha

All sliced up

My secret punch

Chocolate cake ice cream sandwich

Wild Japanese Strawberries

The kids were basically raiding my strawberry plants in between bites! Although tiny, these strawberries pack and intense punch in flavour. Savour one at a time. MMmMMmmm

The rest of the day was spent playing Wii, singing Karaoke, eating leftovers, snacking and drinking. Lets just say, a few people ended up passed out on the floor and we left them there til the next morning......

A 28th birthday with flying photos

Since me and Will don't get our annual overseas trip together this year, we decided that we needed something to make up for it. I booked a room for the two of us at the Novotel at Brighton with our own private balcony with a view of the beach. This was part of Will's birthday celebration and we thought we should live it up!! It cost a bit, but it was well worth it! Since Brighton is only about 10mins drive from Kogarah, we figured we can both drink our asses off and just cab it back to the hotel at the end of the night.

King bed

The view from our balcony

We dumped our bags and headed out to grab a Souvalaki Pita roll just like we use to do in Mykonos to line our stomachs. I mean, we had already been drinking for about an hour!


And drinking means insaneness, and insaneness means we needed to do a mail drop.....

What's that in his hands?

The same thing we had scattered all over the hotel:


Want a closer look?

Oh yeahhhhhhhh! Its like my 2007 B'day all over again!

Kaan dropped by to help pose with the photos

We catch a cab to Chelsea's restaurant in Kogarah. We walk up to the reception where we get stopped by security and told to wait for the manager. Next thing you know, about 4 people are running up and down the stairs like it was a code red alert. Gees, what did we do?? About 5mins later, the manager comes running down to let us into the restaurant. A heap of mezze was already on the table when we arrived, so I could dig right on in.

Hummus, babaganoush, labna, fetta, bean salad etc

Spicy chicken wings - Which tasted surprisingly asian?

And...spring rolls?

My drink...

Their drink...

Which was coke with our smuggled in vodka! Kaan gave me alcohol poisoning from all the vodka he was serving me! Between the 3 of us, we finished 1.5L of vodka!! Things started to get a bit out of control after that, which was a bit strange as only the 3 of us were drinking??

I think it was still alive.....?

Next thing you know, we had photos flying through the air!

That's one disgusted look

I had everyone on the table go: ?What was going on? What's happening? What's this??". It was like I was surrounded by 20 Karen Walkers. Luckily I got saved when the birthday cake came out!

We had to make a minor correction

Eating from the new plate

The plate

Some time during the night, a belly dancer came out and it was all downhill from there onwards...

Still "soberish"

Smashed, drunk, fairly sober

We basically got kicked out of the restaurant at 2am, except we couldn't get a cab. We asked the owners to call us a cab, and instead of calling the taxi company, they called a friend to see if they could drive us. Damn, this is sounding a lot like that time in Pammukale where we got stranded? Except we didn't have our 30kg suitcases with us. We eventually flag down a taxi, even though I almost had to throw myself onto the road to get it.

We get back to the hotel where I go to the toilet to get changed for bed. I come out 5mins later and Will is completely passed out.

The morning after was NOT pretty...

We had 2 shots of coffee to cure ourselves

Hidden big breakfast

I grabbed myself a big breakfast which had bacon, sausages, mushrooms, tomatoes, eggs and toast. Except you can't see any of it as its covered by the eggs and toast.

Tomato, eggs and toast