Welcome to 2007!

Happy New Year!! I can't believe how quickly 2006 has come and gone! It only seemed like yesterday that I was at Circular Quay with a bunch of Melbournians celebrating the coming of 2006! So much has happened in the past year and so quickly it all seems like a blur. I don't even know where to start. But here are a few highlights of 2006 for me:

• Having a nice TAME holiday at the Hunter Valley with a bunch of friends
• Figuring out that I don't like tame holidays so I went to the Blue Mountain with Moishii only
• Blue Mountains wasn't wild enough which led to our binge drinking holiday at the Gold Coast where I managed to get a guy to pull out his sack for me
• Getting my first bonus at work!!!!
• The birth of my new niece Ashley!
• Having the entire family home for Christmas - First time in over 10 years.
• The many weddings of my friends
• Finding out one of my really good high school friends is pregnant!!
• Taking up Volleyball - My new obsession
• Organising a successful surprise birthday party for Moishii
• Socceroos in the World Cup!!

So what are my New Years Resolution for 2007? Well, I usually don't do resolutions because I don't stick to them. But this time, I think theres a few resolutions I might be able to stick to...atleast until July 2007.

• Drink Less e.g. No more alcohol for breakfast! Its basically getting too expensive for me to drink. I practically need to drink a fish bowl of spirits to get SLIGHTLY TIPSY!
  
• Save more - Turkey, Greece (Mykonos) and Italy in July!!
• Exercise more - so I can run down the beach of Mykonos in a white bikini and blonde wig Baywatch style! MuahAUAh

I wasn't even going to celebrate New Years this year. With the weather forecast and all, I just wanted to curl up at home and watch the fireworks on TV. But then Cookies told me she's got her cousins apartment for the weekend in the city and to bring alcohol. Of course thats an offer I can't resist!

So I rock up bright and early in the morning so I could go to the fish markets with MnM for brunch before we head off to buy supplies for the night:

Fresh Oysters with Tetsuya's Vinaigrette

Seafood platter for 2

Jumbo prawns

Salmon Sashimi

Seaweed Salad

Flying fish roe

After the fish markets, we headed over to Broadway shopping centre to buy our supplies for the night. Since the alcohol was already taken care of the day before (Think trolley and Dan Murphy's) it was just food to soak up the alcohol. And boy am I glad that we bought some really carby stuff to help soak up the alcohol......

SOME of the alcohol.....

Vodka Jelly shots and Cowboys

Oh, did I mention that we only had 3 people drinking??? hehehe its alright, we didn't waste the shots. Although mind you, it might not be a good idea to drink and make jelly shots.....Since we didn't have a measuring jug to make the jelly, I decided to just wing it. I boiled some water, mixed just enough water with my aeroplane jelly until it dissolves, the poured in the vodka. How much? I'm not too sure. But after 2 packs of jelly mix, we had less than 1/4 of a vodka bottle left.

A few things to note, NEVER put your vodka in the freezer before making the vodka jelly shots. The minute I poured the vodka in, the jelly started to solidify! So instead of pouring the jelly mixture in, I was spooning GLOBS of them into the shot glasses. And always try to measure your vodka! My jelly shots were soooooooo potent, it was impossible to eat without gagging on the excess vodka! We decided to mix the jelly shots into our punch to help dilute the alcohol content.

So our lovely punch, mixed in a rice cooker because we didn't have a punch bowl, went from this:

Batch #1 without the Vodka Jelly Shots

To this:

Batch #2 - With the Blueberry Jelly Vodka Shots

Batch #3 - punch with Lemon and Lime Vodka Jelly Shots

The blue one has got to look the nastiest.....whilst the yellow one.......well......we squeezed a whole bunch of lemon into it so it had a sour acidic smell, but god it tasted good!!

Inbeteen us drinking punch and taking shots, we decided to head around to corner to Baja Cantina on Glebe Point Rd for dinner:

Vegetarian Tacos with black beans and rice

The black beans were way to salty. We basically all left our beans untouched since I could feel my arteries hardening with every bite. The vegetarian tacos were a real disappointment since the fillings in the taco was black beans, rice, lettuce and cheese with sour cream. You've already got a plate full of beans and rice, but to get tacos also filled with beans and rice was way too much. The least they could've done was to put some fresh salsa or something in the tacos. Stick to the meat ones next time.....

Chicken Suiza

The chicken was shredded and cooked in a creamy sauce, wrapped in a tortilla, covered in more cheese and sauce and baked. This was really nice and I might actually order it next time!

Baja Fish Tacos

I got my usual Baja Fish Tacos. The fish was fresh and the batter was light and crispy. It was served with coleslaw wrapped in tortilla. Next time I'm going to order some extra salsa to go with it. But this dish does not disappoint!

So after dinner, it was back to the apartment for more drinks and some UNO attack. We were going to watch the fireworks on TV, when at the last moment we remembered that theres a roof on the apartment! In our rush to get up there for the 9pm fireworks, I left my camera behind. No problems though, because I remembered it for the midnight fireworks!

The view wasn't as good as the one we had at Circular Quay last year, but we didn't have to deal with the crowds or the waiting and pushing and shoving. And the plus? We could rock up in our PJs and slippers and be back home within 2mins of the show from finishing to have more drinks!

We ended up crashing into bed around 4 am. It wasn't until about midday when we woke up desperately needing some sort of liquid, preferrably non-alcohol based. I think after 3 buckets of alcohol, we've had more than enough (See my NY Resolution up above!!)

We headed around the corner to Wok Master on Parramatta Rd (Between Broadway shopping centre and UTS) for some hangover cure:

House soup

I would've been happy if they served me a massive bowl of this for lunch. The soup was light and refreshing. The pork ribs and carrots served in the bowl was nourishing and perfect for a hangover cure (Not that I had a hangover). Its like the antidote for alcohol!

Combination Won Ton Noodle Soup

Ahhhhhh Vegetables. Sweet refreshing crunchy vegetables. And the soup.....I needed something hot to settle my stomach after a night of drinking. Won Ton Noodle Soup is such a big comfort food for me. I don't know why, but ever since a kid, this has been one of my favourite dishes. In year 9, after Chinese school on Saturdays, I will always go to Chinatown with my friend for a bowl of Won Ton Noodle soup and she will have her Beef Brisket Noodle soup. Good memories!

Roast Duck Rice Noodle Soup

Cookies seemed very happy with her bowl of noodles, commenting on how meaty and juicy the duck was. And guess what? Each bowl was only $7.80 and they were massive! We will definately be back!

So eat lots, drink moderately and have a great 2007! *Cheers*

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Merry (late) Christmas!

Bit late in posting this, but since I put up my New Years post, I thought I'd do my xmas one whilst I was at it. This year xmas is huge for us. The entire family is back from overseas with the addition of a new family member as well! This is why I went a bit nuts with the shopping this year. We totalled 91 presents beating last years 72 presents!

As as we had a few of the young ones with us this year, I decided to play up the whole Santa thing and went all out. After spending a few days revving the kids up on Santa, I went and printed out some Santa gift wrapping paper and a letter from Santa using Santa's own letter head:

Each present had a personalised letter with comments such as "Do not chuck anymore tantrums otherwise Santa will put you on the BAD LIST next year" to "Sorry I couldn't visit you earlier, but you did not have a chimney in your house".

The presents all wrapped up

The young ones even went and wrapped a present for Santa and made a card for him ontop of laying out the cookies and milk as well as a bowl of cherries.

After the kids all fell asleep, I snuck into the living room (Where all the kids were having a slumber party) and took all the presents, tipped out the milk, took bites out of the cookies and left some cherry seeds behind. Then I left a note from Santa as well as the presents.

7am I was woken by the screams of "SANTA CAME!! SANTA CAME!!!". My niece, came up to me when I walked out and said that I was Santa because the gift wrapping paper was printed out! This is when I play my dumb look and pretend to go back to sleep. Damn that girl is smart!

We had to wait around until about 11am before it was time to open the presents. This took us over 1.5hrs with the amount of presents we had. I basically sat at the tree and randomly picked a present. All the presents were opened one at a time:

Santa's present

Wearing their presents

One of the best presents of the day was actually given from a very close family friend. Her mother passed away a few months ago, and we treated her like our 3rd Grandmother. She treated my father better than her own son and if it wasn't for her, we wouldn't be living in Australia today. She found out my sister in law was pregnant but didn't live to see the baby. The present below was a little gold bangle that belonged to her when she was a baby girl. Instead of passing it to her daughter, she left it for my brother's first child. This brought tears to all of our eyes, in particular my sister in law and mother. I've made it very clear to my brother it is his responsibility to keep it within the family.

The family heirloom

Ashley the lucky girl (in the dress I bought!)

After all the presents were opened, the kids went off to play with their new toys whilst the adults prepared the xmas lunch.

My 4 bean and corn salad

Ham and pineapple skewers

Jellyfish salad

Turkey

Ham and Smoked Salmon cold platter

Verjuice vinaigrette for the smoked salmon

Chinese crunchy noodle salad

Hokkien fried noodles

Gluten and egg free fried rice for Jess (That's duck egg you see)

For everyone else - The orange dots you see is egg roe

BBQ TIME!!

Grilling the Nem Nuong

Table shot

Table shot #2

Baby cakes from Summer hill

http://www.babycakes.com.au/

Jelly Belly for DIY dessert

We also had a sago and taro coconut soup and a watermelon and grass jelly dessert. But by that time I felt more stuffed than a Turkey that I just laid down on the couch and tried to pass out. That is until we turned the karaoke machine on which continued for a good 5 hours!!!

We had so much food left over we ended up eating the same things again for dinner, and again for breakfast. After dinner when the other guests had gone home, we decided to sit around the livingroom playing chinese whispers. This was a complete disaster. Phrases went from "Jonathan has smelly armpits" and came out as "King Oyster". Like WTF?

The problem was my dad's english isn't good. My nephews and neice's chinese is just as bad. Meanwhile, my sister was busy having a laughing fit EVERY TIME it was her turn. Probably why we ended up with a "Uncle's milk smells like a pig". Oh so wrong.......by oh so like my family!!

I don't know when our next all family reunion is going to be, but I hope it'll be soon. We should always cherish occasions like this when we have a chance.