I have been so excited to celebrate CNY with my kids since I was a kid. I am no expert on Chinese history, but I loved learning about all the traditions associated with Chinese New Year. Now I can learn more about them with my family.
First thing we did was place an order to an Asian market through Instacart. It was super awesome they delivered because it was about a 30min drive from us so it made my life a lot easier. We got the girls training chopsticks. Tons of mochi flavors that I don’t even know what they were (one had sweet red beans inside). So it was really fun, after it was delivered we all just gathered around the table and tried all the new treats.
Millie caught on to using the chopsticks right away. She thought she was pretty cool with them to say the least.
Charlee is still getting the hang of them.
We had fun making paper lanterns. We used gold paint and the bottom of an empty water bottle to stamp shapes onto them. Millie loved that.
As far as food. We had mandarin oranges and apples which the girls loved. The rest of this they didn’t really try. Lol but I had a blast cooking.
Nian Gao is a traditional CNY treat that was too complicated for me to make. So I made this Nian Gao inspired cake. I got all these recipes from https://whattocooktoday.com.
The cake had this crazy chewy texture. It was awesome. Very weird at first though.
I also made these spicy noodles which are Chinese and Indonesian inspired.
Our favorite dish was this chicken. Mmmm mm.
We also watch some YouTube videos about Chinese New Year and read some books. We also watched Ni Hao Kai-Lan which is an American show that teaches Chinese words.
My main goal of this week was to try new things together and to bring to the girls’ attention to the fact that the world is huge! That there are people who look, talk, eat, and live differently than us, and that it is pretty awesome how diverse we all are. I feel like we accomplished this goal. Everyone had a lot of fun too.
Our Best Rife 