Chinese New Year Cooking Day and Luncheon

Today I hosted a Chinese New Year cooking day and luncheon in honor of wonderful tradition my friend Min started for us ISEs while she was here in England. Eight dear friends and fellow ISE wives came over to my house in the morning and we prepared ourselves a Chinese New Year feast. We made Braised Pork, Pineapple Chicken, Pineapple Rice, Peking Duck, Chicken Satay, and home made spring rolls!!!! My role was simply to help out the other ladies with questions and fill them in on some techniques and knowledge I learned from Min, but I let them tackle all the cooking.

We all had a great time and I hope they learned a little bit and gained some confidence in making some great Chinese food from scratch. Most of all I hope they enjoyed an amazing holiday that I have grown to appreciate very much!!!!

Here is Paula preparing our Peking Duck...rubbing on a gooey glaze of honey, Chinese five spice and soy sauce!!!!

Paula was very proud of her Peking duck as she prepped it all from the sides of spring onion and cucumbers all they way to carving up the bird for us.

Holli jumped in to help out with the Pineapple chicken and filled us all in about her adventures in Ethiopia to meet her twin baby girls just a few days earlier. She is truly an amazing women and we are so excited for her and Andy as they have gone through a long process to add on to their family.

Laurie was my seasoned veteran as Min had a special Chinese cooking training for us before she headed back to Singapore. I put her in charge of the spring rolls as they were pretty time intensive and she had helped with them before.

Sarah was in charge of the Pineapple Chicken and Pineapple Rice dishes. She is quite a natural with the wok and did me proud.

Chris got to my house shortly before lunch time so we got her included by assembling our Pineapple chicken.

With a full kitchen it's hard to give everyone a cooking and prepping job, but Kim jumped right in to help with the cleaning up. It is an important job and one that I don't like to do much myself so I was very gracious to everyone who helped with the cleaning up efforts.

I put Tina in charge of our final dish of the Braised Pork and she did fabulous. She had taken some Chinese cooking classes several years ago and she was excited to get refreshed. She had just gotten back from a trip in the States and brought us some Hershey kisses and Starburst flavored jelly beans...how yummy!!!

As always it is great to get together with the ISE ladies as we have been quite a support system for each other over the years and as our group changes we like to keep in touch some how.