Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Tang Yuan Festival

Happy Christmas too all my fellow blog friends who are celebrating Christmas!

Seems a bit weird of ms.owner to post an entry on the tang yuan festival during Christmas day but... oh well. Here goes :

We went to Mama's hometown last Saturday (22nd December) to celebrate Tang Yuan festival. We had a great time but some of ms.owner's relatives are not really comfortable with us, so Papa decided to make a move to Ko-Ko's house as soon as we're finished eating the tang yuan.

For those of you who don't know, Tang Yuan festival ( or Dong Zhi aka Winter Solstice festival, as it's known in some parts of the world ) signifies the arrival of winter. It's the perfect occasion for families to get together to celebrate the festival by having yummy-licious food and of course, tang yuan! Since there's no winters in Malaysia (and also in South-East Asia), this festival is more commonly known as Tang Yuan festival than Dong Zhi. festival :p

Tang yuan is made of sweet glutinous rice balls. The chinese people are good at using objects, occasions or food to signify good things - The word Yuan (meaning 'round') signifies completeness/wholeness, hence this why families get together to celebrate this festival.

Traditionally, Tang Yuans are without filling but in modern times, people tend to use fillings like red bean paste, grounded peanut or sesame paste served with hot ginger syrup. However, in our family we tend to use coconut mixed with brown sugar aka gula melaka as the filling. It's uuuuuuuuber yummy. When we bite into the tang yuan, the gula melaka will melt off a bit from the coconut and we can taste the yummy flavour of the gula melaka along with the hot ginger soup.

Below are the piccies of us waiting for mama and ms.owner to prepare the Tang Yuan.

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Kneading the dough.
Mix hwot water to the rice flour and knead it bit by bit.

Mama : Careful, don't add too much water
Ms.owner : It's too dry! *adds water*

Ms.owner ended up having to drive to the store to buy another packet of rice flour.
Reason : because the dough became too sticky coz it's there's too much water. Hehehe

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This is how the dough looks like after adding colour.

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The filling!! Yummy-licious shaved coconuts cooked with brown sugar aka gula melaka.
Mama boiled some water and then added the sugar in. When it gets thick, then Mama adds in the coconut.

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Preparing to fill the dough with the filling.

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The filling on the dough before being wrapped.

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Wrapping the dough and then uh... make it round. Heh!

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Smiley faced Tang Yuan!

Abby : Pssst, ms.owner 'punctured' a tang yuen when mama's not in the kitchen.
I saw her hide the mangled tang yuan in the rubbish basket. Heheheh....

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Smiley faced Tang Yuen!

While we were waiting for mama to prepare the tang yuan, ms.owner sneaked out of the kitchen and forced us to wear the horrendous reindeer horn. Chelsea's not too happy because she was happily sleeping away when ms.owner woke her up to make her wear the horn. *snorts*.

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Chelsea : I'm reaaaally not in the mood for this... Go away!

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Abby : Hehehe. Ya? I'm Abby the black nosed black dog!

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5 comments:

Amber-Mae said...

Wah, celebrating Tang Yuan festival now ah? Now X;mas lah... Must be in the X'mas mood, kekeke! Those Tang Yuan looks yummy but I would have preferred if there was pork in it then coconut. Mmmm... pork!

Merry Christmas to you Abby, Chelsea & family!

Love licks,
Solid Gold Dancer

Goofy said...

mom wanted to give me a try on the tang yuan but sked I'll get chocked, so ended up I CAN'T HAVE A BITE!!!! meanie meanie mom...

anyway, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Looks yummy! But I bet my mom wouldn't let me have any either. She always says to dad, "Don't let him have any people food!" They are eating Christmas food today, HAM!! I can smell it. Poor Goofy, poor Rusty. Abby did your mom let you try one?

shushu, momo & kero said...

those tang yuan looks delicious! Smilley faces tang yuan is very cute. My owner had pumpkin flavour one with peanut butter as filling....we didn't get any though, coz our owner scared we will choked on it!

Abby the Dogzilla said...

Hiya guys!

Nah, Ms.owner won't let Mama or Papa give us any of the tang yuan coz she's afraid that we might choke on it.

But I don't like the ginger syrup, tastes weird to me. Ms.owner bought a bag of doggy cookies for us instead.

Ko-Ko aka Big Brother gave us alll the cookies before Ms.owner have the chance to take piccies of it.

Lotsa Woofs,
Abby and Chelsea