Year of the Pig!

Readers, happy Chinese New Year! May you have peace, prosperity, and a lot of good "fat" in the year of the pig!

I had a fun weekend. Parents were here yesterday to spend New Year's Eve with me. We went to Costco in the afternoon and bought a year worth of paper towels, toilet paper, ziplock bags, light bulbs, and everything else that I was always running out of and then had to get at outrageous prices at the local drug store. Also bought A TON of lettuce and other veggies, since after the weekend filled with carbs, sugar, butter, and fat I'm ready to eat lean and healthy and mostly vegetarian again.

But yesterday, oh what bad (but good) food we ate! Mom made her famous wonton soup with super spicy sauces. I baked a loaf of honey whole wheat sesame bread and ate it smeared with butter, fromage affinoise cheese, and quince paste; We had cookies and cheeses and also made a traditional Chinese New Year's dessert - eight-treasure rice cake.

After we stuffed ourselves so full that we were unable to move, dad and I talked about law and philosophy until 5 am in the morning, while mom slept in the next room and grumbling every few hours about how loud we were.

Then I slept for 3-4 hours, got up feeling exhausted but happy. Ate leftovers from last night and talked some more, but in general kept it low-key. Mom helped me to make another, bigger eight-treasure rice cake to take to AC's Chinese New Year's party this afternoon.

The cake turned out to be quite a success. Perhaps I'll post a photo here soon since it's very pretty to look at.