Every year we invite all our local friends who have adopted children from China as well as others who have some relationship to China and/or our children. This year we celebrated the Year of the Tiger on Feb 20. Chinese New Year (CNY) is a two week celebration. It begins with the first new moon after the full moon that follows winter solstice. CNY started on Feb 14 this year. It ends with the Lantern Festival which is also the full moon. It is always special to me because it is when we were in China meeting B.
We usually have crafts, especially since the children are getting older. The oldest one of our bunch is about 12 or 13 years old. The youngest is about 24 months. The party includes food, a lion dance, bubble wrap stomp (instead of firecrackers) and red envelopes.
J.T. decorating his craft.
Final result of some of our artwork. Many thanks to A.M. for lending us her wonderful Chinese stamps.
Food! We usually have traditional noodles, dumplings and less traditional foods - but delicious and creative none-the-less. We've gotten pretty good at making Nian Gao - Chinese New Year cake made with glutenous rice flour. We use peanuts and raisins in ours which add a little salt to our cake. This year we also did a chocolate chip-pecan nian gao.
Dumplings! People traditionally eat lots of dumplings for New Years because they resemble gold nuggets and that would bring prosperity to the family. Eating long noodles brings long life to parents. There are lots of fun Chinese New Year traditions, new clothes, not sweeping on New Year's Day so you don't sweep out good luck, fire crackers, etc., etc.
The group!
Lion Dance. We made this great lion head a few years ago and it just keeps on going. We fix it up a little bit each year. Several kids got to be "first" and the others followed behind walking through the family room, dining room and kitchen and back in again to the cacophonous banging of everyone else.
This year we invited the children who sang at Chinese New Year - Virginia Tech program to do a repeat performance.
They sang the Tiger Song and a couple of others. If I can figure out how to upload videos here again I will.
Here the older kids are getting ready to stomp on large bubble wrap - the sound is almost exactly like fire crackers and much safer.
Stomping!
Little kids stomping!
Red envelopes - the children wish each of their parents and/or grandparents and/or senior person a Happy New Year and the parent/grandparent/senior person gives them a gift of a red envelop. In seriously Chinese families with serious red envelopes this can add up to quite a bit of money. At our celebration there were a $1 coin in each envelop, chocolate coins in another and a dollar bill in a third.
Grandma B., Boboa G. and C. handed out red envelopes to some of the girls.
B. receiving her red envelopes.
Chinese New Year is a holiday we look forward to each year. It ends our holiday season which starts with Thanksgiving, followed by Christmas and New Years.
We've been working our way through a fun book about the Periodic Table called "Fizz, Bubble & Flash" by Anita Brandolini which explores elements and atoms in a hands on way. The first section is on Hydrogen and the Alkali Metals family which is what leads to ice cream. Sodium and its relatives in the Alkali Metal families are highly reactive to water and/or air. We checked out some fun and interesting videos showing what happens when bare alkali metals are exposed to air and water. 
The first thing we did was to mix up a simple ice cream mix. 1/2 heavy cream, 1/2 milk, a little sugar and a little vanilla - seal in a bag. This bag is placed in a larger plastic bag with ice. Shake for about 10 to 15 minutes and observe that the ice cream mix is colder but not ice cream.
Next add salt to the ice and start shaking again. Shake for about 10 to 15 minutes. It is definitely colder - using an oven mitt or a kitchen towel helped. Also the bag had a lot more condensation on it. In short order we had ice cream!
Yum!
A close up on the ice cream in the baggie.
To further demonstrate the effect of salt on water we had also frozen plain water and salt water. It took a lot longer to freeze the salt water. Salt (sodium chloride) lowers the freezing point of water. In fact it didn't quite freeze all the way. Also the salted water was blue. As I was browsing around the the book I noticed that it said that Iodine usually evaporated. My guess is that the iodine was trapped in the frozen salted water. When we thawed the water out the blue color remained but was gone the next day.
We've been studying "Story of the World, Vol 4" and have found that cooking food from the countries we are learning about make it more interesting. We learned that Ethiopia was one of two countries that remained under it's own rule after the "Scramble for Africa" . So we made Ground Nut Sauce with eggplant. B. thought it was OK, J. didn't like it and I thought it was great. BK said I could make it again. It is also good with squash instead of eggplant.
Basically it is one onion sauteed, two tomatoes diced (or one small can of diced tomatoes) sauteed with the onions. Cut the eggplant into bite sized portions and saute them with the onions and tomato. Take 1/2 cup of peanut butter (preferably one without sugar - the first time I made it I used the blender and made my own with lightly salted peanuts with oil) and 1/4 cup of water. When the eggplant is cooked (about 10 minutes) add the peanut sauce.
Serve over rice. Ours need more salt. I also tried it later over sweet potatoes. It was really yummy of sweet potatoes.
Next we read about the next-to-last czar of Russia, Alexander III, how his father was working to improve the life of serfs and improve the country. He saw his father assassinated so when he came to power he took away some of the liberties his father had granted. We also read a book "Russian Girl:Life in an Old Russian Town " that had an easy recipe for Pirog - It was basically a pile of cut up, cored apples. On the side you mix up milk, flour and eggs, then pour it over the apples and bake until the cake is cooked - sort of an apple cake. It was yummy but salt would have helped. It seemed a little like the bisquick "Impossible Pie" idea.
Next adventure was Korean cooking. We learned about the Sino-Japanese war which was fought mostly on Korean soil. King Kojong and Queen Min were ruling Korea and trying to bring the country to modern-ness in the late 1800's. Queen Min tried to get Russia to help against the Japanese and was assassinated. Above is a squash pancake. The pancake part is flour, milk and egg. The squash part was summer squash (normally it is zucchini) onions and green peppers. By itself it is pretty boring.
But add some dipping sauce (1/2 cup soy sauce and 1 tsp of cider vinegar) and it becomes quite delicious.
The page from the "Cooking the Korean Way" for kids.
