Sunday Dinner

Since my mom’s in town for a couple of days, we decided to have a little dinner with some of her friends and their children. My mom made lots of dishes, including her version of jap chae, fish, tofu with preserved duck eggs, a cold cucumber dish, and mung bean noodles with peanut sauce. My mom and I also made nian gao with red beans – we baked it, instead of steaming it, and it turned out really great! I was babysitting Faire and Cantor for the night and they loved all of the food (and Faire took some really great pictures, too!)

Fish filets prepared with red wine, soy sauce, vinegar, dark brown sugar, garlic, ginger, and green onion:

Preserved duck egg with tofu (another name for the preserved duck egg is thousand year egg; as a kid, I used to think these eggs were buried in the ground for a thousand years and always wondered how people dug them up from the ground):

Mung bean noodles with garlic, green onions, and spicy peanut sauce:

My favorite dish of the night, Taiwanese cucumbers with garlic, soy sauce, and sesame oil:

For dessert, my mom and I baked a large nian gao cake:

The nian gao was very chewy and slightly sweet and the red bean filling made it extra delicious! Faire AND Cantor loved the nian gao and were jumping around the apartment happily chewing on their desserts.

Faire has become quite the little photographer (at three years old, she already knows how protective I am of my little point-and-shoot and always securely places the strap on her little wrist before taking pictures. She always seems to cover the flash, but it’s okay because she’s still learning!) A great picture she took of Cantor:

Faire also snapped this picture of me and Cantor, although it looks like Cantor is in pain to be in a picture with me:

The three of us (I took a couple, actually), but Faire looks the cutest in this picture:

We had a great time, as usual, and Faire and Cantor took home some of the nian gao, so I’m sure she was a happy camper to find it the next day!