Labor Day Dinner Party

As I mentioned in my previous post, my mom is an amazing cook. We used to have VERY large dinner parties when we lived in Champaign; every Thanksgiving and Christmas, my mom would invite her friends over and we’d have around 50 people in our house for dinner, karaoke, and gift exchanges. Of course, those friends would be David’s electrical engineering professors, so it would be very funny to watch them dance and sing karaoke at 2 in the morning.

Usually, my mom would have us clean the house while she cooked the night away and we’d end up eating 20 or 30 different dishes that she made from scratch. I always looked forward to our holiday parties because it’s always fun to entertain large groups, especially when my mom is there to keep things fun. For Labor Day, my mom hosted a small dinner party for her friends in North Carolina; these friends don’t sing karaoke as much, but they are OBSESSED with card games and usually play until the morning (seriously…the last party we had, I went to sleep around 2AM and they were STILL playing! They ended up staying until around 4 or so). Since my mom didn’t have too much time to prepare, she had a simple (in her eyes) party. Below are some pictures from the party and the dishes she created. Enjoy!

Tea smoked chicken:

My mom adding some cilantro to the chicken:

My mom and her friends frying up some homemade dumplings (her friend brought these):

Ti pong (marinated pig’s butt) with daikon radishes:

Mung bean noodles with peanut butter sauce and cucumbers (and lots of garlic):

Bok choy with vinegar, sugar, salt, and sesame oil (a cold dish my grandmother used to make):

Noodles with chili pepper flakes, sesame oil, and green onions (easy and surprisingly good):

Marinated green papaya (this was brought by friend):

Sticky rice with pork and mushrooms (no shrimp because David is allergic). My mom made the sticky rice and then steamed it with lotus leaves underneath- one of the best dishes of the night!:

Mustard greens (grown in a friend’s garden) with mushrooms and garlic:

The tea-smoked chicken:

Marinated pig’s feet with peanuts (another amazing dish – apparently a lot of older women eat this dish because of the gelatin):

Lotus seed buns made from scratch (brought by another friend):

Crab’s legs (brought by another friend):

One of the tables (we had two since there were so many people we had another set of tables in our grand room):

After our amazing dinner, the guests got down to business; they are all obsessed with a card game (San-Xian):

It gets pretty intense (lots of yelling if you put down the wrong cards since you’re playing in teams), so the women decided to split off and play on their own:

Around midnight, we started with our desserts. My mom’s friend makes a really good red bean soup with lots of mochi balls:

Someone brought a fruit tart:

I made a chocolate cheesecake with chocolate ganache:

And someone else brought a chocolate cake with chocolate ganache:

I went to bed around 1 and things were still in full swing; I heard the next day that the party ended around 3 AM. Not bad for a last minute get-together!