CNY reunion dinner

We had everybody back for the annual Chinese New Year reunion dinner. As usual, steamboat. :-P We made a resolution not to have steamboat again next year if we can help it. We should keep it simple because we just cannot finish all the foodstuff. Of course, some traditionalists will say that we should have leftovers from the CNY reunion dinner to depict abundance but I really believe that too much leftovers are also not very good.

So anyway, this was us at the dinner table.

And this was the time that we finally finished dinner and started clearing away the table.

Time to prepare all the fruits and cakes - including the pink huat kueh - for the midnight prayers. As can be seen, we are still very much traditionalists in a way. It's not just simply sticking a band of red paper around every fruit; the paper band would have to be serrated. On the fruits, a round paper cut-out would be placed on top. A throw-back to the days of my nyonya grandparents, actually, just for Chinese New Year.