大年初二, 開年飯 2nd day of Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year gives lots of people lots of excitements, for the kids loving it cuz, they can receive ang pow. For the parents, they got to work thru out the days and nights to prepare dishes, and before hand got to clean the house and so on. For working people will make use of these holidays to rest at home. And some will stay at home to finish off their DVDs whatever missed out. Some will stay in and eat a lot…

Not sure about others, for Cantonese, they are treating day 2 of CNY a big thing. And they called it 開年. This represent an important day for them, and it gives them a day ahead to prepare dishes. Further, all dishes has their own name, and each names represent some auspicious meaning. For example, …

Five Seasons means五福臨門.

Prawns means 哈哈笑, laughter thru out the year and in the family.
Sea Asparagus with Broccoli means一路順利.

Mushrooms with trotter and dried oyster, 好事發財 and many mores.

Fish means 年年有餘.

金銀就手 is the soup that mommy make every year without fail, that soup consists of dried oyster, dried moss, carrot, turnip. She has to boil it for nearly for few hours and many times, this pot of soup will be finished within a day even she made it in a bigger pot.
Every year of this day, sisters and myself will be busy helping her arranging the dishes, and arrange table setting.

I have no idea how other people celebrating day 2 of CNY, for example like Hokkiens, Hakka, Hai Nan and so on. But this is what Cantonese did for day 2. Some have simplify in celebrating, but mommy and daddy has been practising this for many years and am sure all of us will practise this in the future too.

Well folks, … enjoy!