Happy Human Day
More Specifically: Happy Day of Men, in Mandarin Chinese, it’s 人日。Nu Wa (女娲) was the Goddess who created humans using yellow mud on the 7th day of her creative explorations. It is no wonder that Chinese people work all 7 days of the week, I guess even the deities do it. There are a few stories in relation of how men were created, the common one being via mud. However, another story is that Nu Wa and another god name Fu Hsi (伏羲) had a lot of children. No matter which legend, we now chose the 7th day as Men’s Birthday.
Just another snippet of traditional information that I think it is fun to share. I am trying to get back into writing, but I have somehow lost some motivation in writing reviews. Writing blog does help a lot with keeping in touch with my semi- terrible writing skills, I would rather not regress. So if you have any suggestions on what I can try to write about, comment away.
Typical Fish Dish We Love Eating in Lunar New Year!
This is a half ready salad toss that I was making for the Lunar New Year Reunion Party. We do party all nine or fifteen days (depending on which tradition you follow), not including the most important event: the Lunar New Year Eve Reunion Party. It is one of the most unmissable event, because the eve is where all family starts to reunite and have meals together. Oh yes, we love food. The salad is missing one essential ingredient: raw fish. I love using raw salmon, because Tasmanian Salmon is just so melt in the mouth and fresh. You can use any raw fish, so long as it is uncooked. The main reason is that this dish is 鱼生, literally translates as live fish. It is a symbol of life and abundance, and some places call it Prosperity Toss. You sure have to toss this salad as high as you can, while saying auspicious words. Getting rich is usually the first wishes, but seriously if you are a person who is erm… health conscious this is not your type of dish. All that tossing and yelling, we share more than vegetables and fish if you get what I mean.
But it is good fun, trust me by the time you are done around a quarter of the dish ends up on the table. I made this using salmon, bell peppers/ capsicum, radish, carrots, cucumber, bean sprouts, picked ginger, coriander, crispy fried noodles, peanuts, sesame and scallions. The topping was plum sauce, a generous squeeze of lemon, five spice powder and sesame oil. You do have free rein when it comes to the vegetable, as long as they marry well.
Now, some live fish
Sorry if you cannot see my 6 little fish in the jar, I do have 6 white clouds. The top is a pot with expanded clay, and a miserable looking spring onion inside it. The little round dome thing is moss, I am such a lousy photographer. One of these days I will update my fish jar with a better one. For now, I am experimenting with aquaponics. You can look it up, but the photo shows the general idea of what it means: fish feeding plant on top, while plant takes the nitrogen from the fish water.
I am still doing water change and cleaning the filter, because this is still a little new. So far the fish are happy, and I have no problems as yet. Feeding them is a challenge, because I do not have a little stage to prop up the pot enough. But oh well, this is just an experiment and I don’t fancy buying too many tools for something that might not work. The moss dome is cute, because my family back home in Malaysia somehow caught the aquascape fever, again please ask Mr. Google or Youtube.
Stacking Shelf? Not really
I do have books from the library that I will hopefully read and review soon.
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