Winter Solstice Festival & A Bucket

Happy Winter Solstice Festival everyone!

Last night, I made Tong Yuen to welcome the winter festival. It was my first time making them, and the hubby's first time eating them. In fact, I haven't had any for quite a few years. But whilst making them yesterday, it brought back fond memories of when I was a young girl, rolling the dough into a ball shape with my grandmother beside me, making the syrup with it's beautiful aroma of pandan and ginger in the air.
It was a tradition to us, to eat as many tong yuens as our age. For an example, if you are 25 years old, you will have to eat 25 tong yuens.

Here is the recipe for tong yuen:

Ingredients:
Syrup
1/3 cup sugar
1.5 cups water
2-3 pandan leaves/screwpine leaves
A few slices of ginger (optional)
Rice Dumplings
2 cups glutinous rice (sticky rice) flour
1 Tbsp fine sugar
7 oz water
food coloring ( 2-3 different colors )

Method:
1. To prepare syrup, boil water in a pot. Add the screwpine pleaves and let it boil on medium fire for 5 minutes. Add sugar and let it boil for 5 minutes. Lower fire and let it simmer to another 15 miuntes. Sugar can be added to taste if you like. Set aside.
2. In a big bowl, mix glutinous flour with sugar.
3. Add water and knead to form a paste. Continue to knead until it form a soft dough and no longer sticks to your hands.
4. Divide into 3-4 portion and add 2-3 drops of food coloring to the each portion of dough.
5. Divide into small balls and lightly shape into balls using both palms.
6. Set aside a few hours or overnight as this will make the dough a bit harder and easier to handle.
7. Boil another pot of water, drop the dumplings into the boiling water. As soon as it floats to the transfer it to the syrup water.
8. Serve and enjoy!

Well, Christmas is nearly here and I've finally finished my Christmas shopping. Last weekend, we headed up to Sydney to visit and had lunch with his two aunts, brother, parents and his grandfather. (an amazing man of 97 years old) Of course, we exchanged Christmas gifts and had a rather lovely time.

This weekend we wil be off to Sydney again to celebrate with my sister and her husband. My sister will be making turkey and ham with a few other sides. I will be making my 'will-soon-be-famous' pavlova. =) It will be lovely and I'm getting excited.


I've applied to volunteer at Salvation Army and RSPCA. I got an email back from Salvos this morning, but unfortunately, nothing from RSPCA yet. Humbug. It will be fantastic if I could get a volunteering position in RSPCA.

I watched a show the other day (forgotten what it was called) but the leading actor mentioned that everyone should have 'a bucket'. A Bucket is where you write down goals and dreams in a small piece of paper and then throw them into a bucket and randomly select one. The one you select will be your main priority. For an example, if one of my goals in life is to have a vacation in Hawaii, I write that down and if I randomly selected that goal, it would then be my main goal and priority to do, so I will have to work as hard as I can to achieve that Hawaiian holiday.

I should start that immediately. My New Year's resolution!!!