Happy New Year’s Eve!!! In less than 24 hours, it’ll be January 1st, 2010! Say it out loud several times and revel in the excitement of a whole, brand new year! In less than 24 hours, I’ll also be on the bus to New York City with my cousin…It’ll be a one-day express trip, because we can’t afford the exorbitant hotel fees, and my cousin practically threatened suicide if I don’t fulfill her “New Years in NYC” dream.

Nobody is perfect. If we were, there really is no point in living anymore, because life is all about learning, experiencing, and growing. But a lot of us still struggle with that desire to attain perfection. I sure did. I wanted to be the most beautiful, most talented, most powerful, most intelligent, most popular person on earth. Maybe not explicitly, but it was certainly a very attractive and appealing idea to me. As I became lured into petty schoolgirl competition, I became absorbed into the beauty aspect of perfection, which eventually led to my eating disorder. Ironically, not only did I lose beauty, I lost everything else: my academic capability, my passion in pursuing my talents, my place in society, my friends.

So my dream for 2010 is to recover all that, starting with beauty. I want to be beautiful. But not in that physical way I once desired. I want to be beautiful human being, one who exudes beauty not in a superficial way, but from the innermost being. And notice that I emphasized “human being”. That means that I want to be beautiful, with flaws, imperfections, and all.

Last night, my best friend Joanna, and her whole family came over for dinner. I’ve praised Joanna in this post, so I’ll just praise her mother this time. Her mom is actually one of my favorite person:

Look at her! A tiny woman, but with a face gleaming with sweetness and delight in the Lord! She is one of the most passionate, enthusiastic, and dedicated woman I know. She never sits still in the house; she’s always out and about helping and counseling others, and everyone just loves her.

Besides Joanna and her mom, we also invited her brother, James, his fiancée, and his fiancée’s younger sister:
Here they are praying. Joanna’s mom insisted we do a little worship before eating, so we sung a few hymns too:
And then my dad preached.

It was a good message, but both my cousin and I couldn’t help wondering when we could start eating:
Well the feast soon began! And what a FEAST!

My mom went all out. She made several of Jame’s favorite dish:
 Pajeon, or Korean scallion pancakes.
It’s pan-fried, chock full of scallions, squid, shrimp, potatoes, and onions, with a chewy rice-flour batter.
  She also made napa cabbage kimchi:
My favorite!! This dish was gone within 5 minutes. I’m not kidding!

Another napa cabbage dish:
Cabbage stewed in fermented soybean paste with dried anchovies. Not for the faint-hearted. I’ll bet if I served this to you, you’d run the other way, because it stinks.
But hey, stinky food tastes so damn good.

My mom also made Korean BBQ ribs!
Served by my brother. What is with his disgruntled expression? Doesn’t he realize that I’m giving him a few minutes of fame on my fabulous blog?
These were sticky, slightly sweet from honey and fresh-squeezed orange juice. I might ask my mom for the recipe, but she’ll probably say something like, “Oh, just this and that all together”.
The final dish my mom made was stir-fried shrimp:
I have no idea how this tastes like since I didn’t eat it. I don’t care for shrimp, and I wanted to save tummy space for the wonderful dishes Joanna’s mom made!

Joanna’s mom brought some impressive dishes as well. First, some kind of New Year noodle dish:
I’m not sure what this is called, but it’s a mix of pork, radishes, carrots, cucumbers, bean sprouts, cabbage, and rice noodles in a sweet and sour wasabi vinaigrette. I dominated this, despite the wasabi making my nose run. It was fantastic!
All it needed was some chopped dry-roasted peanuts. I still had fourths of this:
Joanna’s mom also brought steamed fish:
Fresh-caught fish! And when I say fresh-caught, I mean that Joanna’s uncle caught this fish himself in the sea. It was butchered, flipping and flapping, alive in Joanna’s house. Love it.
 Steamed, and then topped with some kind of soy sauce-sesame oil mixture, and ready to dig in! Fresh fish is best prepared simple with minimal ingredients!

But the highlight of that evening, in my opinion, was the hand-made dumplings Joanna’s mom made:
From the filling to the dumpling wrapper, everything was made by hand. Which is probably why it’s SO FREAKING delicious.
Filled with shrimp, egg, and Chinese chives. Ooh la la.
Now, there is this Chinese tradition, in which they put a ball of dough into one single dumpling. Whoever who finds the dough-ball in the dumpling is promised great blessings in the new year. Kind of like that English tradition with the penny in the pudding, or something like that. But anyway. Guess WHO found the dough-ball?
 Yours truly!
Wa hahahaha! Oh hohohohoh! Ee Heehehehehehee!

I’m gonna be blessed! I’m gonna be blessed! 

Not that I didn’t already know it, but it’s been confirmed by a ball of dough, so it’s got to be true, right?

We celebrated with glasses of wine:

And I promptly fell into a food coma:
Zzzzzzzz…

Dreaming sweet dreams now! I hope all of you are dreaming sweet dreams for the new year, too!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Question of the day: What is your personal image of yourself for the 2010? What kind of person do you dream to be?

P.S. Exciting news: DC blogger meet up on January 2nd, 2010 (whoa, sounds weird to write that)!! At 1 pm, in a lovely place called Zest Bistro. If you can make it, please send me an email!

Related posts:

1. New Year Self-Reflection Part I: Thanksgiving
2. The Tale of Two Dumplings
3. Luckiest Brat in the World
4. Well-Rounded Confidence
5. To Be Ambi-Social

Tagged as: cabbage, dumplings, egg, fish, kimchi, Korean, noodles, pancake, pork, ribs, seafood, shrimp, squid