2009 Spring Festival: Homemade Dumplings and Moxibustion

Yesterday was Chinese New Year's Eve or the night before Spring Festival, which is the cultural equivalent to Christmas in America. My wonderful neighbors Jim and Yanzi invited me, Meizi (a friend I've mentioned before in this blog), and Bob, a colleague of ours, over for a night of eating delicious homemade Chinese food and cooking dumplings. Yanzi, with Jim's help, spent the afternoon cooking our feast while Meizi and I ate sunflower seeds and chatted in the living room. Bob stopped by a little before the meal began, bearing a huge box of fruit, a traditional gift given here on holidays.

Here is a picture of Meizi posing next to our table before we sit down to eat.


After we devoured our meal, we chatted for awhile, and then early in the evening Yanzi and Meizi set to preparing the dumplings FROM SCRATCH, which involves lots of chopping, mixing, kneading, and boiling.

Here is a picture of Yanzi and Meizi working on mincing the celery, cabbage, and ginger, which they will add to ground pork and salt to make the dumpling fillings.


After the chopping comes the making of the dumpling casings. Yanzi kneads the dough, pulls it into strips, and then separates the strips into balls, which she then rolls into small circles.


Once the casings are made, we use chopsticks to place a small portion of the celery pork or cabbage pork filling onto each piece of dough. Here Yanzi does this with ease.


And then the casings are pinched shut to seal in all the savory ingredients.


Jim contributes by chopping the garlic for the dipping sauce.


As a 外国人 wai guo ren (foreigner), I feel pretty lucky to get a chance to try my hand at making dumplings. Meizi and Yanzi lend their expertise, telling me that my dumplings look good. I know they are just being nice, but I don't care because I am having such a blast!





The last step: boiling. The dumplings are brought to a boil, then the water is drained and new water is added. This happens three times before the dumplings are fully cooked and ready to be eaten.


And at last we can enjoy!



After feasting on dumplings, we settled down to watch various Spring Festival galas on TV...and do some moxibustion. This TCM technique is supposed to help with circulation and the flow of energy in the body. Yanzi, who studied TCM, insisted that it feels good and is healthy for you, but anything that involves a large flaming wick and big red welts can't be THAT relaxing. I decided to pass...for now.