Kuih Ee [湯圓] - 2013 [for 冬至 Dongzhi Festival]

Kuih Ee [湯圓] - 2013 [for 冬至 Dongzhi Festival], a busy day apart from making the glutinous rice balls in ginger sugar syrup soup, I  also have to prepare a variety of dishes and other foods for ancestral worship at my MIL house.  Luckily, it falls on a Sunday and I have a Saturday to make the preparations.

I won't be posting the recipe for the Kuih Ee [for the recipe, please look up my earlier posts on Kuih Ee] but only some photos of it.  This year I was lucky, my neighbour gave me some natural colourings for my kuih ee.  I made 5 colours [white, red, yellow, green and blue] for this year's rice balls [tang yuan].

The green is from pandan paste, yellow is from pumpkin and blue is from the blue flower [bunga telang].  I used Bentong ginger for the sugar syrup.  The end product - yummylicious tang yuan [湯圓] [kuih ee].

For ancestral worship, I had a long list of items to prepare [some are specified by my MIL, while some I can try out with different tastes].   

My mother in-law's list of must have.

- Kuih Ee

- Seng Lay - Pak Cham Kai,  Dried cuttlefish 

and Roasted Pork

- Fried Fish

- Fruits [I bought Persimmons only] but she added 3 other varieties

- Jiu Hoo Char

- a pork dish [I cooked the Palm Sugar Braised Pork Belly from No Frills Recipe]

- a curry dish [I cooked the Fish Sauce Curry Chicken, recipe from Yum Yum magazine] - recipe posting soon.

- a soup dish [I cooked the Tom Yum Pig Trotter Soup, similar to my Tom Yam Gradoog Moo].  I replaced the pork ribs with pig trotters because I was told that pork ribs cannot be used for ancestral praying [I don't know why - anyone knows the reason?]. Too busy, didn't have time to take photos of the soup with pig trotters.

- a noodle dish [I cooked the Hokkien Fried Yellow Noodles - non-vegetarian]  [picture shows the vegetarian version].

- Cakes - I baked a chiffon cake and an Ogura cake

- Chinese Kuih Muih - I made Steamed Red Buns 

 [Mi Koo Recipe]

- Rice and wine etc..

Of course, as a Taoist's family, burning of josspapers and paper money for our fore-fathers/ancestors is a must have too.    After prayers usually by 12 noon, it is time for the family members to feast on the food prepared, hehehe!.  Most times, I'm too tired to enjoy the food after an early start to prepare these things....and later the clearing and cleaning up to do.   This is how I spent Solstice Day year in and year out since I got married....hehehe!