Gung Hay Fat Choy! Chinese New Years in Vancouver

Despite having lived in and around Vancouver for nearly thirteen years, before this year I'd never been to the Chinese New Year parade in Chinatown. I'm not sure how that happened - I love parades!

This year I got to see three different Chinese New Year events, celebrating the dawn of the year of the tiger. On Saturday my mother and I went mall-hopping, and caught two dragon dances! On Sunday morning Kirk and I went to Chinatown and watched the main parade. It was awesome! It was a cacophony of colour and sound. Lots of people were handing out little red envelopes of lucky money (actually gold chocolate loonies). There were musicians, dancers, community groups, cadets and the obligatory corporations and politicians. Before the parade I heard a piper (which is kind of strange), but there were no bagpipers marching in the parade.

Here are some select photos.

 

Anticipation on Pender Street

Kirk waiting for the parade to begin

 

 

Vancouver Fire Fighters' Band

 

 

 

Click below for more photos...

Hum Drum New Year

I'm feeling a little blah today. It's raining. The frenzy of the holidays is over. My brother and sister-in-law are back in Toronto. Kirk is back at work. I took the Christmas decorations down this morning and the bare tree is standing in the corner, waiting to be taken to the chipper tomorrow (which kind of makes me feel like a jerk). I'm sitting alone on the couch.

I need a new project, so I've decided to do a portrait of a very good friend of mine. I'll be painting it with acrylic on a 11" square piece of watercolour paper. I'm not going to say who it's supposed to be, in case it ends up not looking anything like her :) Then it'll just be a portrait of a pretty girl.

This Week in My Kitchen: Cookies and Pies!!

Mmm, Christmas baking! I'm not the best baker, but I'm slowly improving. This year I kept it simple, with a couple of batches of cookies and two pies.

Cookies: Ginger, Oatmeal Peppermint Chocolate Chip, Chocolate Kahlua, Thumbprint
Last week my friends Meghan and Stephanie came by and we had an evening of baking cookies and drinking wine (two of my favourite things!). We used my go-to cookie guide, ExtraVeganZa by Laura Matthais
There were a few mishaps, but everything tasted good and we made enough to give as gifts and to pig out ourselves. When I was a kid I used to bake cookies with my grandmother quite a bit. She passed down her not-the-best baking skills to me. We always had a few weird looking cookies and ones that just didn't turn out. To this day, I call imperfect pastries "Nanny Cookies". We had a few Nanny Cookies this time around, and it made me really miss her (she passed away when I was seventeen).

Nanny Cookies: overzealous portioning results in one giant cookie

perfect oatmeal peppermint chocolate cookies

chocolate kahlua cookies ready to go in the oven

check out the chocolate-chippiness of this one

chocolate kahlua and thumbprint cookies

gift basket for my landlords

Pies: Pumpkin and Pecan

This year I made a pumpkin pie from the frozen remains of our halloween pumpkin, and pecan pie (yes, vegan pecan pie is possible and delicious!). Yum!

draining the halloween pumpkin - I saved & froze the juice for later use

pumpkin pie

pecan pie

a delicious grape pie my landlady made with the concords that grow in our yard

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Christmas!!

Merry Christmas to all! Here are some shots of our living room decorated for Christmas. This is the first time I've had room for a tree (and a real one to boot!), and I'm super excited.

 

the painting on the mantle is by Arden Marow Ross