[this post is dedicated for the 'memoir' assignment]
It was the third day of the Chinese New Year celebration back in my hometown few months ago, in the beginning of the Dragon year..
I was sitting on the cozy beige color sofa in our living room by myself, covered by the warm yellow lighting after sending our last guests to the gate. The ticking silvery ash color clock on the wall has past our usual dinner time. Nobody's back at home yet. It is understandable since the third day was always the busiest day of the new year. It is when we will go around visiting our colleagues, friends, and relative's houses for yearly new year visits, or something we call 'pai jia' in our native language.
After accompanying our guests to eat a little bit of everything awhile ago from the new year foods which we displayed on the table, my stomach refuse to make any noise, so I decided to delay my dinner. Being left alone without anything to do automatically makes me reminiscing the old time.
I was staring blankly to my only company at the moment-- our dog, while pieces of the scattered memories start to flash randomly here and there inside my mind..
I remember back then when I was younger, I was always so eager to welcome the lunar new year.
It is still very clear in my mind and still warm in my heart, how I'm always so pleased of the lunar new year scent in our house. Not only because of the crowd but the scent. Smiling over the random memory, I continue to collect the scattered pieces..
I will wake up early in the morning, and there will always be the smell of the sweet, dry, and tangy scent from the incenses my father burned earlier to pray to our God for our family's blessing. Along with that, it was the lovely smell of the fresh orange, new year's layer cakes and all the crunchy,
sweet, and tempting new year's signature finger foods in the jars
prepared for the guests with the slight hint of the light fireworks smoke odor from the last night's lunar new year's welcome celebration.
All of the pampering scents was almost unbearable, I think I could smell
heaven. It is always be the best part of the morning during the Chinese
new year for me as a child.
Not to mention the best smell among all was the smell of a hint of brewed sugar being heated in the water on the stove, whispering my mom's signature tian tang sweet soup was on the way to our dining table. The sounds of the table ware from the kitchen was like a music to my ears.
I have always love the smell of that sweet soups.
It is filled with a very warm and earthy sweet smell which successfully reminds me of our big family reunion time and it is almost always making me homesick every time I remember that smell especially when I was away from my hometown.
The tian tang sweet soup itself is made from sugar water added with mostly white fungus, red dates, lotus seeds, gingko nuts, and barley. It was quite flexible on what we want to add inside, but those are the ingredients that my mom will always use every year when making the tian tang.
Even-tough, I was always attracted to the scent of the sweet soup but I was never so fond about consuming it as a child, but I have grown to really like and attracted to the taste as well now. I have never figure out why and how the taste of this soup was never be my favorite when I was younger. Come to think of it now, it has the most in-refuse-able taste ever.
The slightly sourish flavor from the red dates and the sweet lotus seeds together with the chewy gingko nuts was just so sinfully match to each other just like the smooth texture of barley and the chunky texture of the white fungus in which complete each other in a bowl of 'heaven on earth'.
Indescribably irresistible.
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| [picture is strictly for illustration purpose only & not own by me; credit to owner] |
Even now, I realize that this things I like about the lunar new year was never change.
I still love the lunar new year scent and I still love the sweet soup even after 21 years of my life.
As I remembering all those things at that very moment, I was craving for some of the tian tang, so I walk across the room to our kitchen straight to the refrigerator and pull up my mom's big food container with a purplish-pink lid color, storing the remaining ingredients of the sweet soup.
After heating up some sugar water and adding up all the ingredients of the sweet soup, I was sitting on the dining table by myself eating the soup in which shockingly enough doesn't feel as much same as before. Clearly, I was sure it wasn't spoiled despite it has been stored for 2 days in the fridge neither because of the way of how I make/preparing it, because it was an exact copy-paste of how my mom used to prepare it.
I don't understand why back then. I was almost clueless.
But one thing for sure that I finally realize now of why it doesn't taste the same is not always because of how we prepared the food or how fresh the food is.
Sometimes, it is about in what situation we ate the food.
Sometimes, even the most awful food will taste extraordinarily delicious when eaten in a very warm, happy and joyful environment surrounded among our family and loves one..
and some other times, even the most 'heaven on earth' food would not be as heavenly as it is when eaten in loneliness..
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This is not the end of the story. This is just the end of another pieces of stories. So brew your tea, bake your cookies, be back later and flip the page--
Enjoy the little treat,
