Jane's notes from Christmas

jiaozi, originally uploaded by zawelski.

We made at least 100 jiaozi! Jiang Ayi (the one who helps my fam cook and clean every day) and Zhou Jing (a grad student here, my jogging partner) were the jiaozi masters, with Zhou Jing teaching us the special way to fold and make them up in the northeastern part of China, where she’s from. They were so beautiful! We had four different kinds of fillings:

soft white tofu and chive
smoked tofu cubes and shitake mushrooms
shredded cabbage and carrot and home-pickled vegetables
pumpkin, ginger and sesame seed - a surprising note of sweetness, and absolutely delicious.

I had hunted on the internet for recipes using star anise, since I’ve always seen it at the market, but never used it. My search revealed this: baked apples with one star anise on top, infusing the whole thing with a rich savory flavor. The apples were stuffed with golden raisins (the only kind available around here) that had been soaked in sweetened jasmine tea. Here’s the link: http://vegeyum.wordpress.com/2007/12/05/bakedapples/

I also came upon a recipe for five-spice carrot muffins. Five spice uses star anise in it, and we’ve had a container full of it here since we arrived (from previous residents, but it still smelled great). Think your traditional pumpkin pie spice, with a hint of anise. I also fortified them with lots of sunflower seeds and chopped walnuts. These muffins rocked. The 2 other Americans in attendance were so pleased to have a taste of home with muffins, and such tasty ones at that. Here’s the link: http://tnoranges.blogspot.com/2009/09/chinese-five-spice-carrot-muffin.html

Rounding it out were mulled wine - I just spied whole cloves and dried orange peels at the market, dark beer and M&M cookies (go, Mom!). Here’s what completed the scene: country Christmas music, bits of Handel’s “Messiah” from our Ipod speaker, the whole house decked out with strewn wrapping paper (Go, Ikea in Chengdu!), piles of gifts, the Christmas tree, stockings, Christmas cards from students and ourselves, our huge home-made Advent calendar, plus 3 chocolate ones from a sweet friend in the States, and lots of attention to the many jiaozi and other dishes being crafted.

One of my Facebook friends summed it up pretty well when he said, “I swear, doing a big Christmas "event" with family and friends in one's home is like opening a show. You've got to have costumes, set decoration, music, props, etc. PLUS FOOD, of course! We're exhausted and the curtain isn't even up yet.”
I love to entertain in my home, but we sure do expend a lot of effort. Staying up late to wrap last-minute gifts and do food prep for the next day surely also contributed to a certain sense of, well, I just had this really aching back.

Maybe it was also the intense week of jogging, sit-ups and yoga, but my body was tuckered out after lunch! After the guests left, I hit the sack for a good hour-and-a-half.

Woke up and couldn’t even move! But after a few minutes, I recovered fully from the yoga stiffness. Ready for round 2 of the day.

After eating leftover fish soup and jiaozi, Zekey announced, “I can’t wait for Christmas to end!” What? He meant that he didn’t want the day to end. We settled on leaving the 2 boxes in the mail from Babcia unopened, as well as the grow-in-water Christmas tree, for the next day, to extend the celebrations. But it sure was cute how he sighed and batted his eyelashes, in love with Christmas.

Next, we made cut-out cookies from dough I’d made and refrigerated on Christmas Eve. Previous residents had left the traditional Christmas-shaped cookie cutters: angel, trees, stars, little gingerbread men and a candy cane. Our Western-style countertop oven comes in handy so often.

Who knocked on the door but the boys’ teacher, Chi Laoshi, whom they adore. She came bearing a gift of a little plastic tree-shaped container filled with candies. She stayed and helped decorate cookies.

I made frosting using powdered sugar from the Western-goods bakery in Chengdu. Food coloring? Not in these parts. We succeeded in making pink - not red, but close - with a pomegranate squeezed by mine own bare hands. Green was not achieved, as the kiwi juice was apparently not green enough. But it wasn’t pure white, so it stood out from the third bowl of pure white frosting. We chopped up Skittles (thanks again, Mom!), and decorated to our hearts’ content.

Then we spent an hour-and-a-half delivering cut-out cookies to 8 of our good neighbor friends. The boys’ teacher came with us, much to their delight. Up and down we went, in different stairwells, being let in, staying at the threshold, so as to not have to change into slippers at each place. Many neighbors gave us oranges or candy as we departed. But the cutest was when Zekey shouted out (and his speaking voice is already pretty darn loud), “I LOVE YOU!” to the favorite of these, our favorite neighbors. It began with Luo Bo, our foreign affairs office assistant, and continued with Ivy and Sicily, Liang Tao’s wife and daughter, Rao Bin and Lang Lang, and of course, Chi Laoshi, their teacher.

There are great perks being in a row of apartment buildings. Let’s see, there are 5 entrances in our row, and each entrance has 12 apartments. That’s 60 homes. Across from us is another apartment building, same size. That’s 120 homes within a span of 300 feet!

Wow, it was 9:30 p.m. when we finished, so the kids headed straight to bed. Dave and I somehow mustered the energy to do bunches of dishes and put away lots of food. The previous night, Christmas Eve, we had thoroughly enjoyed ourselves listening to David Sedaris’ “Santaland Diaries.”

We pulled off a great Christmas celebration in China! Yay, us! New traditions - Christmas Jiaozi, David Sedaris, and cookie delivery. I’m pretty happy with all this.