CNY Part 2: Dinner with family.

After our fun last night, and with essentially the entirety of the city shutting down by noonish the next day, we decided to again follow the customs of everyone else in Hong Kong, and have a family dinner.

The fact that we didn't have any semblance of food, blood/legal relations, nor pools of money to spend on an extravagant feast should probably have been an obstacle, but instead, we rallied together and decided to cook it, potluck style.

And due to our relative lack of Asian cooking styles, it was more about whatever you could fashion into a meal and call it "a meal" over having fancy cuisine. What fits that? Spaghetti. A spaghetti dinner it was. Before executing this, though, we needed supplies. So in the morning, before the last of the commercialized stores closed for the holiday, we rushed into the grocery stores and even the open air markets.

Where else but Tai Po Market?

(The correct answer to this is "pretty much anywhere, Jeff". But this is my story, and it's my favorite district in town because it's so authentic.)

Ainhi and Noah were making the pasta, sauce, and chicken together. Amy was doing dessert. I finally decided at some point to make a fruit salad from whatever looked good at the fruit market. Brooke provided the beverages.

After the shopping bonanza, we separated briefly to prepare our dishes, and then reconvene for dinner.

For me, this only meant one thing: chopping fruit. cubing fruit, peeling fruit, and sampling fruit. In all, I prepared a fruit salad with fresh pears, apples, kiwis, white grapes, and strawberries. Then, I poured a little 7-Up over it for sweetness, and then a pseudo-Greek dressing of yogurt and honey for dipping.

Basically, everything was delicious. In a sense, it's what everyone else was having for their family dinners: food from home.

Spaghetti with a real tomato sauce (Ainhi labored through peeling ten tomatoes. Just for the sauce. That was awesome.)

The garlic bread. Real garlic and butter on bread, made in a toaster oven. It was by far the star of the show, and a brief taste of home.

And, finally progressing as a group from gaining our bearings in Hong Kong to living in Hong Kong as real people in this place, and the coping associated with this transition, what better to have at times in a pseudo-dream world than a pseudo-family when it all of a sudden isn't a dream anymore.