Have you seen these?

If you haven’t, you probably can tell from the title that it is a rare delicacy for Chinese New Year.  In Chinese, we call these “角子(jiao zi)”, I could never figure out why because in English, the character “角(jiao)” means angle or corner and the character “子(zi)” means little.  I think it’s a weird name since there are no angle or corner in these tiny delicious sugary dumpling.  I guess whoever invented this delicacy might have thought it looked like a protractor and it reminded of angles and math and corners, who knows.

Anyway, last night was the first time in who knows how long my mom has made one of these.  She told me that she hasn’t made these herself since I was born which was probably why I don’t remember.  I guess she was trying to help me reconnect with my heritage since I came to the United States so long ago.

My mom also told me that people stopped making these since the early 90s when they started selling it in the supermarkets.  She often say it makes it that much more special when it’s homemade.  In the recent years, my mom had been trying to buy these in the California Chinese Supermarkets but she said it will never be as good as she used to make them as a kid and shared it with the neighborhood.

I even tried to learn how to wrap it and make it look all pretty like hers but after 3 hour, I gave up and just watched her finish it  up with her delicate fingers sealing up the seam of the wrapper that she created from scratch.  As I watched, I used my new tablet and took pictures of every step and every ingredients to remember this rare moment.

Besides the food, this Chinese New Year is also special to me because my aunt has flown all the way from China just to celebrate it with us and at this rare moments, we traveled to many exciting places and seen many beautiful rare creature including the Bald Eagle.

Well, that’s all for now.

Readers:

Do you or your family have rare traditions to celebrate holidays?