Lunar New Year is right around the corner. This Friday will officially mark the new year on the Lunar calendar, and this year, it’s Year of the Ox we’re welcoming in. Year of the Ox is actually my year. It may not initially appear that way because based on my birth year on the Gregorian calendar, it looks like I am a Tiger. But because Lunar New Year tends to fall in late January/early February, in reality, I’m actually an Ox. So, it’s MY year this year, so hoping for some good things to happen in my life to shake things up in a positive way!

In previous years, we’d hosted lunar new year dinner parties, and I always made a whole fish to welcome the new year. Given it’s COVID and we’re still supposed to be socially distancing, this actually made me a little sad. I’m still making some traditional dishes ranging from the radish cake to Buddha’s Delight to steaming up some Vietnamese banh chung I purchased, but it’s not really going to be that festive. And it made me wistful of the times when I was young at home with my grandma, where she ALWAYS made a big fuss and pulled out all the stops for Chinese New Year, from the foods to the decorations to the superstitions that were followed (ummm, yeah, I will still be washing my hair if I feel like it before the new year begins). I will likely never have that level of awareness or celebrate in a traditional way like that unless one day, we end up living somewhere in Asia.