New Year of Horse--甲午

The six days holidays (January 30th to February 4th) of Chinese New Year flew in a flash. In the sunny southern Taiwan, I attempted for the first time to smoke brisket with a great success using a brand new smoker, a birthday present from Jennie Wang.

I made two new jars of star fruit wine. It's one of my new year rituals to pick up star fruits from the front yard garden and preserve them with sugar. My husband brought a new jar for me, because sweet Eni, the Indonesian maid, broke one while cleaning it.

Everyday, I was busy experimenting different dishes with Eni, take making pastry for example, I taught her to make both sweet (chocolate and peanut) and salty (Indonesian Beef Rendang prepared by Eni) pies. Eni was willing to learn while she had free time after taking care of my mother-in-law.

I love spending the Chinese New Year holidays in the beautiful countryside with my husband and relatives. I especially enjoyed reading Legend of Eastern Zhou (770BC-246BC) to my great delight to broaden my knowledge of Chinese Theatrical Literature, a free course for senior citizens at Taipei City Library--Jin-xin Branch from January 22nd till February 26th. I wonder how Shakespeare would look at the busy and noisy period of Eastern Zhou of heroes and slaves, a kaleidoscope of human civilization beyond imagination and description.

My dear husband was born in 1954 甲午 . He is celebrating his 60th birthday this year. One hundred and twenty years ago, the First Sino-Japanese War 甲午戰爭 (1 August 1894 – 17 April 1895) was fought between Qing Dynasty China and Meiji Japan, primarily over control of Korea. After the Qing was defeated, Taiwan was given to Japan from February 1895 till the end of 2nd World War in 1945.

The spring of 2014 arrived early this year. When I rushed to the Flower Garden after work at the pharmacy this afternoon, I only got to see the residual cherry blossom. Better late than never, though. I took a few photos under the cherry trees. Then I went to Wen-san Farm to pick up less than 10 falling olives. I usually picked up two big bags of olives in the past years. I learned a lesson today. I need to pick up falling olives at Wen-shan Farm as soon as the cherry starts to blossom.