Eat Dance Live

(pic from here ) HAPPY NEW YEAR! Happy New Year to you and yours! I hope your 2011 is filled with health, love, and happiness! I've gotta say, I've never been so uncertain about what an upcoming year will hold. 2010 has been exciting and crazy in so many ways, most of them pretty unexpected. Who knows what 2011 has in store for me? To recap 2010, perhaps I should have read predictions earlier this year using the Chinese Lunar Calendar because 2010 was "my" year... I'm born in the Year of the Tiger and 2010 was also a Tiger Year (specifically a Metal Tiger year). It's been a wild ride. Given the nature of Tigers, I assumed maybe just having a Tiger live through a Tiger year was just a little too much heat, but here's what I just read about the 2010 Year of the Tiger (which ends this February 2011): "This year is one of much activity, drama, change, crisis, and unpredictability. Tiger years are associated with instability and upheaval. Metal is particu...

Between Chinese New Year, Valentine's Day, and Mardi Gras, I've definitely had my fill of holidays over the past couple days! First off, happy New Year to all those on the lunar calendar and a special shout-out to all the other Tiger zodiacs out there! As kids, we definitely used to make a bigger deal out of Chinese New Year, doing a lot more of the traditional activities a family does and getting our little red money envelopes at the end of the evening. However, we still honor the most important part of the day though: getting together as a family to celebrate over a big meal. We had a wonderful dinner with all of the many extensions of my Chinese family that live in the area, now uniting four generations under one roof! Though I didn't have most of the meal because it wasn't raw (I made a big salad for the veggie eaters), I still loved to share in the experience of the big traditional Chinese hot pot (which is actually your perfectly balanced meal of proteins, starch...