The Winter Solstice

21 December

In geographical terms , the winter Solstice refers to the position of the sun being over the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere resulting in the days being longer than nights. So, it's not surprising that the further South one goes, the shorter the night hours and it's no wonder that my brother who is in Melbourne experiences long summer days and it's bright even at 9pm.
However Sara says in the UK , days become dark at the start of 3pm. So the nights are longer than days in the Northern Hemisphere. It's the result of the movement of the earth around the sun.

This knowledge I have passed down to generations after generations of students when I taught geography in my younger days.

But today , 22 December marks a special day in the Lunar Calendar too. It is "Dong Zhi" - the Winter Festival which denotes the end of the Winter season and the start of Spring. It's the last festival of the Lunar Year before the Chinese New Year.
When I was a little girl, mama used to make a sweet soup filled with glutinous balls to usher in the celebration of an additional year to our age. Tradition has it that the family that rolls the glutinous balls together stays glued together. That was so long ago...

Today, Por and Kong stopped over for a trip to Penang. Por told me she has long discarded the celebration as no one is around for them to remember the occasion. So after 27 years of marriage, this is the first time I have them with me and I thought perhaps I should have a go with the sweet.





I bought these ready made glutinous balls at the wet market. Clever me thinks it's so easy until the critical Sara scorned at my easy way out..." Mama what's the meaning of getting ready made balls? Do it yourself la !"
Ugh !I would not want to go through the hassle..."You make la since you think you are so smart!" I regretted the moment I uttered for she took my word for it.

There she took up the challenge despite my screams...total mess !

But my screams fell on deaf ears; as usual.



She would not let it go...the balls were rolled and she insisted hers is of higher quality than the ones I bought at the market.

That's how it looks after the boil. What do you think is the verdict ?




I added the rest into the sweet concoction and they look so pretty!

The Verdict :

Kong - Kong took 4 balls and love them. Por loves the gingerly soup concoction. I took all 4 from the market because Sara's looked too sweet for my liking. Daddy Lau took 8 balls and concluded the best ones are...his daughter's recipe ! So another feather in her cap which will bloat her head further but nevertheless a good try.

All our first attempts...thanks to Dong Zhi for the glutinous balls caused our differences to turn into sweet remembrances.