Spring Festival

So today is the second day of the New Year (Chinese reckoning) and I've had my wife's aunts, uncles and cousins over for dinner. My mother-in-law did her usual excessive cooking routine and made assorted delicacies and specialities. If memory serves there were (in many cases the names are made-up to describe, not translated):

• homemade meatballs and fish balls with wood ears and some kind of mushroom;
• fried chicken drumsticks;
• lotus root and spare rib soup;
• stir-fried green beans with some kind of leafy vegetable I couldn't identify;
• battered lotus root with pork;
  
• some kind of vegetable that has no English name (菜苔 in Chinese, although I may have the characters wrong);
• pork and taro root cracked rice casserole;
• mutton and carrot hot pot;
• wormwood salad;
• stir-fried beef tripe and pepper;
• a mixed cold dish containing marinated beef, beef blood vessels, tripe, coriander and peanuts.

All of this was after the huge breakfast of homemade dumplings (Chinese dumplings are like Polish perogies) and the day full of snacks of various sorts.

And, yet, somehow I'm still losing weight over the holidays.