We decided to do this traditional New Year’s Eve and Day thing so that when our baby is born, we’ll be able to present to him a smorgasbord of traditions from all sides of our families, with smorgasbord alluding to the food bit of tradition, not the Swedish bit, because we don’t have any Swedish in our blood except for the time I got a couple of splinters in my hand from assembling an Ikea armchair. From Naomi’s father’s side of the family, that is. From Naomi’s side of the family, that is.

Author Mr Miyagi Posted on FebruCategories At home, Eating Tags CNY, LNY, lohei, raw fish, tradition 2 Comments on Have we lo’d enough hei yet? What Chinese herbs are you smoking today?įor New Year’s this year we decided that it would be nice to observe a little family tradition. I didn’t ask my dad about this, but he seemed very into the lohei this year, looking as though he was concentrating on the task at hand (and chopsticks), even though this tossing fish and sundry all over the table business comes more naturally to him because he has Parkinson’s.

Still it’s great to be able to make a mess at the dinner table and say we’re conforming with tradition even though we know the practice was invented by a Chinese restaurant chef who didn’t know what to do with leftover slivers of raw fish, crackers and some condiments, and he’d run out of gas and electricity, so he wasn’t able to cook them. Especially when there are pregnant women in the family. We’ve lo hei’d three times this Chinese New Year, which isn’t a lot, but there’s only so much raw fish and crackers you can manage.

Miyagi ramen