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Talia Ann was all dressed up for the Reunion dinner, she could not wait for the aromatic feast of yummy herbal steamboat dinner.

I created my own soup base this year. Around noon, I started preparing the chicken. It’s a whole chicken with the head & neck intact…yucks! I have to do what I hate most…chopping the chicken head. Once that’s done, I chopped off the legs, de-skinned the chicken and chopped it into more managable pieces. All of the pieces except for the chicken breasts go into the pot and I added some chinese herbs (当归，淮山， 苟杞子， 黑木耳。。。etc). I brought it to boil and transferred the pot into the space cooker. The yummy herbal soupbase would be ready after a few hours of slow cooking.

When I opened the lid 7 hours later, the aroma filled the air and everybody at home was drawn to the kitchen….ok…I lied, maybe not everybody. Talia Ann wanted to come down, but she couldn’t.

I think we prepared too much food for the steamboat. We have 2 bags of prawn, sukiyaki beef (thinly-sliced beef), sliced fish, marinated chicken, raw chicken breast, king clams, more beef, sotong, some pork, a heap of Golden mushrooms, dumplings (made by mum), fish dumplings, a plate of assorted mushrooms, sotong balls, beef balls, tou fu, 2 piles of assorted green veggies…etc.

Mum prayed over the food & the family while all of us fell under the temptation of the 当归鸡 smell in the air.

Guess what, this was the first time I had steamboat when everybody attacked the soup before any food was added to the boiling soup. It really put a smile on my face, all the effort was well worth it.

The sukiyaki beef was the next target and we cleared all of it within minutes. We ended the dinner with a bottle of year 2000 Cabernet Sauvignon and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie™ Ice Cream (It ranked 4th on Top 10 Flavors).

[ Ice Cream break: if your kids love Ben & Jerry ice cream they will enjoy the “Past your eyes” mini game on Ben & Jerry’s website. Good for hands & eyes coordination]

It’s good to have a domestic helper at home. After dinner, we could sit back and enjoy the wine, ice cream and watch TV. Our helper really enjoyed her dinner too, she told Jaime while washing the plates that she was so full and that she would never forget the nice dinner. It was a rather simple steamboat session for us, but I don’t think she had so much food on the table before.