On the 5th Day of the 5th Month of the Lunar Calendar

Me: I decided to buy bak chang today. It's my comfort food for today.

SC: Me too me too! Actually everyone wanted that too. Duan Wu already ma. We let Angel tasting first. Then only we buy the nice one.

So there we were, elbowing our ways as we walked passed all those food stalls in the night market behind the hospital, hunting for bak zhang.

See, the thing about me and night markets, I don't normally like to buy foods and take them back home later. I prefer to get something that I can munch as I walk. Therefore, I think night market is such an expensive place for dinner. I ended munching up 15 bucks. But I was really really full no doubt. Had a siu pau, char siew pau, some nyonya kuih, shanghai fried pau, fried chicken, coconut drink, sugar cane drink and the ultimate goal of my walking down the night market - bak chang.

Serve me right, now that I'm sitting here complaining how bloated I am. Bugger I shouldn't have bought the fried chicken...

I'm always a fan of glutinous rice dumpling. When my grandma were still around and fit, we used to celebrate the 5th day of the 5th month of the lunar calendar with a gathering. Be it lunch or dinner, we'll always have dumpling at the end of the day. But as times past by, the gatherings were no longer a schedule in our calendar as both my grandma passed away. Occasionally over the years, my mum would still cook up a feast on such a day, particularly when we were all at home. In fact, we would also make some dumplings the day before too. But then again, as we've left home for studies, such a dates were no longer a celebration for us.

Commercially available glutinous rice dumplings might not be as nice as home-made ones, but I guess we have to thank them for indirectly reminding us that there's such a day in our thousand years of culture.

Sometimes I do wonder, when everyone started to get lazy with preparing the ingredients and making them dumplings, would we still even know there's sucha festival?

Sigh... so full...