6th March – Mama Lan celebrates the Lantern Festival!

They call it a Lantern Festival for a reason!

It’s 6^th March today, and tonight’s our second supper club evening!! We’ve decided to celebrate the Lantern Festival and centre the theme of the evening around it. The Lantern Festival is the final day of the 15-day long Chinese Year Festival and requires all sort of special food to mark the occasion!

As usual, I got up early this morning and got everything ready – from cooking the food to decorating the flat! After all, I’ve got a certain Ms Marmite Lover to impress! Given the nature of the Lantern Festival and as the name implies, we’ve set up plenty of red lanterns around the house.

My newest mocktail!

It took the boyfriend and I aaaaages to put them up!

But perhaps the best bit of tonight’s dinner is the dessert! We have a real treat for our guests, tonight – tang yuan!!! A personal favourite.

For the welcome mocktail tonight, I invented a new drink called ‘The Red Lantern’. I am multi talented, doncha know! ;-p.  Want to know the recipe?  Check out our recipe section.

Wish me luck!!

Love,

Mama Lan

And so dawns the big day…

On the 6^th Feb 2010 Mama Lan opens to the world!!!

And guess what? Just as I’m still getting my head around it, the big day has arrived!

Got up at 7am today – though I was still mostly asleep. Decided not to go to my weekly spinning class at 9am. Oh, the sacrifices I’m making for Mama Lan! Sympathy, please…

[And if you’re sitting there thinking why on earth would I go spinning at 9 o’clock on a Saturday morning, well, let’s put it this way – I love food! And I eat A LOT. If I didn’t exercise, I’d be huuuuuuuuuuuge!]

First things first: Everything that can be moved out of the living room and into the storage room, had to be moved.  Thank heavens the boyfriend DIYed the spare bedroom into a storage room!  I’m still not sure how he took out the bed and hid it so well behind the wardrobe!

I found out today that the sofa is too big to move out of the living room.  Errr, how on earth did they get that thing in through the door in the first place?! Decided that if it can’t be moved, it had to have a purpose – so from now on, we’ll have a chill out area next to the kitchen.  Mama Lan’s Special Mocktail on the sofa anyone?

Cleaned the flat inside out.

The beef had been marinating for 24 hours and had to be slow cooked in the pan. Continued cooking from 11am to 4pm, and then set up the table to perfection.  Some of the decorations were bought all the way from China. I *did* say I had this planned for ages!!! Just taking a bit of a breather to update the blog. Surprisingly calm and in control.

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Just checked the time – 6:20pm!  Horror!  :-S Where did the time go???  (Facebook? I got distracted… )

Haven’t changed, and still have to made the mocktail!!! Ok, Ning, calm down! You can do this.

Have just taken a sip of Chinese Green Tea. Didn’t help.

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Put on a sleek black Chinese top with black trousers.  Red belt and red shoes – it’s a Chinese New Year opening after all! Waiting for my first guests. Officially have butterflies in stomach.

Doorbell!! 6:45pm. Dinner is supposed to start at 7:00pm.  Why would anyone want to be early?  Why?!?!

Eeeeeek!!!!