Winter Solstice Festival in Maastricht!

Yesterday morning, our part-time cleaner asked my wife whether she knew it was 'Koh Tung', a Chinese winter festival involving the making of 'Tong yun', soft balls made of glutinous rice flour normally cooked in sweetened boiling water. As usual, my busy wife forgot all about it!

But when she least expected it, a surprise call past midnight from Cheng in Maastricht asking for its recipe saved the day! As she had noted, having it in a real winter made it more meaningful than us observing the festival in a hot equatorial country...

Maastricht under snow

Sepide from Iran and Hibret from Ethiopia making 'tong yun'

And the taste?

"My first experience with making "tong yun" was a "great success", as Borat would say. The rice balls turned out to be really soft and chewy, the soup tasty - largely thanks to a last-minute SOS phone call to Ma asking for cooking instructions (vital recommendations include: adding cornflour and oil to the rice ball dough, and sauteing garlic and dried shrimps before adding water and meat for the soup). Yum! :D

I wasn't sure if you could access my friend's Facebook album on this so here are some photos from today. The first photo is funny because we have Sepide from Iran and Hibret from Ethiopia rolling rice balls - they were quite talented! *grin* I've also attached a photo of "Yalda" from the day before, the Persian winter solstice festival of gathering over dried fruits, nuts, and "Hafez" poetry. I think I've finally understood the rationale behind "koh tung" (fancy us equatorial inhabitants celebrating autumn, spring and winter festivals?!) whilst living in this part of the world - there has been so little sunlight and so much snow in the past weeks that these little traditions truly bring people together, making winter a wee more bearable. :)

Christmas will also be a busy, sociable period as I have a dinner and karaoke session at the Tirivayis on Christmas eve (this Friday already?!), dinner at Asel and Nico's on Christmas day (actually, I was also invited to Janneke's but I promised Asel and Nico first...), and then another dinner with Janneke and my other Dutch friends on the second day of Christmas. On the 28th, I will leave for London. I hope to be lucky again by evading last year's Eurostar tunnel problems! *fingers-crossed*"

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