Fortunate

Recently, we have been reading books about China and learning about Chinese New Year, or Lunar New Year. This was inspired both by the beginning of the Lunar New Year falling on Valentine's Day, and by the departure of the beloved Tai Shan. Tai Shan is a four-year-old panda who was born at the National Zoo in Washington, DC, and has now been returned to China, as was agreed by the two nations (his parents are only on loan to the USA from China, and any offspring must be returned to China). Having seen Tai Shan as a tiny cub and watched him grow, it was hard to say goodbye, but we took the opportunity to learn more about pandas in the wild, and China in general.



So of course I found it fitting to make fortune cookies for Chinese New Year. Even though fortune cookies are not in the least bit Chinese. But they are one of those goofy cross-cultural phenomena that I kind of love, even if they're not "authentic." And I have kind of an obsession with making things from scratch that right-minded people never make from scratch. I found a super-easy recipe for homemade fortune cookies over at AlphaMom, and they turned out great. I did change it up a bit, and substituted lemon extract for the almond extract. Not for any good reason, except that I didn't have almond. And I printed out my own fortunes, using customized phrases for our family. They were delicious and quite fun. So fun, in fact, that things got a little raucous and the toddler ended up throwing his fortune into my wine glass.



Happy Year of the Tiger to you. May your year be full of good luck. I, for one, am feeling very fortunate.

This post is part of the Moms' 30-Minute Blog Challenge, hosted every Tuesday by Jamie over at SteadyMom.