Winter Solstice Festival

Winter Solstice Festival is coming to the town again, it falls on 21 Dec this year instead of 22 Dec in the past years. As a tradition, it is also a day which marks the ending of a year and family members would reunion again to have dinner together. Glutinous rice ball soup is the main dish of this festival where the Chinese believe it represents reunion and strenghtens the bond of family. There is also another saying, after having the glutinous rice ball soup, it shows you are one year older.

I personally not the fans of glutinous rice ball, and I would only go for those has filling. Every year, my mom chooses to make the simplest glutinous rice ball which means only in red and white but no filling, so I will never eat and tell my mom because I do not want to get older.

Back in 2005 (if I do not remember wrongly), with Zepphians again, we wanted to celebrate the festival though we were away from our hometown. Therefore, Ms Tan and I were searching for glutinous rice flour all over Midvalley whereas Ms Wong volunteered to prepare red bean soup at home so that we could cook our glutinous rice ball later. Unfortunately, all the glutinous rice flour was sold out, as we were about to leave the place with disappointment together with some snack food as the replacement, we saw few ladies holding pre-packaged frozen glutinous rice ball! Suddenly, I felt I was so "not smart" as in why didn't anyone of us think of this instead of insisting on glutinous rice flour. We bought that eventually.

However, I think I could understand Ms Tan's intention, we would want to enjoy the process of making glutinous rice ball together more than eating it.

Last but not least, Happy Winter Solstice Festival 2008, I am not missing the festival, I am missing the reunion with everyone, with the people I want.