Dumpling Day and Tuesday night Dumplings

This weekend our village had our second ever Dumpling day. A little different from the first one.
On the first dumpling day a year ago, we were anxiously waiting for Cindy to receive her referral. It was a thursday and we had been planning dumpling making for a few weeks in advance. However, when the day came, we already knew that Cindy was "in" for that month of referrals and she should have been getting her referral *that day*. By mid day, we had news that the DHL truck had broken down and the delivery wouldn't make it to Portland until the next day. Dumpling making that night was jubilant and anxious. We were excited for the next day and could not wait for it to be late enough to go to bed so it could *be the next day already...*
Dumpling making this year featured our very own little Dumpling....becuase, since we were making Dumplings the day we waited for her, she has been known as Dumpling. So this year around the table, we had 4 aunties, a Mommy, and a dumpling. We made around 200 dumplings, and Dumpling played with dumpling wrappers in the water making little balls of them.

Next year, we are hoping we have 1 Auntie, 4 Mommies, and 4 little ones... We can't wait for the time all of the girls will be old enough to learn to make dumplings with us. For now, playing with broken dumpling wrappers is enough. When they are old enough, they will join in with our Chinese New Year Preparations and help make dumplings and cook the Chinese New Year Feast.

This year we made 3 kinds of dumplings. Traditional Pork, and new this year- Vegetarian and Shanghai Soup dumplings, also called "Xiao Long Bao". When you bite into them, there is soup inside the dumplings. Unfortunate we ran out of dumpling wrappers so we were only able to make the pork and vegetarian ones. I brought the ingredients for the Xiao long bao home with me and last night I made another 125 dumplings. Cannot wait to try them!