07/04/07

Chinese New Year Raisin Bread

It's that time of the year again and I should be baking the regular Chinese New Year goodies like pineapple tarts or perhaps even orange tarts like I used to in previous years. This year, I was bogged down by the spring cleaning. In truth, I had neglected the house for a while. Unlike most Singaporeans who are house proud, my wife and I have better things to do than to spend our energies on making the house a showpiece. Moreover, we don't get many visitors. Speaking of visitors, there is always a mad scramble to keep the house orderly in preparation for visits by friends or kin.

However, a bread fanatic can never neglect his bread and that's a higher priority than making pine-apple tarts. I would have loved to make some if I had the time because most store bought ones are made with factory processed pine-apple paste. The taste of the factory made paste is excruciatingly bad and once you have made your own freshly ground pine-apple paste, you'd never ever want to buy those from the local supermarkets. Unfortunately, pine-apple tarts are very time consuming to make and good home-made ones are difficult to come by. Guess I'd have to go visiting in the hope of sampling some first class ones.

Anyway, I decided to make 4 loaves of my favorite raisin bread. I'd probably give 3 away but I am a little apprehensive because no one give breads on Chinese New Year here. I certainly hope I am not breaking any taboos by doing so. The taboos on CNY are numerous and I certainly don't want to lose any prosperity especially since the horoscopes say that I'd have to be careful with my investments. Fortunately, I do not have any spare cash for any investments. Is this what you call an oxymoron?

Well, I hope that my gift of bread will bring goodwill and prosperity to anyone who happens to get it.