Recap: First adventure of the year

"I tried to make the dough on New Year's morning, and the dough attacked my mother," I told my parents with the calmness of a news reporter. "Happy New Year."

"Stop being so morbid," my mother tells me, and in the light of the candle, it did indeed look like the dough is attacking her. It clung to her hand and bottom of the pot in hopeless, stubborn clumps. After another half an hour of wrestling she managed to subdue it (the dough yielding with a final, resigned plop back into the pot) and so we're going to have dumpling for dinner, despite of everything. Everything including the candle.

There is a candle there because we had a power-failure this morning, and the kitchen area got very, very dark. I needed light in the kitchen because I got up early this morning to make dumplings, not the kind that you'd normally think of, but the completely rounded kind made with rice flour and semi-liquid, sweet filling. My parents generally consider the crumbly dough and the running filling far too much trouble when you can just buy ready-made ones in the store. I spent an hour making it this morning in lieu of the holiday spirit, and halfway through the electricity disappeared.

An electric stove will not work without electricity, and you can't boil water without a stove and you can't cook dumplings without boiling water, so while my mother went outside to see just how much of our area's powerless (ha--a symbolic killer on New Year morning, is it not?) I wandered around nibbling a bar of chocolate until my father found this portable electric stove from who-knows-where that had emergency natural-gas burning properties and natural-gas canisters to go along with it. It was still dark, we cooked the dumpling on the small stove, occasionalling shining a flash light into the pot to see if it's done. I sang "Happy New Year" and my mother joined in changed the part from "there are singing and dancing..etc." to "there's wind and power-failure"...

After the food's eaten mother decided that dumplings are a good idea and we should have them (the normal kind you'd think of when thinking of Chinese food) for dinner, and set out to make dough. I suggested that I try to make some too because I've done every part of normal dumpling making except the dough making and mother let me and the dough turned out too soft so we had to add more flour to it (or at least, mother decided to dump a whole bunch in and then wrestle with it).

The power came back on approximately 15 minutes ago. This is funny, and ridiculously so. I've never made food under the light of a candle before, so this is another first.
Happy new years. Because yes, I'm happy, in spite of it all. Best of luck to everyone in the new year, a chunk of time which is still new, shiny (I know how my friends like shiny things) and full of possibilities. Cheers.