Tag Archives: New Year

Sunday Game Plan – New Year 2026!!

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This is the last Sunday Game Plan of 2025. 2025 was a busy year filled with energy shifts, closure and acceptance to where I stand with certain family members, some friends and coworkers. I’ve been active on Yelp writing restaurant reviews and hitting up hard to get into restaurants. I’m also mindfully posting on Meta, which consists of Facebook and Instagram.

Since 2026 is only five days away, I have planning the New Years Eve Dinner 2025 with my traditional lucky foods menu. This time is going to be a challenge with working thru New Years Eve. Thanks to Stop and Shop, Whole Foods, and Lidl, I was able to achieve that. 

To start, I obtained the traditional 12 round fruits platter. I was able to obtain:
Oranges, blueberries, lemon, lime avocado, grapefruit, apple, strawberries, grapes,  persimmon, kiwi, and mango. I also have 1 banana to make it 13.

For my meals, I searched recipes online to find inspiration with the ingredients I had to work with.  So I plan on cooking the following:

  • Chili Crunch Carbonara (bacon and noodles)
  • Sausage, black eye peas and kale soup
  • Cornbread (Jiffy Cornbread Mix)
  • Cedar Plank Bacon Bourbon Salmon
  • Lentil Soup or stew (I have yet to purchase lentils)

Check out my posts on Instagram at @tablespoonsandteaspoons. Stay tuned for an exciting 2026.

Songkran – Thai New Year

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Happy New Year! Well, today is Thai New Year. Since it’s a “New Year’s Day,” it’s time to post something for 2024.

For New Year’s January 1st, I’ve cooked a lot of lucky foods.

1) Twelve fruits: pomelo, lemon, lime, apple, persimmon, kiwi, orange, grapes, pear, star apple, honey Grapefruit, tangerine.

2) Pork- pork spareribs adobo

3) Fish – Baked Maple Syrup and mustard salmon

4) Cornbread – Corn bread Muffins

5) Pork – Bacon wrapped asparagus

6) Lentils – Tasty bite madras lentils

7) Noodles – Jovial cassava spaghetti

8) Greens – Blanched Yu Choy

Six weeks later, Chinese New Year – Year of the Dragon.

I made more lucky foods.

1) Dumplings

2) Soy sauce chicken

3) Roast pig

4) Vegetarian pancit

5) Lumpia

6) Baked Maple Syrup salmon

7) Nian Gao

8) Shrimp Rice Noodles

Now it’s Songkran, which is celebrated in Buddhism throughout most of Southeast Asia. Unlike the 15-day festival celebrated in the Lunar New Year. This New Year is celebrated for three days. It is a religious festival where water is poured to wash away the old year. The day begins in the temple where monks are offered food in exchange for a blessing and words of wisdom. Then water is poured on top of the Buddha statue to purify and cleanse sins and bad luck.

I was doing some research on the foods to consume during Songkran. So far, I have found some dishes that is worth having during the water festival.

Prawn Pad Thai – Zabb Zabb
Satays – Zabb Zabb
Chicken Satay
Shrimp roll and fried tofu – Ayada
Som Tum- Ayada
Shrimp Pad Thai – Ayada

I am hoping that we get to dress up for Thai New Year. I can’t wait to share more stories and post on Instagram @tablespoonsandteaspoons.

Stay tuned and Suk San Wan Songkran! 

Throwback Thursday/Flashback Friday – Pork Dishes Filipino & Thai style 

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Today’s first Throwback Thursday and Flashback Friday post of 2017 is a double duo, filled with cultural and food experiences that I can identify with – Pork. 

Although pork is forbidden in some cultures, it is also one of the most popular types of meat in eastern Asia especially in the Philippines and Thailand. 

Pork, the product of the pig comes in a variety of forms and there are many ways of preparing them for consumption. 

In the New Year, one of the lucky foods to consume is pork because the pork is said to be rotund, which signifies prosperity. Since it is derived from the pig, the animal itself “roots forward” symbolizing progress.  Not only pork brings good luck it is also healthy. 

Health Benefits of consuming pork include: 

– Protein for growing and maintaining muscle

So, given this information for the occasion I decided to turn back time to several posts here as well as my own experiences to attempt a healthier yet authentic version of the Filipino adobo and Thai grilled pork (moo ping).  Better yet the cost to make both of these dishes was under $10 and it serves 4 people plus leftovers. 

Pork Belly Adobo

The pork belly was sliced and marinated in 4 tablespoons of soy sauce, 4 tablespoons of tamarind sauce, 4 tablespoons of datu puti, garlic, onions, ginger and bay leaves. The only addition added was star anise. The dish was marinated for 3-3.5 hours at room temperature.  The dish was prepared as described in one of my earliest post: Chicken Thigh Adobo. 

Moo Ping – Thai grilled pork

One of father’s favorite Thai dishes is moo ping, translated in Thai for grilled pork. Inspired by one of the best pork dishes at Ayada, I attempted to replicate the dish while keeping it healthy. 

Pork shoulder was sliced and marinated in garlic, cilantro, fish sauce, soy sauce and sugar for 3-4 hours prior to grilling. Normally this dish is prepared in skewers. 

So today we covered a throwback recipe and a flashback dish at a restaurant to make two lucky cultural pork dishes for the New Year. Hopefully this double duo will help Tablespoonsandteaspoons progress to bigger and better 2017. Cheers! 

Sunday Game Plan – Happy New Year – 2017 Good luck meals 

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Happy New Year 2017! As we approach the one year anniversary of Tablespoonsandteaspoons, this experiential journey was filled with trials and errors, mastering food photography, extensive food and health research and experimenting dishes. 

As 2016 ends and 2017 begins, we decided to prepare meals utilizing what is considered lucky foods to consume for the New Year. After evaluating the significance of the lucky foods, there were some health benefits in consuming them. 

This time around we were lucky enough to prepare these meals successfully ahead of time. 

The lucky foods to consume New Year’s include:

Black Eyed Peas

Spinach (Greens)

Pork

Udon (buckwheat noodles)

Lentils

Below is our successful Game Plan for New Year 2017. 

In addition to the game plan, we prepared our traditional 13 round fruits, a Filipino tradition because 13 was considered a lucky number. 

So excited to share our meals for New Years with all of you. 

Cheers to a happy, healthy, properous and successful 2017!