A Family Affair

Our friends T and B recently got engaged and we were invited to their engagement party last night. T comes from a HUGE Vietnamese family. There's a family picture on the wall, and it looks like one of those school alumni photos you see in yearbooks!

According to Vietnamese tradition, the engagement is even more important than the wedding, because that is when the partner is officially welcomed into the family and becomes their 'property'. B and T had a tea ceremony with T's parents the morning of the engagement party, and now she has to call all of T's relatives by their Vietnamese names (eg. Sister No. 2, Brother-in-law No. 5, etc.). Even I get confused during Chinese New Year when I meet up with my relatives on my dad's side of the family because there are so many of them, and my Cantonese is awful.

Anyway, the amount of food at this party was amazing. There was a huge table set up outside with Vietnamese beef salad, macaroni salad, potato salad, normal salad, heaps of different types of bread, fried rice, cakes, donuts, muffins, prawn crackers, spring rolls, etc. On the bbq, they had marinated chicken fillets, Vietnamese pork ball skewers, pork chops, prawns, corn, beef, etc. And the food just kept coming! I need to get the recipe for the chicken marinade from T, because it was heavenly. It tasted better than anything you'd get at a restaurant... I tasted a bit of ginger, lemongrass, maybe some fish sauce, garlic, and some sweetness (honey, maybe?). There were all sorts of Vietnamese iced desserts, a bit like the Singaporean ice kachang.

There was such a communal feel to everything... it reminded me of the big parties we used to have at home in Singapore when I was a little girl, only with a LOT more people and food. At the end of the party, people were 'auctioning' off the food they had brought, and trying to get guests to take some home with them. It was very cute, and a fun way to end a party.

I think a party like that really highlights the importance of food and family. When friends and family come together with good food, it's always an enjoyable experience. There's the whole concept of commensality, where a group eats together at a table. All cultural, racial and social divides don't seem to matter - you just dig in, get your hands dirty, and appreciate the spread.

I'm so happy for B and T. Their wedding is in September, four months after ours!