Last weekend we hosted an open house for the Gravy Baby’s full-month party.  It’s a Chinese tradition where the parents celebrate the first month of the baby’s life.  Having never been to a full month party, though, I came up with some ideas of my own on how we might pull off this little shindig.

Step 1: Go big or go home.  In our case, going big meant ordering a pig roasted over coconut husks.  This beast of a meal weighed in at around 77 pounds of roasted meat.  The roasters brought the pig to our apartment and carved it in front of us with two giant meat cleavers and heavy wood butcher’s blocks.  The skin was crispy, the meat was juicy, and there was tons to spare.

Step 2: Get my hands dirty.  One of the customs of a full month party is for the host family to give out a dyed red egg to symbolize the renewal of life.  Dyeing 50 brown, hard-boiled eggs the night before our big shindig felt like a little like Easter, except that there was only one color on the palette.  By the way, did you know it’s nearly impossible to find white eggs in Malaysia?  I fretted for a good week over whether or not a brown egg is dyeable.  As it turns out, they are; try using about 1/8 cup of distilled vinegar and 10 drops of food coloring to every cup of hot water.  Oh, and don’t use a wooden spoon to stir the dye solution; it’ll turn your spoon red, and even after you wash it, the dye will seep into your food whenever you use it to cook with next.  Just ask the lady of leisure and her husband who ate flaming red pasta this evening.

Step 3: Put my kid’s face on it. I briefly toyed around with the idea of etching or somehow transposing the Gravy Baby’s face directly onto the brown eggs, but ultimately decided not to tempt fate.  I already was rolling the dice on whether or not I could dye a brown egg, after all.  Instead, I purchased small cellophane treat bags and printable labels.  Using a downloadable template provided by the website, I made a simple design using Word and inserted my most recent favorite photo of the little guy.  The labels printed 20 to a sheet, so all I had to do was print 3 copies and I had a set of party favor stickers on my hands.  I bought an assortment of local candy to add to each bag, threw a red egg in there, and we were good to go.

In the end, the best part of our little shindig was having all of our friends here turn out to celebrate our little guy with my family, the hubby and me.  I can’t believe how lucky we are, in so many ways.  So maybe, just maybe, I’m didn’t overdo it.  After all, I feel like I have so much these days.

(Okay, we could’ve done with 25 pounds less pork.)