Here is a picture of the sweets table at our Tet party. Some things we will definitely be buying next year and some we will definitely NOT be getting again :)) Everyone there tried just about everything so it was interesting to see the different reactions to different foods.

We started off with what was supposed to by a green papaya salad, but I thought the papaya I had bought was bad, so I threw it out. Then my sister in law said that it actually does smell that bad and it was probably fine. Oh well...we served the salad without the papaya and it was yummy. It had mint and cilantro in it with a lime soy vinaigrette. I also made salad rolls in rice paper spring roll wrappers and served them with hoisin peanut butter, soy garlic and hot chile dipping sauces.

The hot foods we served were lemongrass soy tofu, vegetarian curry stew and jasmine rice. They all came out beautifully! I marinated the tofu overnight so it had a ton of flavor. I put out a bowl of limes to squeeze over the tofu and fresh beansprouts to add to the curry for some crunch. My mom got us a rice cooker and crock pot and the rice cooker is my new favorite appliance! If you're looking for a great new rice cooker at a great price-check out Target ;)

The curry was spicy and wonderful-everyone seemed to really enjoy it. There was some lemongrass in the stew too which didn't really soften, so maybe next time I'll put in bigger pieces of it so it can be removed.

Our sweets table was awesome! We had a huge selection of things to try. The good (in my opinion): vanilla rod cookies, black sesame peanut butter cookies, candied lotus root, candied coconut, melon seeds, yummy sesame candy. The so-so: a cake that I think was made of figs, candied melon, candied water chestnuts. The bad: horribly nasty cookies that were filled with something black and smelled like they were burnt wood, candied kumquots (other people really liked these but I had to spit mine out!)

So all in all I am very happy with how it turned out. I am glad that we honored our daughter's Vietnamese heritage and so thrilled that it is now a part of our whole family's tradition.