HOLIDAY TABLES & TRADITIONS</br><h2>A Chinese New Year</h2>
Nov 15, 2011
Premiered December, 2011, on PBS.
An Italian Christmas Eve. A Mexican-American Christmas Day. A Chinese New Year. A Passover Seder. Four holidays, four very different tables and traditions. Join celebrity chef and culinary author Lidia Bastianich as she travels across America in a celebration of culture through food, in Lidia Celebrates America: Holiday Tables and Traditions.
From San Antonio, Lidia heads to San Francisco to celebrate a colorful and plentiful Chinese New Year, the most important holiday of the year for Chinese Americans.
With the late Shirley Fong-Torres, renowned travel writer and chef, as her guide, Lidia visits Chinatown for tea and dim sum before returning to Fong-Torres' kitchen to make Chinese dumplings, also known as pot stickers. "My granddaughters and I love to make pot stickers together," Fong-Torres explains. "Dumplings are very significant in the New Year. It's like enveloping the fillings, and enveloping love."
"The Chinese New Year symbolizes the beginning of a new season and a hope for a better year. Much of the symbolism has to do with prosperity and rebirth. This is what America is all about -- this great exchange of culture," Lidia says. "The more I discover about new cultures, the more I notice how close they are to each other. They are all about the family, staying together, and being good to each other."
Four Holiday Adventures
A Mexican-American Christmas Day
Follow Lidia to learn how the Mexican-American community celebrates Christmas. 
An Italian Christmas Eve
Follow Lidia to learn how the Italian-American community celebrates Christmas in the program. 
A Passover Seder
Follow Lidia to learn how the Jewish-American community celebrates Passover in the program. 
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Four holidays, four very different tables and traditions.
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