A Chinese New Year

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.