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Already abandoned your January resolutions? You've got another chance to start a new habit. If your idea of celebrating Chinese New Year is brunch at your favourite dim sum house, welcome the Year of the Pig this weekend with a big, at-home feast.

It has never been easier to toast the Lunar New Year. As the holiday becomes increasingly mainstream, retailers such as the Bay and Loblaws, not to mention entire malls, are gearing displays and in-store events to the Year of the Pig (or Boar). And because it's packed with symbolism and regional tradition, experts say, it's hard to make a misstep when planning a menu. (In fact, the Lunar New Year is celebrated by several cultures, including Japanese, Vietnamese and Korean.)

The Scarborough Town Centre has been holding Chinese New Year celebrations for the past six years. Rosa Chan, a consultant on the festivities (which include chopstick contests and gold piggy bank raffle draws), says she is seeing a surge in interest from both non-Chinese and younger-generation Chinese alike. "We should celebrate every culture," she says, "but China has really become a focus for the world."

Peter Degnan, director of culinary development for Williams-Sonoma, came to the same realization while travelling the world researching food and entertaining trends. In the days leading up to Chinese New Year, front-and-centre display tables in the kitchenware stores were groaning with upscale, colourful woks, rice cookers and gourmet Asian sauces.

With China in general and Shanghai in particular becoming hot travel destinations, Degnan says customers are ready to try cooking more adventurous Chinese cuisine at home.

"There's a huge appetite for new flavours and techniques," he says from his office in San Francisco. "More people are entertaining at home and looking for themes and ideas to anchor their parties."

Kylie Kwong, a Chinese-Australian chef, author and TV personality, planned the debut of her latest cookbook, Simple Chinese Cooking, to coincide with the feast-centric occasion.

"When I think of Chinese New Year, I think of red, food, family and friends, lots of festivities, lots of noise," she says on the line from New York, a stop on her book tour. When she returns to Sydney on Monday, she will be hosting two 10-course all-organic banquets at her 48-seat restaurant, Billy Kwong.

She has built her reputation on demystifying Chinese cooking and, in a sense, rehabilitating it to its fresh roots. "We've made it as simple as we can. Home cooks shouldn't be intimidated. . . . You can buy all the ingredients at your supermarket."

For newbies cracking open her cookbook this New Year, she recommends deep-fried whole snapper with a sweet-and-sour sauce, whole white poached chicken and definitely a noodle dish.

"Chinese cooking is not all gloopy sauces and MSG-laden sweet-and-sour pork," she says. "It's about the beautiful art of steaming and poaching."

Rosa Chan is also fond of seafood, especially the tradition of eating whole fish on New Year's. Like many traditional eats, fish is a homonym: The word for fish also means abundance. She favours oysters too, for they are supposed to bring wealth.

Shirley Chan, the Saturday Magazine editor of Toronto's Ming Pao newspaper, says her family's dinner is a blend of Canton province and Shanghai traditions, with rice cakes for the former and dumplings for the latter.

When it comes to setting the table, most experts say decorations are a nouveau concept. Beyond a tablecloth in the lucky colour red, "there aren't really Western-style decorations on the table, like a centrepiece," Shirley Chan says after much thought. "Chinese just focus on the eating."

Fair enough, but that doesn't mean one can't start new traditions. The February edition of Bon Appetit magazine features a Chinese New Year menu, including crisp daikon cake and five-spice lamb with red chilies, set out in a splendid dining room decorated with red lanterns, roses and lotus-flower-shaped tea-light holders.

For a less formal look, imagine a row of golden piggy banks down the centre of a table, place settings marked with traditional red envelopes used to give "lucky money" to the younger generation (you can go chic and plain or kitschy and cartoon-pig-festooned).

Oranges on the vine are another New Year staple that could double as decoration. And full bags of rice "to start the year" are a Cantonese symbol of luck too. For a hostess gift, Roots has a red leather pouch purse with the Chinese character for "lucky" written on it.

One word of caution from Torontonian Dora Nipp, head of the Multicultural History Society, however. If you're new to the Lunar New Year, ask for help while scouring Chinatown. White paper lanterns? They're for funerals. Banners? Ask what they mean or you might be hanging up a bon voyage sign for the dead.

On a holiday built around luck, why take your chances?

Tips and traditions

Decor

Red, red and red. Lanterns, chopsticks, bowls and more. It's a lucky colour. Not white: It's for funerals.

Red envelopes for "lucky money" or other treats for your guests to take home.

Gold piggy banks.

Live blooming plants, symbolizing rebirth and new growth.

Food

Fish and chicken, preferably whole. And yes, it's okay to eat pork even though it is the Year of the Pig.

Uncut noodles, symbolizing long life.

Oranges on the vine, symbolizing abundance. Bring them as a gift to secure close relationships.

A candy tray, or "tray of togetherness," including candied lotus seeds.

Drink

Tea is traditional, as is beer, although chef Kylie Kwong serves wine and champagne too.

Cookbooks

Kylie Kwong: Simple Chinese Cooking (Viking Studio) by Kylie Kwong ($43.50). Available at booksellers.

Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook: Recipes From Hunan Province (W. W. Norton & Company) by Fuchsia Dunlop ($39). Available at booksellers. Prep

Cut your hair -- or at least wash it that day. Clean your house. Pay your bills. It's all about a new start

-- Tralee Pearce