My boyfriend and I celebrated Valentine’s Day early this year. On Saturday, we absconded from the outside world with triple cream brie and wine drenched goat cheese from The Meat House, truffles from Beacon Hill Chocolates – basically, all our favorite hedonistic foods in one night. I woke up the next morning still feeling full and not at all prepared for my PRK assignment that day: covering Chinatown’s lion dance parade.

Growing up in the suburbs, my only conception of Chinese food involved a general named Tso, and when I moved to Boston I found that Chinatown had more than enough offerings to fit my fast food expectations. But this visit, I made something of a Chinese New Year’s resolution: I’d find a light and healthy lunch amid all the parade revelry (never mind that the Chinese New Year was weeks ago – the parade was still ostensibly held in the holiday’s honor).

This endeavor was made difficult for a number of reasons. First among them was the sheer selection of yummy-looking foods. Like any holiday, the Chinese New Year has its own set of traditional meals, depending on the country it’s being celebrated in (quick history: “Chinese New Year” is a misnomer in much the same way Boston’s Chinatown is – both actually encompass a wide array of Asian cultures that have been influenced by China’s enormous cultural sway. The lion dance itself, in fact, is not uniquely Chinese). These include dumplings, fried vegetable cakes and various noodles – as well as some decidedly more wholesome dishes like Buddha’s Delight, one of a handful of authentic dishes with a name that may be familiar to Americans.

The second difficulty involved the mechanics of the lion dance parade itself. The parades I’m used to involve a straight, marching line. This dynamic parade was quite different. Instead of one group of paraders, there were several clusters, each moving with their own “lions”  in – from what I can tell – a direction of their own choosing.

Each cluster would stop at a restaurant or storefront and their lions would dance in front for several minutes (apparently, the lions are supposed to grab an enticing green vegetable from the business as part of this ritual – but from my perspective, I couldn’t see it). At this point, the lions would actually enter the establishment and dance with whomever was inside – cooks, customers, local merchants. Imagine sitting down to a restaurant meal to find that your lunch has been invaded by mythical creatures – it was quite a sensation.

This dance is supposed to bring local businesses luck and prosperity – but on the day of the parade, it was a bit difficult to shower my (rather humble) prosperity on any restaurants. At one point, I actually got stuck on the doorway between a lion and a dancer – I had to move quickly to avoid fireworks.

Still, after some searching, I managed to find a restaurant that was roomy enough to hold me and any other creatures that needed to enter: Penang, a Malaysian chain restaurant on Washington Street (yes, a chain – I didn’t know it at the time. The meal seemed authentic enough). My date and I ordered spring rolls with veggies and seafood to start – healthy enough, for sure, with a nice spicy kick from the sauce. It was nothing special, but it felt satisfying and familiar nonetheless.

But though there were plenty of healthy options on the menu, our resolve fell apart when it was time to order an entrée. He got duck with a ginger sauce over rice, and I went with that most decadent of Asian fare – fried rice. Pineapple fried rice, no less. And I ate the whole plate.

If my mission was a failure, it was a tasty one. The duck was incredibly tender and juicy, and I was a huge fan of the rice, with its huge chunks of pineapple, golden raisins and sweet shrimp. There’s always next weekend to be healthy – for now, I just haven’t figured out how to do it in Chinatown.