Merry Xmas everyone!! :) I hope you all had a great one!!
Now that everything surrounding the festive season is starting to slow down, I finally have time to blog and share with you all how we celebrated Christmas in our household and most importantly, what we ate!
I'm a big believer in the STRICTLY NO DIETING rule during the Xmas & New Year season, and I definately stuck to this!!
Every year, we spend Xmas day at my parents' house, and they set out a lovely buffet-style spread for dinner. As we have a mix of east (Japanese and Filipino) and west (English) in our family, they try and cater for everyone by having a mixed menu - this usually consists of a traditional English Xmas Dinner, Sushi and also Filipino foods. Instead of everyone sitting around the table with identical meals, we just pick what we want from the buffet of food before gathering together to eat.
This year, Kris and I were put in charge of the veg to serve with the traditional English Xmas Dinner. For those unfamiliar with a typical English Xmas Dinner, this consists of turkey (or any type of meat!) and "all the trimmings" - vegetables, stuffing, roast potatoes, "pigs in blankets"(chipolata sausages wrapped in bacon) and Yorkshire puddings, doused in gravy.
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Preparation of the Xmas veg!
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We chose to cook boiled carrots, sprouts, cabbage, broccoli, roasted parsnips and mashed potato (which I put Kris in charge of, and he now reckons he is the "Mash King" :-o!)
As a little addition to the table, we also cooked asparagus wrapped in Parma ham (seasoned with butter, salt and pepper) - delicious!!
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Asparagus and Parma ham
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When we got to my parents' house on Xmas morning (at about 10:30am), the buffet was already laid out.
As always, there was a mix of Japanese/Filipino/English foods to choose from.Some dishes which we had for Xmas included:
- Sushi
Turkey (with veg and of course, Kris's mashed potato!)
Spring rolls (Filipino Lumpia)
Jamonado (a sweet Filipino ham)
Lucban Hardinera (a type of meatloaf that originated in the Quezon Province in the Philippines)
Chicken drumsticks
Calamari
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| Sushi! |
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| Sushi! |
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Lucban Hardinera
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We also had a selection of sweets to choose from to have as dessert, which mainly consisted of popular Filipino treats, such as:
- Leche Flan (a very sweet milk flan)
- Polvoron (a powdered sweet which is individually wrapped)
- Yema (individually wrapped sweets made from egg yolk and condensed milk)
- Buko Pandan (a very popular Filipino dessert which consists of green gelatin, pandan leaves,tapioca pearls and "nata de coco", which is a chewy, translucent, jelly-like food product produced by the fermentation of coconut water)
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| Polvoron and Yema |
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| Buko Pandan |
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| Leche Flan |
Needless to say, we all took advantage of such a wide selection of food and, especially with the STRICTLY NO DIETING rule, we went back for seconds (and thirds, fourths and even fifths!!)
I hope you all enjoyed your Xmas dinners too - I am sure that all families have their own Xmas traditions which they follow regarding food - what's yours?
*~ MERRY XMAS!!~*
