Christmas 2018

Happy holidays from the USA! I arrived home on 16 December and have been busy finishing up Christmas shopping, catching up with family and friends, and baking up a storm for tonight’s annual Christmas dinner. This year it was a full house with my aunt and cousins, and my brother and his family (including in-laws).

We started with hors d’oeuvres of cheese and crackers, grapes, olives and Camembert cheese and cranberry sauce filo bites. My cousin Leilani and I also enjoyed a few cups of mulled cider, as is tradition.

Due to the number of people, dinner seating was split between the dining room and kitchen table. Leilani and I were on kid wrangling duties with Lei’s daughter and my niece and nephew. For dinner we had a buffet set up in the kitchen with pear and walnut salad, bread rolls, roast turkey breast, stuffing, cranberry sauce, green beans, scalloped potatoes, and tamales. It was all very yummy.

After opening presents (and there were a lot of them around the tree) we had dessert. I made mini gingerbread houses, sugar cookies, snowball cookies and apple pie. We also had Belgian mini cream puffs and my sister-in-law made peanut cookies with Hershey’s kisses. Everyone was very full and a lot of dessert was taken home for eating in the coming days. It’s always nice to be able to spend the holidays with family, especially with the younger ones.