Family Feasting Fun

We had our annual family Christmas dinner on the 26th this year. This is another staple on the family Christmas calendar. It’s always good to catch up with the whole family over a table full of food.

This year, Noey was able to join us at the dinner table though his Christmas dinner was of a rather different variety.

No roast beef, or ham, or turkey for Noey just yet!

In recent years, I’ve tried to relieve some of my Mum’s burden by contributing some dishes for dinner. I learnt my lesson from last year — then I had gone over to my Mum’s to cook my extra dishes and ended up stressing her and myself out over missing ingredients, unfamiliar cooking equipment and there being too many cooks in the kitchen. This year I stuck to preparing straight-forward dishes in my own kitchen and carted them over for the party. No fuss, and everyone was happy. My contributions this year were:

Minestrone soup
Grilled bacon-wrapped veggies
Mash potatoes
Grilled prawns in basil pesto
Roast beef and caramelised onions

(Yes, Amanda, I re-created your prawn dish, though I grilled the prawns first instead of boiling them cos I love that chargrilled taste! It was super yums!)

And to all this my Mum added a Pork Knuckle, Ham, Salad with Japanese dressing AND Turkey. And free flow of Moscato of course. The beef was the pièce de résistance of the whole meal though as I decided to splurge on some 200-day grain-fed Angus Beef (or something like that!) this year and it was worth every bite. Mmmmm. I’m still thinking about it! With all that food on the table, we decided in the end to pass on the turkey (which was after all a store-bought one this year) and just devour everything else on the table. And we did a pretty good job of it.

Noey again played the model child and entertained himself for a good part of dinner on his own in his high chair, leaving me to eat and talk to my heart’s content. He proceeded to tear all round the house later but with my full and happy belly, I was more than happy to indulge him.

Together with Christmas eve dinner at Karen’s, our Christmas day buffet at Oscar’s and the spread over at Momo’s on the 27th, I’ll say we definitely had our fill this year! Now to look forward to a quiet New Year’s…