First and foremost:
Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanza and Happy New Year!
The video is a classic (lol) is too hard to pass up singing.
I've been MIA for the past month; you know how holidays get. I was cramping some NCLEX studying, shopping my paychecks away and cooking up a storm for Noche Buena aka Filipino Christmas Eve celebration. So let's start off with Christmas:
Every year Christmas eve is as followed:
Go to our Church's candlelight service
Feast away / shots of Johnnie Walker
<The Johnnie was actually a tradition started about 2 years ago, when my dad got drunk and wouldn't let anyone open the gifts until the bottle is all finish. Now we look back on it and just laugh, but it has become a tradition for all the men to take shots.>
Lastly, open gifts.
This year my sisters surprised me with a 49ers Crockpot! I immediately started crying when I pulled it out of the box; I've been asking for a Crockpot for 2 years already and now finally have one! And its my favorite football team! I also received really nice bamboo bowl, baking pan and baking utensils from my brother and girlfriend. The rest were workout clothes and PJs. My family knows me so well!
This Christmas made up a lot for last year's Christmas Eve, when my dad had back surgery and it wasn't the best holiday season.
Our Noche Buena feast was a force to be wreckoned with! My mom and I did most of the food prep a couple of days before, while my dad did all the cooking the day of. I would've helped him, but he sent me out to pick up Haitian "black rice" from his co-worker and in exchange for a tray of his Pancit. That was a pretty fair deal. Her rice is amazing! Honestly I have no clue what was in the rice, but it was too good.
With the menu this year, we had to make sure that we had something vegetarian/ seafood for one person and no nuts/ shellfish for another.
On the menu this year was:
Haitian black rice
Pancit (one Seafood and one Pork)-Filipino noodles
Palabok- Filipino noodles
Chop Suey- Seafood mixture
Dinaguan (blood soup; don't get creeped by the name too much)
Kare-Kare (Oxtail in peanut sauce) This is my FAVORITE!
Fried Cod
Relleno Bagus- Authentic stuffed Bagus (milkfish)
Garlic Chicken
Lumpia Shanghai
Lasagna
Me prepping the Lumpia Shanghai
After Christmas came my little sister's 22nd Birthday on December 28th. We celebrated it early at Teak on the Hudson in Hoboken. We had a great time besides my friend's vomit coming out of the pizza box that I was holding. That is another story for another day. We had lunch at Picnic Garden BBQ, an indoor Korean self-BBQ. It was my parent's first time doing Korean BBQ. As I was grilling, my dad was making ideas to install one of these grill at our house in the Philippines.
New Year's Eve is here (Snooki's voice).
I actually worked that morning and lemme tell you how stressful that day was!
Instead of going out to party, get drunk and showered with confetti when the ball drops, I opted out for a quiet evening with Justin and his family. We had a night well spent eating great food and drinking glass after glass of Champagne.
The next morning, Justin and I stopped by our favorite bagel place for some breakfast.
He got a Taylor Ham, Bacon, Egg and Cheese sandwich
I got an Everything bagel with Lox and cream cheese
I am grateful and blessed for the good and the bad events that happened this year. I love to ring in the New Year with my Handsome.
I just want to thank all my readers for their support. It isn't easy to run a blog and keep people interested, but I'm just so glad to share my passion with all of you. I can't wait for what 2016 has in stores for all of us.
BXO,
Jackie
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