hmm

After having an awesome Christmas dinner with my children, the next morning,I went to the beach with the kids and one minute I was walking on the  pedestrian walk and the next instant I was on the ground. Clearly, I was not looking where I was going. I tried to break my fall using my arm(very smart move) and ended up with a fracture/sprain on my  arm, couple of abrasions on my knees and pure embarrassment of falling down in front of all those hot surfer guys.

I don’t remember when was the last time I fell down and hurt myself like this. My arm hurt like hell and ideally I should have gone to the hospital. But it was too much effort and I didn’t want a cast ( I was sure if it was a fracture it would be a simple fracture and it would heal on its own anyway). So, I spent the past 10 days, crying, consuming copious amount of pain killers and cursing in colourful language every time I had to lift my arm to do something.

Christmas was really fun. Yaya and my youngest baked a great deal of cookies. For dinner, I cooked prawns in lime, chilli coriander sauce, lobster in Mornay sauce, Singapore chilli crab, turkey and gravy and then our usual Christmas staples of devilled eggs, saddleback potatoes, mushroom in wine sauce.

Years ago, just as I was leaving India for good, I had bought a recipe book from one of those book shops on MG road Bangalore. Devilled eggs and saddleback potatoes were from that recipe book and I have cooked both on every Christmas since 1994. It is the only time in the year where I cook devilled eggs(although it is the easiest thing to make). Kids look forward to having devilled eggs and the saddle back potato every Christmas meal.

Just as I was cleaning up after cooking the feast, I remembered that a classmate of mine is alone in Brisbane as he couldn’t afford to go back home for Christmas. So, I called him and asked if he would like to join us and he said Yes. And then I remembered he is a staunch Christian and wouldn’t eat shell fish(lacking fins and scales). So, I took some salmon out of the freezer, defrosted  and marinated it in maple syrup soy sauce marinade (I was given this recipe by a first nation man while I was travelling through the Yukon territory. Equal amount of maple syrup and soy sauce and few slivers of ginger and marinate for 15 minutes(or longer if you have time) and grill it)

For dessert, we had pumpkin pie, Christmas pudding and all the cookies the girls baked.

I have used this Christmas pudding recipe since I came to Australia and it turns out really well. I don’t bother soaking sago overnight, I just cook it in milk.

The biggest surprise was the Christmas gifts kids bought for each other. My youngest usually sucked at buying gifts. Last year, she sent photos of the gifts she was thinking of  buying for her siblings and then asked for their opinion. This year, she bought them all their gifts in advance and they were all really good things.

Yaya bought me a clay pagoda for my garden( I have wanted it for so long), my son got me 4 glass llamas in varying size with one odd colour llama(representing him having to live with three women) and my youngest bought me real emerald earrings. She knows my favourite colour is green and bought it using her own money.

So, all in all a great Christmas.

 

6 thoughts on “hmm

  1. I know it’s two weeks already (was on a voyage to South America and so not much internet, just got back recently), but Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. But am glad you had a wonderful Christmas 🙂

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