Let us begin with Christmas Eve. The only significant meal on Christmas Eve was of course, the evening meal. Basically, my parents’ friend and their family all get together for a big homemade buffet kind of thing. Usually lots of sushi, thanks in part to the proximity of their house to Highway 7 and turkey. No holiday is ever complete without turkey. The other stuff was just random Chinese stuff, the sticky rice, fishballs in curry, random vegetables all cooked together, and the like.

After Christmas Eve comes Christmas. Since we actually had church that day, lunch wasn’t anything too different. There was, however, some rice noodle roll with pork and XO sauce that was new. Anything with XO sauce is usually tasty.

For dinner, we were at my cousins’. Two portions of meat awaited us. First there was a ham with pineapples on it. It tasted and smelled like it was cooked in apples though. Then there was a turkey. Usually, my aunt stuffs turkeys with sticky rice. It tastes pretty good, but sticky rice has a tendency to make you feel bloated. Also, the rice would be cooked in the scrumptious juices of the turkey itself, making everything taste like turkey. This time, there was no stuffing and it was the best tasting turkey ever. The taste wasn’t super intense this time, allowing for a more enjoyable eating experience.

Boxing Day brought some more interesting meals however. We ended up not buying anything, by the way. For lunch, we ended up at 7 and Bayview at a Korean restaurant that stole its name from that Korean drama that everyone is apparently in love with, roughly translated (not in meaning) “big long gold.”

This was probably the second time I’ve had Korean food that wasn’t KBBQ. We had the usual pork bone soup and bibimbap (rice and a crapload of vegetables and beef) in those stone bowls. We also had chicken teriyaki and some fried glass noodles. The soup was spicy enough and the rice was tasty. Those glass noodles, though. See, I’ve had glass noodles before, but never fried. I’ve always wanted to have them fried because they were incredibly tasty. Those Koreans are ingenious. Not the greatest variety though.

For dinner, we had hot pot. To my amazement, my parents got lobster for hot pot. What they did was they got lobster and removed the tasty meat from the shell so that there was a huge pile of lobster meat. They took the shell and like any other Chinese parent, cooked up some soup from it. But the hot pot soup, made from a combination of fat beef and lobster, was much like the elixir soup from Zelda: so tasty that it refills all of your hearts and magic bar and doubles your attack power until you get hit.

And we all know that after Christmas, comes New Year’s, or more specifically, New Year’s Eve, which coincidentally, was my mom’s birthday. For dinner, we had a crapload of sushi with some grilled stuff, like steak, giant shrimp, and chicken, all marinated with this nifty KBBQ sauce we found at T&T.

For New Year’s, we went to the other cousins’ place and we had a crapload of smoked turkey with much gravy. My cousins made an observation, that this (smoked turkey) was the best thing for congee. I agree. Up there with smoked turkey is roast duck and seafood. The best thing to do with meat and seafood leftovers is to make soup or congee out of them.

Many goodies this year, I must say. And now, back to boring old regular food.