nishatalitha

I have had a lovely day. I forgot that my parents do a stocking if you're there Christmas Eve night. Since I'm the only one of the three of us here at the moment, there was one stocking (read: plastic supermarket bag) and that was mine. Traditional marshmellow santa (breakfast!) and chocolates, and another one of the awesome serving spoons that I wanted. Now I have two.

Mum and I spent much of yesterday preparing for the remaining Food Events (she's already had two). We had the results of some of our work today - a three course meal for lunch.

The starter was prawns marinaded in zatar, lightly cooked and drizzled with lemon juice and zest, surrounding some tiny pieces of roast kumara and shallots, with mint and basil leaves on top, overtopped with some shaved parmesan. It was meant to have spinach leaves and a red wine vinegrette over the parmesan, but we forgot to do that. It still tasted excellent, although we felt the prawns needed a bit more flavour.

The main course consisted of a green salad with a vaguely mediterranean flavour (mostly aided by the red onion and feta); more of the cubed roast kumara; fresh asparagus drizzled with a wasabi vinegrette and reduced balsamic vinegar; and the piece de resistance: a side of salmon sliced with half lemon pieces inserted into the slits, oven baked with a moroccan glaze that included, amongst other things, cumin, chilli, coriander, lemon juice, lemon zest, brown sugar, olive oil. It was amazing.

Dessert was the lemon curd & gingernut souffle that I've made a few times before. Mum makes the tiramisu from the same page, I make the souffle. It was excellent, as expected.

After, we headed over to the 'tron to see my sister, her husband, and tiny baby nephew, who has now regained all the weight he lost after he was born (11%). He is suitably cute and adorable. He's either sleeping, eating, or pooping most of the time, I gather, but he managed to wake up for an hour or so when we were there. He likes stretching and is very uncoordinated. Yay, baby nephew! The parents are doing well, too. It still seems unreal - my little sister has a baby, but it's true. She does. And he's real. :D I have photos to inflict on some people at some point.

I should probably head towards bed now - tomorrow we have a family Christmas on my Mum's side. First we collect my brother and his wife from the airport around 11.40am and to do that, we should leave around 10.30am. Lunch is bring your own, but dinner is the big pot-luck. Most of the food prep for this is all done; we just need to assemble it there. There will probably be 24 for dinner.

Yuletide reading for me will be limited until I get home - I haven't found an unsecured network for my laptop yet, and don't really want to read lots sitting up in the office (apparently I've used the same working for the location and music here before...).