Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Merry Christmas from the Great White North

Santa in the rain

Hello! Gosh, only a few more days left in the year, can you believe it? It feels like the year just flew by, doesn't it? Anyway, I'm still here in Vancouver and thought I'd do a quick update on our Christmas, starting with a trip to the Christmas market (I arrived on Christmas eve which was the last day this market was open, and I was determined to make it there, rain be damned!) And of course, it was raining! But not too badly, and I think it helped keep the crowds down (or maybe people were at home, cooking Christmas dinner!)

Raclette

There were lots of stands selling things like ornaments, clothes, lebkuchen, toys, and so on (most of which I believe was actually imported from Germany) but I was there for the food, and more specifically, the raclette. I haven't had raclette since Py was in Switzerland, so there was no way I was going to pass up the chance to eat it again. If you haven't had it, it's basically cheese, toasted under a grill, and then scraped off and served with potatoes, pickled onions, and cornichons. This version came with bread instead of potatoes and added some ham and was pretty good!

DSC_0418

Py had the roast chicken, which was also pretty good. It's hard to go wrong with roast chicken, if you ask me.

IMAG0237

And then, because I am greedy, we got a waffle-on-a-stick. (I say we, but I really mean me.) This was yummy, and I ended up totally covered in powdered sugar, which is not necessarily a bad thing! Oh, and we also had mugs of mulled wine, which was significantly more delicious than that horrible jaegertee we had at the Basel Christmas market years ago.

Christmas Eve

We were invited to Christmas eve dinner at our friends' place; check out their lovely tree! So pretty. We brought them a box of cookies and a couple of little gifts, and received a copy of Bakerella's cake pops book (thanks!) Dinner was turkey, brussels sprouts, mashed potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, stuffing...in short, pretty close to what I would have eaten if I were celebrating Christmas in the states! Followed by an insanely delicious cranberry cake that was drowned in a butter-brown sugar sauce. Mmm, butter.

Snowmen

I neglected to take any photos of dinner, so instead, here's a picture of a handpainted ornament from their tree. I like the beady eyes of the snowmen.

Christmas dinner

Christmas Day itself was nice and quiet; we opened gifts and then went for a nice long walk. Actually we were hoping to find an open pub somewhere for a drink, but everything was shut down, so we went to T&T (that supermarket wonderland), bought some vegetables and then went home and made Christmas dinner--sauteed steaks, salad, and potato-leek soup. As Monokuro Boo would say, Simple is best! For those celebrating, I hope you had a merry Christmas!

5 comments:

Unknown said...

It looks like you had a great Christmas. Thanks for coming by my blog and leaving the nice words for me. I really appreciate it. Happy New Year!

obachan said...

The waffle-on-a-stick looks good!
Hope you had a wonderful holiday season.
Happy New Year!

Anonymous said...

I love what you had for Christmas dinner; simple, tasty, healthy. I wish more people would go down that route rather than make huge stuffing fatty meals that go on for forever... :) And Happy New Year!

tofugirl said...

Hi Hyosun! Happy new year to you too! I actually just bought the ingredients for your soup and can't wait to make it :D

Hi Obachan! Happy new year, and I hope you had a great holiday season as well! The waffle was pretty delicious :D

Hi Anonymous! We really enjoyed our dinner :) I very rarely eat steak so it was kind of a treat, but yeah, not overboard. Not that there's anything wrong with going overboard periodically, but I sometimes simple is best! Happy new year to you as well!

alfred said...

I like the waffle on a stick so much. The powdered sugar is the one that I love too when eating a waffle.