Christmas Eve was fabulous. For those who are not familiar with Latin American customs (particularly Mexican), our big celebration happens on Christmas Eve, not Christmas Day. Indeed, it is on Christmas Eve when you have your kickass dinner and then everyone stays up until midnight. Opening of presents occurs on Christmas Eve as well.
Oh, and Midnight Mass, if you wish to do that (it's traditional!).
(Small children will additionally open Santa's presents on Christmas morning, lucky little varmints.)
We didn't do Midnight Mass, but we had a faboo time with my sweetie, my two boys, and the fabulous
messydress. Dinner consisted on a turkey breast roast (no point in cooking a big hulking turkey for five people and then eat leftovers until Valentine's day), and all the trimmings. Plus my evil, no redeeming qualities, non-diet, melty brown sugar-topped, pinneaple upside-down cake.Man, that was evil. The scale was not loving me on Saturday. (More on that on a fitness post.)
At any rate, the boys and Messydress stayed past midnight, and then they all merrily went home.
Christmas day in Mexico means visiting friends and family and swapping leftovers. In this case, I realized early in the morning that my evil plan of not having leftovers had worked well. Entirely too well. Which posed the problem of what the heck are we going to eat now.
Undaunted, we decided to do Chinese food with the kids and Messydress some time in the afternoon. My first choice was Peking Duck. I haven't had it in a while, and there is this awesome duck place on Rt. 7 that makes it like no one else. However, when I called them -- and trust me, you do have to call ahead -- we were informed that the earlier that they could take us was 9:30 p.m.
Scratch that.
To make a long story short, the five of us ended up at a small Indian food joint by Loehman's Plaza, which carries a kickass buffet.
It was awesome. We ate, we laughed, we chatted until the joint started to get so packed that we had to leave and let other people sit down. Then we all parted since the weather had started to take a turn for the worse, and at that point a warm and cozy home seemed like a very good idea.
But nothing says Merry Christmas like chicken vindaloo.
I think that we have started a new family tradition.
And I like it a lot.
