Through the magic of TC's Easy Bake Oven, she made one batch of sugar cookies for Santa Claus. I call them the Homer Simpson sugar cookies because the only frosting we had was pink and they are doused with mega sprinkles! But no matter! Santa Claus ended up eating them all along with the glass of milk we left for him on his special plate.
Little wooden thumb puppets at the base of our mini tree in the living room. Half off years ago at Cost Plus imports.
Christmas Day is traditionalyl at my parents' house. Most of Bert's family was also there along with our only cousins (in San Diego) and their kids. As always, there was a huge spread of food. First up, pancit bihon with calamansi halves on the perimeter...
I don't know what this is called but it's Shrimp with peas, onions, baby corn and jack straw mushrooms. Another party staple of my mom.
My mom broke out with the big guns this year, Embutido, which is a really rich, pork meatloaf with cheese, chorizo de Bilbao, pickles, raisins and boiled egg. However, my mom didn't include the boiled eggs because this was supposed to be "healthier" embutido. Is there such a thing? I think that the other fatty ingredients cancel out the absence of the eggs! In any case, it still tasted great without it. I can still hear my sister saying, Chorizo de Dildao jokingly.
My mom's "healthy" version of pinakbet since it doesn't include oil or bagoong alamang. It's mostly vegetables - okra, long beans, eggplant, bittermelon (my favorite) and sweet potato (I think that's what she put instead of kabocha squash), and tomatoes.
My dad, who makes the American food, did your basic Ham with pineapple.
He also did roast beef with homemade gravy... He only makes this twice a year.
My mom made sticky rice bibingka. Notice the corner is gone? That's my piece man!
She also made kutsinta with fresh grated coconut...She used to sell these when she worked at the cannery for extra pocket money. This dessert was quite popular with the Mexican and Portuguese women. The Filipina women bought it too!
Filipino style "fruit salad" and by fruit, I mean canned fruit cocktail with macapuno coconut strings, cream cheese and heavy cream. Yeah, really health conscious dessert there! I still like this but in very small doses. As kids, we would argue over who could get the cherry.
A popular Christmastime treat, pistachios. Yeah, I know we can eat this any time of the year, but we normally mack on this during Christmas.
Our good friends who were over for dinner the other night, gave us this fruit strudel from
Hans and Harry in Bonita. So, we brought it over to my mom's where it was promply devoured within minutes. Strudels from Hans and Harry never seem to last long. It's nice when we got those from parents at work sometimes.
A close up of the homemade tart my aunt from Utah made. The week before, my other cousin whom I hadn't seen in more than 25 years, made the drive out from Utah to San Diego, along with one of his friendss. The reason? To watch the Utah vs Navy game. They stayed over at my mom's and did sightseeing that week. Utah ended up kicking the Navy's ass big time. Anyways, his mom made us a variety of tarts and this was one of them. This one had coconut and mango in it. Almost as good as Goldilocks Bakery.
My last food pic here is the pancit malabon (with corn noodles, shrimps and boiled egg slices) made by my San Diego cousin's wife. This is her specialty.
The younger kids played
Guitar Hero III - The Legends of Rock. Because they hadn't yet figured out the "Cheats" (that came later), my nephews were stuck in Level One. My sister was getting pissed off from hearing Foghat's "Slowride" for the millionth time. When my older nephews arrived (teenaged sons of my San Diego cousin), they looked up the cheats online, pressed the right buttons and voila, the levels were "unlocked" and we could finally skip levels and hear other songs beside "Slowride", "Mississippi Queen" and "Barracuda". One of the harder songs to play was by one of my favorite groups, Iron Maiden's lovely ditty, "Number of the Beast". Yeah, perfect music for Christmas time. But seriously, that song was pretty hard to play. I didn't attempt it, but the kids did. Another challening song was Eric Johnson's "Cliffs of Dover"; I was surprised they had that. He's one of my favorite guitarists. It's kind of cool that Guitar Hero is, in some small way, exposing kids to rock music! I'm not much of a video game player, but if there's a game I'd try, it would be this one!
Little wooden thumb puppets at the base of our mini tree in the living room. Half off years ago at Cost Plus imports.
Christmas Day is traditionalyl at my parents' house. Most of Bert's family was also there along with our only cousins (in San Diego) and their kids. As always, there was a huge spread of food. First up, pancit bihon with calamansi halves on the perimeter...
I don't know what this is called but it's Shrimp with peas, onions, baby corn and jack straw mushrooms. Another party staple of my mom.
My mom broke out with the big guns this year, Embutido, which is a really rich, pork meatloaf with cheese, chorizo de Bilbao, pickles, raisins and boiled egg. However, my mom didn't include the boiled eggs because this was supposed to be "healthier" embutido. Is there such a thing? I think that the other fatty ingredients cancel out the absence of the eggs! In any case, it still tasted great without it. I can still hear my sister saying, Chorizo de Dildao jokingly.
My mom's "healthy" version of pinakbet since it doesn't include oil or bagoong alamang. It's mostly vegetables - okra, long beans, eggplant, bittermelon (my favorite) and sweet potato (I think that's what she put instead of kabocha squash), and tomatoes.
My dad, who makes the American food, did your basic Ham with pineapple.
He also did roast beef with homemade gravy... He only makes this twice a year. 
My mom made sticky rice bibingka. Notice the corner is gone? That's my piece man!
She also made kutsinta with fresh grated coconut...She used to sell these when she worked at the cannery for extra pocket money. This dessert was quite popular with the Mexican and Portuguese women. The Filipina women bought it too!
Filipino style "fruit salad" and by fruit, I mean canned fruit cocktail with macapuno coconut strings, cream cheese and heavy cream. Yeah, really health conscious dessert there! I still like this but in very small doses. As kids, we would argue over who could get the cherry.
A popular Christmastime treat, pistachios. Yeah, I know we can eat this any time of the year, but we normally mack on this during Christmas.
Our good friends who were over for dinner the other night, gave us this fruit strudel from Hans and Harry in Bonita. So, we brought it over to my mom's where it was promply devoured within minutes. Strudels from Hans and Harry never seem to last long. It's nice when we got those from parents at work sometimes.
A close up of the homemade tart my aunt from Utah made. The week before, my other cousin whom I hadn't seen in more than 25 years, made the drive out from Utah to San Diego, along with one of his friendss. The reason? To watch the Utah vs Navy game. They stayed over at my mom's and did sightseeing that week. Utah ended up kicking the Navy's ass big time. Anyways, his mom made us a variety of tarts and this was one of them. This one had coconut and mango in it. Almost as good as Goldilocks Bakery.
My last food pic here is the pancit malabon (with corn noodles, shrimps and boiled egg slices) made by my San Diego cousin's wife. This is her specialty.
2 comments:
OMG...Do you guys have a Goldilocks Bakery in California???? Is it like the ones in the Philippines?? When I was in the Philippines a few years ago, I bought a whole bunch of polvoron and other sweets for the other teachers and office staff I worked with. Every time my lola or other relatives come from the Phils, they always bring us stuff from Goldilocks!
we have one in national city (where most of the major filipino food joints are). it's also a restaurant but it's also so busy that i've never actually tried to eat there.
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