Christmas eats and Happy New Year

On 2012 we had a couple of Christmas celebrations at home: a dinner with our Buddhist friends and lunch on Christmas day.

Dinner started with some excellent marinated olives courtesy of our friend Gaby. Then we moved on to the main dish: this Middle Eastern Christmas roast lamb, rubbed with spices and slow-cooked for 4.5 hours in the oven. I used cauliflower to make the rice/lamb mince base, and it worked out perfectly. Sides were baked sweet potatoes and a caramelised onion and chard salad from this cookbook. Dessert were chocolate almond butter swirl brownies from the same book made by my housemate Bonnie in the slow cooker (!), served with fruit and coconut cream.

Marinated olives

Christmas roast lamb

Cauliflower rice & lamb mince

Baked sweet potatoes

Caramelised onion and chard salad

For Christmas lunch we decided to recreate our “traditional” meal from back home. I use quotes because it’s more a Peruvian version of American thanksgiving. Anyway, we had roasted turkey (marinated with Peruvian flavours, recipe coming soon), this slow-cooker applesauce, and “Russian” salad (my Paleo version of my family’s version of the Peruvian version). In case you’re wondering, the salad had steamed beetroot, potatoes and carrots, celery, avocado, and homemade macadamia oil mayonnaise. We drank a summery white wine sangria made with Verdelho, Cointreau, soda water, and sliced limes, lemons, oranges and peaches. Dessert (which we had as afternoon tea) was this wintery Paleo fruitcake served with coconut cream.