New Year’s Eve Celebration

Happy New Year to everyone!!! How did you celebrate the arrival of the new year? Did you light up fireworks or just had a quiet dinner?

My family on my father’s side celebrate New Year’s Eve in our house every year. This year was extra special with the new additions to our family.

This was our first time to meet our precocious niece, Lian who came home from Taiwan for the first time. No one dared to talk to her for a long time since she spoke fluent Mandarin and we all ran out of things to say to her in Chinese. We later found out she speaks some Filipino.

Most of the people pictures were shot by my cousin Jim who it seems is a budding photographer. I think my new Panasonic GF1 helped a little.

I love this picture of my cousin in law, Dr. Louie with his new baby, Bree.

Baby Bree sleeping soundly while her dad wrote prescriptions for all his patients/relatives.

Another niece, Callista in her cute Gap onesie.

Some of the older kids were busy playing Wii after dinner.

We had dinner at the small garden behind our house. The small house in the picture is actually a tv/rec room.

I prepared an International menu for dinner to accommodate the young and old guests. It was a mish mash of dishes that didn’t seem to go well with each other but everyone was happy and enjoyed all the food. That’s caesar salad in the wooden bowl below.

I saw a picture of this dish on a friend’s facebook pics and I recreated it. The recipe and step by step procedure here.

California summer rolls

These are a type of sushi called inarizhushi. The outer layer is made from fried tofu skin called aburaage. It’s stuffed with sushi rice and tuna corn salad. Watch out for the pictures on how I made this coming soon.

inarizhushi

I made this linguine with sun dried tomato pesto with luganega sausage from Santi’s.

linguine with sun dried tomato pesto

For those who don’t like pasta there was Chinese misua ordered from Lim’s Bakeshop.

Chinese misua

baked spiced chicken

We bought dried preserved duck and Chinese sausage (lap cheong) from Hong Kong. We put the duck and sausages on top of white rice that’s about 80% cooked and let it continue cooking til done. The flavors and fat from the duck and sausages drip on the rice to make it so flavorful. We added some soy sauce and sugar to the rice.

preserved duck and sausage rice

The highlight and mainstay of our annual dinner are the prawns and prime ribs cooked on our old teppanyaki grill.

I ordered a whole US angus prime rib rack from Santi’s.

Dessert was mostly store bought except for these home baked chocolate chip cookies with walnuts.

I played around with my camera and took these shots of the dessert we had. I bought my favorite apple pie from Sugarhouse.

The chocolate cake came from Hungrypac.

And my all time favorite peachy peachy from Arny and Dadeng’s newest branch in Gilmore extension which was a stone’s throw away from my house. Oh no!!!

Lim’s Bake shop
604 Gen. de Jesus St. Little Baguio,
San Juan Metro Manila
telephone: 725-8851 ; 7252059

Santi’s Delicatessen
The Promenade Bldg., 198 Wilson Street Corner
P. Guevarra, San Juan City
telephone: 381-2926; 381-2934

San Antonio Plaza Arcade, Forbes Park
Makati City, Metro Manila, Philippines
telephone: 894-1293

Hungrypac
Ash Creek Center
Madison Street corner Ortigas Ave
telephone: 736-0002, 0917-8360092

I just realized that Arny and Dadeng has numerous franchise groups. This group’s branches are the following. For the other group’s branches click here.

telephone: 257-5462