I know, I know I am late – very late at wishing you all a great holiday.
Awesome Christmas Tree by my sister and her friends
I promise I had a good excuse – I’ll put that post up soon enough to let you know why my online presence has been missing in action (hint – part of it had something to do with this).
In the meantime, I hope your Christmas/Hannukkah/Kwanzaa/Whatever-other-holiday-you-may-have-celebrated was an amazing one full of family, fun, friends and love. Also, I hope your New Year was spectacular and that 2012 has brought with it all that you’ve wished for so far. Also, good luck on your New Year Resolutions – I don’t usually make any but this year I decided to make some. More about that in a moment.
So, I spent Christmas in Trinidad, like I have most Christmases in my life – and if there’s anything that defines a Trini Christmas it’s the food. Of course, as some of you know, I actually started my baking early, while I was still in Toronto – Stacey and Nancy both got to taste my spectacular (if I don’t say so myself) Cranberry, White Chocolate, Shortbread Cookies…..if you beg I MAY decide to reveal the recipe…
That's right baby - I know you're drooling...
As usual, the two fridges in the house and three freezers were packed full of food and cake and sweets and chocolates and biscuits. The difference this year was that my mother and I went on gluten free baking blitz. My mother stayed up every night scouring the internet for various gluten free recipes – many of which she found on the Simply Gluten Free website. Most of which worked out (except for the dairy free panna cotta….which was a bit of a rubbery disaster that I forgot to photograph for your viewing pleasure) really really well – let’s just say I completely stuffed my face with Namaste gluten free brownies, home made gluten free bread and dinner rolls, gluten free pineapple upside down cake and dairy free chocolate pots…
Our fantastic gluten-free breads with pomegranate jam
My gluten-free Pineapple Upside Down Birthday Cake
…and my sisters in the meantime complained that there was too much food in the house….cries of “you’re baking AGAIN?!?!” were frequent and loud, but we ignored them and kept on trucking.
You see, it’s easy to be shocked that we baked so much, but I haven’t eaten homemade, made-from-scratch baked goods in almost 3 years. And it felt good. And it tasted good. And I felt remotely normal for just a little bit for a change (being the only gluten-free person in the house in a country like Trinidad can be a bit stressful at times). And that to me worked better than earplugs to the whining about the lack of space in the fridges for the copious amounts of curry duck that, for some reason, kept flowing into our house this season.
But we don’t just bake, we cook too! My mother found some frozen ackee, just enough to keep her Jamaican breakfast on Christmas morning tradition alive.
My mother's fantastic turkey just out of the oven
We also made gluten free versions of the johnny cake and shrimp accras. Let’s just say that on Christmas morning, my belly was FULL and happy. Then we had an amazing turkey that tasted as yummy as it looks. Unfortunately we missed out on my Mom’s homemade ham because we had a frozen one left over from my Dad’s business’ Christmas party.
I think my Mom owes me a ham :p
Maybe it’s just my family, but it seems we celebrate a lot with food – on my birthday we had a spectacular feast! Lunch was red snapper steamed in a creole sauce, rice, callalloo and stewed pork. It was just spectacular. Yummy.
Red snapper in a creole tomato sauce (Mom's recipe)
Then in the evening a lot of my nearest and dearest friends managed to show up at my place for a good old fashioned “lime”. Thank you everyone for making me feel loved – I hope you enjoyed yourselves – Riza you still owe me a ride in your fantastic car – Sash just apparently moves faster than I do.
Some of the friends who came by for my birthday <3
Anyway, so we are now in 2012 and I am actually making a few resolutions (which I don’t usually do)…that I’m going to try to keep, and at least one of which I will be chronicalling, because what better way to achieve a goal than to tell a few hundred people each week? Here goes
1) Get my blog caught up – that means complete the new designs, complete my reviews, organize my blog sponsors properly and work hard at bringing you interesting and spectacular content. Try to get rid of mediocre posts. This also means improve my About Me page and catch up with all the guest posts that I’ve promised from before Christmas….yes girls, I promise I’m still interested.
2) Lose weight – I know they typical resolution – what better way to achieve a goal than to chronicle it on a medium that reaches hundreds of people per month? At least that way I’m accountable. The goal? 20 lbs by April. And yes, that means I’ll be admitting how much I weigh to you on a weekly basis.
3) Get healthy – another typical one – I’m starting with a new GP on the 13th January, 2012…so hopefully she and I will be able to figure out some answers and would be able to relieve some of my symptoms. This includes a possible visit to a rheumatologist and definitely one to a dermatologist…..and maybe even hire a nutritionis….?
4) Do not get jaded – living in a city situation for this long has made me “hard” and “unyielding” in comparison to who I was. I prefer who I was. I was relaxed, lived my life caring about what mattered and not about the other white noise that imbibes our lives. This year I will choose my battles carefully, love openly (get your minds out of the gutters people) and be happy. Finally.
I think those are four biggies – so let’s start with those (wow I ended up with more here than I actually thought about).
Happy New Year lovelies – I hope I get to meet a lot more of you this year!
