'Tis the Season for Love Handles

This year's really special.  It's my first Christmas with my husband and my brother-in-law.  A new family calls for new traditions.

So we made one up.  We decided to spend Christmas Eve on the beach!  How cool is that?  When I was younger, my family spent a few Christmases in Boracay and Pattaya so I definitely loved the idea.  This time we went to Montemar Beach Resort in Bataan.  As expected, there were only a handful of people there.   We had the whole place to ourselves... well us, Mark Gil, Cherry Gil, and Gary Granada. Harhar.  I digress.

    
We had an awesome Christmas Eve!  I finally got some much needed R & R.  How could I not with a view like this??  It's the perfect place for some meditation, a little soul-searching... and a bit of drinking.  Teehee.

Whisky...

and chocolates.  Thanks Ku for my Christmas gift!  I'm a Twix fan so this chocolate by Marks & Spencer was a delightful surprise.  It's definitely an upgraded version of Twix.  It works even without the caramel in between.  

That was our Noche Buena. :)  Christmas without the usual ham and Queso de Bola, which we intentionally left at home, was kind of liberating.

Lemme fast-forward to Christmas day.

I started my day right with this...

MMMMMMM.  The breakfast of champions.  Bacon, sinangag, and scrambled eggs.  Bacon rocks my world.  It really does.  Yuri knows how to cook awesome bacon.  A man after my own heart.  He cooked me this same breakfast when he was still courting me three years ago.  

Fast-forwarding again to Christmas Day Dinner.

We checked out of the resort at 1 PM and then drove straight home.  We napped for an hour and then drove off to my parents house.


This was the main event.

Curacha crabs flown all the way from Zamboanga.  All 20 kilos of it.  I had been waiting for these crabs for weeks now.  So yeah, I had hairy crabs for dinner.  LOL.  a.k.a. Cockroach Crabs according to my dad.  I apologize for this hastily taken picture.  It was too mouth-watering.  I had to get my hands on it as soon as I could.  My mom served 10 kilos of Curacha crabs.  Each crab weighs at least half a kilo.  By the end of the night, I managed to stuff myself with 5 kilos-worth of Curachas.  Oops.

Oh and you absolutely cannot eat this without the famed Alavar Sauce.  It's a thick coconut gravy made with aligue (crab fat).  For me, aligue is the end all and be all.  It's like crema in a well-made cup of espresso.  It's the only reason why I go through the trouble of picking through these crabs.  Erm especially since I'm allergic to them.  So imagine how mind-blowing it is to have the Alavar Sauce drizzled on top of the fresh aligue.  *sigh*  Words fail me.   

On to the Best Supporting Roles.

I'd have to nominate my all-time favorite Royce Champagne Nama Chocolates.  Read more about Royce here.

My second nominee would have to be the Leche Flan Cake.

It's basically a chiffon cake with a creamy leche flan topping.  A nice balance of lightness and creaminess.  This cake sort of reminds me of Estrel's Caramel Cake.  Estrel's cake is waaaaay better but the Leche Flan Cake makes a decent substitute.

My holiday pig-out season is far from over.  Today we cooked up a decent dinner feast for some relatives who came over for a belated Christmas day dinner.  We had Assorted Cold Cuts,  Fresh Garden Salad with Strawberry Vinaigrette, Roast Chicken ala Yuri with Oregano and Old Bay,  Mashed Potatoes, Mushroom Risotto ala Michelle, and some Pan-Fried Dory in a Sesame Thai Sauce.  In a few hours my hubby and I will be driving to Baguio for an extended vacation.  Strawberry Taho here I come!  I swear I'm gonna get back to biking after the New Year.       

The Rolls Royce of Chocolates

I was working with chocolate last night and I've come to realize that chocolates are really moody. You never get EXACTLY the same result. It greatly depends on the temperature and humidity in the kitchen. You never know what you're in store for. Some days it's effortless, other days it can get a bit frustrating, especially if you're working with melted chocolate. I still love it though.  I mean, who doesn't love chocolate? For some it's the best sort of all-around medicine, i.e. for a broken heart, a day gone wrong, depression, etc., etc.  It makes you feel good (that and ice cream) no matter what.  No matter how tight a person's budget is, somehow chocolate ends up in our grocery carts every now and then.

One chocolate brand that I wouldn't mind spending would spend my money on is Royce'.  It's the only chocolate that I literally dream about on a regular basis.  Silky smooth blocks of melt-in-your-mouth morsels of happiness lightly dusted in cocoa powder.  It's pure genius!  

I got mine twice straight from Japan as gift from my beloved cousin.  I am amazed that she has had the generosity and self-control to spare me not one but TWO whole boxes of Royce' Chocolates because I'm not sure if I would've been able to give them away if the roles were reversed (shameful I know).  But I'm paying her back by giving her awesome food and styling at her wedding next year.  Harhar.  :))

I remember when I got my first box of Royce' Nama Chocolates (this was before I got married and was still living with my parents) and I gave up 4 squares of chocolate, quite grudgingly, to my brother and mom, both of whom are the certified chocolate junkies in the family, so that they could try it out.  They both had the same reaction as I did.  I'm telling you, once they bit into it, their eyes went wide with shock for a second or two,then their eyes closed, closely followed by a look of pure bliss.  True story.  

Whenever I pop a piece into my mouth, my entire mind goes blank and all my senses involuntary zoom in on this amazing piece of bittersweet chocolate.  And then it sort of feels like an an orchestra's playing in my head (in surround sound, mind you) as it starts to melt oh so delicately in my mouth.   Heady stuff.   I could rave about Royce' all day! 

Since the chocolates were so precious I tried to eat one square a day only.  It was like The Ring.  I'd see my brother and my mom circling the chiller where I'd kept the box, alternately and at the different times of the day, attempting to steal some when I wasn't looking. They did succeed a few times and they'd come to me to sort of apologize saying that they couldn't stop thinking about the chocolates and that it was out of their control.  Totally understandable, but there really must be something dark and evil in that box. lol.

Royce is made in Hokkaido, Japan.  A box of Royce Chocolates is usually wrapped in three layers of packaging that comes with a cooling gel to ensure it makes it to wherever its headed without melting.  It has to be stored below 10 C since the ingredients are highly perishable.  Good thing they're now available in the Philippines.  Woot!  You can now buy them at the Powerplant Mall in Rockwell, Makati (costs about P580) and when I last checked they had a stall in Trinoma too, but I'm not sure if it's still there. 

If Yuri had given me two or three (or four) different boxes of Nama Chocolates on our first date I would've maybe agreed to be his girlfriend within a week.

Kidding!

Not.

Erm maybe?

Who knows. :)