HO HO HOoooosting Christmas in Iwade

Have you seen our kitchen? It is small, very very very small. Many of you have bathrooms larger than our kitchen. Our kitchen has a two burner stop top (like what you take camping), a small fish grill, and a microwave/oven. Now I must admit that Rich and I pulled off a cooking feat by hosting a very large and scrumptious Christmas dinner in our apartment and cooked all the food in our rinky dink kitchen. In total we had about 14 people in our apartment. In fact there were enough people providing natural body heat that we didn't even need to run the heater. Pictured above is Rich carving the turkey that we made. Yes we are fortunate and have an oven. Surprisingly it is not a standard appliance in Japanese households; especially foreinger's/ALTs houses.

I'm proud to say that the menu included; turkey(brined over night for extra moisture), pork roast, rosemary mashed potatoes, garlic mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes (foreigners love potatoes; also it's a good filler), homemade cranberry sauce, cous cous salad, spicy almond green beans, wheat bread and mushroom stuffing (amazing and easy to make; I highly recommend), mulled wine, and pumpkin roll for dessert. Our very kind friends brought snacks, rolls, Christmas cake, cheesecake, and lots of wine. Fortunately there weren't leftovers (good thing b/c we leave for Cambodia and Thailand today). It really ended up being a great Christmas. Being away from family during the holidays can be rough and it was nice to share a meal with other people in the same situation as us. Hope everyone had a great Christmas and that you have a wonderful New Year. We are off on our vacation and will return January 6.

C U N the New Year!