We get it—you’ve spent the past weeks running around like a headless chicken. You were buying gifts, wrapping gifts, herding your family from one reunion to another, slaving over Noche Buena and Media Noche, being stalked by inaanaks and dancing “Gangnam Style” at Christmas parties. Now all that is over and you still have a few days left before your kids head back to school.
No, they aren’t taking away the joys of Christmas from you. They are just concerned about the effect of an eat-all-you-can noche buena on your health, specifically your waistlines and arteries.
As much as it is the season for gifts and parties, Christmas is also the time for tradition. Apart from the usual potluck noche buena and program, there are other offbeat holiday traditions which our family enjoys.
It was hard to tell which was more interesting: the lessons in cooking or the lessons in living.
Fruits and ham have always been the stars of the Noche Buena table, but each year, there always seems to be something new—a new fruit, a new ham, or a new way of serving fruit or cooking ham.
I don’t know what came over me, but after years of retirement from kitchen duties, I found myself doing Pote Gallego for noche buena. And once I got started I felt driven to cook on.
At Boracay Garden Resort, specifically, which bills itself as “the only property in the island where guests may take leisurely walks around the breezy, tree-lined property.” That luxury, quite scarce in Boracay where most establishments consist of tightly packed concrete structures, comes courtesy of the resort’s enviable size—some 1.5 hectares of open space big enough to accommodate three swimming pools side by side with landscaped gardens, cabanas, a poolside bar, and wide patches of either grassy or tiled open space for walking around.
Your Mom has probably planned out your Noche Buena spread, but that’s no reason you can’t give some love this holiday. Surprise your loved ones with a Christmas brunch.
Last night, I started working on our Christmas tree. I had not done that with much enthusiasm for a very long time. After dinner, I began to wrap and twist yards and yards of lights around the stems and branches of the tree that has been with my family for the last 12 years. I’m not done yet. It will probably take me another day to finish.
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