December 26 – Soul Food What did you eat this year that you will never forget? What went into your mouth & touched your soul? (Author: Elise Marie Collins)
Well I love food and I love most kinds but the best meal that sticks in my head right now is from last night, Christmas Dinner.
If you've read here for a while you know that I've convinced my family to have non-traditional Christmas dinners the past few years. We've had Swedish (2006), French Canadian (2007), Italian (2008), and last year we had Turducken.
This year we went Hawaiian.
Back in 2007 we went on a family holiday to Hawaii, one of the best trips of my life. We went to a luau and ate at local restaurants when we ate out and really enjoyed the food. So for our dinner this year I wanted to recreate some of the dishes we had on our trip.
We made Kalua Pig.
Kalua Pig is made with liquid smoke, Hawaiian salt and Ti or Banana leaves. Bizarrely enough we had Hawaiian salt (from our trip) in the cupboard and banana leaves (from Calgary) in the freezer.
We bought some decorations from the dollar store.
We started our dinner with Coconut Shrimp and Bacon Wrapped Pineapple.
We had Kalua Pig,
And Chicken Long Rice,
And Maui Ribs,
We also had rice, Cucumber Salad and Pineapple Coleslaw, but I can't find any photos of the salads.
For dessert my Mom made Pineapple Upside down Cake.
The food was all fantastic and over the next week I will share the recipes with you, but the best part was having a great dinner with my family. I am thankful I have them and thankful that they are nice enough to forgo a Turkey Dinner on Christmas Day to play along with me.
(Yep, we've already started on our menu for next year!)
