My Christmas Holidays 2020

Last weekend, I finished my last two exams of the Fall 2020 semester. (◉ω◉) oink

Now I have until next Monday to do anything but school-related. I'm taking a bit of free time to post here what I did—or should I say what I ate—during my holidays. I feel like I should keep it a blogging tradition to talk briefly about how I spent my Christmas holidays each year. I didn't do it for the year 2018 and ended up regretting it later.

Christmas Eve — December 24th

Table set up by my mom

A couple of days before, my sister had gone to Costco to buy our Christmas Eve meal. ~(･▽･)~ It was notably to give my mom a cooking break.

(In case you're curious, for my family, I had decided to order Vietnamese food from one of our favourite restaurants once the holidays would be over.)

We ate soup dumplings for our entry. My sister had eaten them before and wanted us to try them.

They were delicious; what a nice way to start the meal.

The soup dumplings are made by bibigo. I don't know this company, but it's written "Share Korean Flavor" on the package, so I guess that they make Korean frozen specialties.

Each dumpling carries a good amount of broth in it.

Taste-wise, this is exactly how I wanted my dumplings to taste like when I used to make them. I tried some recipes in the past but never found one that tasted like the dumplings made by Chinese people, either at the restaurant or homemade. Similar to my fail with making egg tarts, I grew tired of trying recipes and kinda gave up making dumplings.

Also, the bibigo dumplings are unbelievably easy to prepare. Just need to cut a corner of the tray and pop it in the microwave for 2 minutes! In that short timespan, the dumplings go completely frozen to very hot with liquidy broth. I was impressed.

The main dish doesn't look very appetizing here... but it was good.

Carbonara shrimp pasta (Costco) with Ceasar salad (by my mom). Dislike peas but still ate them.

Flavours from left to right: Crème brûlée, dulce de leche,

pistachio, red velvet, orange and chocolate

Why do companies keep making orange-flavoured sweets? (ಠ  ಠ) As expected, the orange macaron tasted bad.

This was my second time eating French macarons, and I'm not sure why people—at least those on the internet—go crazy over them. The taste is bland, almost like cardboard to me. I'm really thankful to my sister who bought them, but if I have to be honest, French macarons aren't worth the money.

Christmas — December 25th and after

Our Christmas meal: Chicken and mashed potatoes, by my mom.

Food was amazing. I love mashed potatoes.

The day after Christmas: My parents made donuts. ヾ(･ω･｡)ｼ

I believe I was around 12 years old when I last ate donuts made by them.

I chose the chonkiest one. It was good.

I had planned to catch up with my readings during the holidays, but I didn't open a single textbook. Sadly, neither did I have the occasion to resume a sewing project started in September. My holidays consisted mostly of taking pictures and writing my last two blog posts of 2020. Some days, I also felt like doing nothing in particular.