Our Christmas Eve tradition is going fairly well. Three of the past four years we've been able to celebrate Christmas Eve with sushi for dinner.
2008 was the start of the tradition. We were on our own for the first time for the holiday. Kyle was busy writing his thesis so we didn't travel home. After church on Christmas Eve night, we drove around an all-but-abandoned East Cambridge looking for food other than leftovers at home. We settled on an Asian fusion place. He had sushi; I had Thai. At the time I didn't eat sushi, but we enjoyed sake and the tradition was born.
2009 was our first Christmas in Singapore. Rather late in the evening, we headed to Orchard Road for Christmas Eve sushi, only to realize that we shared the "Orchard Road" part of that idea with everyone else on the island. It was a very different scene from the dark Cambridge streets, but the sushi and the sake were good and I even joined in the raw-fish-enjoyment this time.
Last year would have been our third year in a row (how many years does it take for a tradition to be firmly established?), but we spent Christmas Eve and Christmas in Laos with Philip and Emily. We had fish that night, but it was of the Mekong River variety and we enjoyed it fully cooked--as I think Mekong fish should always probably be. You can get decent sushi in lots of places in the world, but I'm not sure Luang Prabang is one of them.
This year we once again celebrated Christmas Eve with church and sushi, again on Orchard. We were a bit earlier this year and we were prepared for the crowds. It was an excellent spread:
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| Salmon, scallops. and several kinds of tuna nigiri |
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| Dragon and Golden rolls |
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| Clams in sake |
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| Crunchy tuna rolls |
Not pictured: hand rolls, gyoza, and edamame. Needless to say, we were stuffed by the end of the dinner.
It was also excellent company and conversation, of course. As Kyle said in 2009: "sitting down to a slow dinner to talk, reflect, plan, and take stock of our blessed lives, that was the best part."
