Yakitori Column

vol 04Christmas Day

Hi everyone, and Happy New Year! I hope you had a nice break even if it was short, and ate lots of Osechi Ryori. Best wishes for 2009, and make sure you eat lots of Yakitori!!

My blog today is about my Christmas Day experience. Depending on who you are, where you are from and what religion you are, you may do lots on Christmas Day or nothing at all.

The two things my family in New Zealand does on Christmas Day is open presents and eat food. We get up in the morning, open presents, and have breakfast; we then go to my grandmother’s house, open presents, and eat lunch, and so on, throughout the day. It’s a tough life doing nothing.

Because it is summer for Christmas in New Zealand, the typical dinner is a barbeque dinner. Steak and sausages are the usual food we cook on the barbeque. As you can see in the photo, New Zealand sausages are much bigger than Japanese ones.

This Christmas we went to my auntie’s house for dinner, and we were treated to a barbeque with lots of other interesting salads and healthy food. I can eat most food but I wasn’t too much of a fan of the jelly-like pea salad (front of the photo), and the chicken salad with strawberries (right). Don’t tell my family! Sorry auntie.

Robert Buchanan