We went to the Christmas morning service in church that morning and my aunt, my late mum’s cousin, stopped by our seats to invite us to her Christmas Open House that day and of course, we accepted her invitation happily.
We did not know at the time that she was born on Christmas Day, her 78th this year so it was, in fact, a 2-in-1 affair.
Her church-going friends brought this Japanese baked cotton cheese cake…
…my favourite, so there was the singing of the birthday song, the candle blowing and cake cutting. The cake had gone up in price like nobody’s business – long long ago, a small oval one was RM10.00 and then it started going up. The last time I bought one, it was RM14.00 and one of the ladies that day told me it is now RM18.00. No, thank you! I’d just go for something more affordable instead.
My aunt served quite a lot of dishes – her phak lor (braised) sa chan bak (pork belly)…
…was so good that I could not resist going back for more.
She also cooked this…
…and she got somebody in the kampung to cook the curry…
…and the masak merah…
The photo of the rendang came out blur so I have left that out.
She bought these Sibu Foochow-style sio bee…
…which were really very good – I think I shall go and grab some soon and blog about it. She also bought the ngor hiang…
– my girl enjoyed it but I thought it was just so-so, nothing to shout about.
There weren’t any vegetable dishes but a friend brought this very nice mango pickle…
…and there was dabai…
…plus these rambutans from my garden…
…my contribution to the party and somebody brought these lovely cream puffs…
…for dessert.
We had a jolly good time – everybody knew everybody as we are a small church community but we couldn’t stay too long as we had to rush back and get working on our own Christmas dinner at home that night but that will be in another post. You’ll stick around, won’t you?
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 