Christmas Eve - All about Town and Getting Ready for our SPECIAL Day

Day 4 - Monday, December 24^th

Day 3 and a little “hiccup” on our journey – I woke up with a major headache.  I thought “Oh no, this can’t be a migraine!”  After some caffeine, Tylenol, a little protein, a short nap, more caffeine and Advil, I took a shower and off we go – a little ole headache can’t keep a girl down when she’s on vacation. LOL

We went to visit Nicole and Baby Ethan.  Nicole is another teacher that Andrea met before she moved to the UAE and we are having Christmas dinner with her.  Have you ever seen such cuteness as this?  Ethan was the cutest and was so happy.  He loves Andrea and he warmed up to me pretty quickly. 

 

Nicole had told us he was not so keen on men but he was interested in Randy.  He would play with Randy from a distance and he would let Randy hold him for about 2 or 3 minutes.  We all decided if Randy was around for a little while, Ethan would certainly have a new friend.  What baby doesn’t love Randy? He’s like the “Baby Whisperer”.

Nicole had bought a Butterball Turkey for Christmas dinner so I did all the prep work for her so the next morning all she had to do was put it in the oven.  She said she didn’t realize the process and was so glad I came to help.  (She was quite grossed out with the prep work.) We talked about the rest of the menu and made sure we had everything.  One of the things that she had requested that I bring was vanilla extract (you can’t find it over there).  She was making a Chocolate Pecan Pie – Yummy.

After our visit, we headed to the mall for some last minute shopping for Christmas and in search of measuring spoons.  We looked everywhere – it’s another one of those things – if you see it, buy it even if you don’t think you need it because when you do need it, you can’t find it.  That seems to be the case with food also.

We had dinner at a nice Lebanese Restaurant, Zaytinya.  Randy had Schwarma (kind of like a wrap with flat bread with meat, fermented vegetables, some kind of white sauce and french fries); Andrea and I had Chicken Kabobs with Saffron Rice. The rice was the best ever – it had a great flavor – even Andrea liked it and that’s saying a lot.  The portions are huge so we almost always shared two entrees.

Schwarma

Chicken Kabob with Saffron Rice

Here’s my version of a mini-schwarma minus the things I didn’t want on it. J

Since Andrea doesn’t have an oven, we went to her friend, Christine’s apartment to bake the cornbread for our Old-fashion Cornbread Dressing for Christmas dinner.  Everything is different here – it has different flavor, different texture.  I had my reservations when I saw the cornmeal – let’s just say it wasn’t Martha White Self-rising.  But I gave it a noble attempt.  I made the first batch and put it in the oven.  Everything is in metric and Celsius so I had to figure out how to convert all the measurements and the temperature for baking.  Let’s just say lots of guessing and hoping. And no iron skillet to bake it in. The first batch was golden brown but flat.   So I made a second batch and added to baking powder and it was the same.  Both batches had a good flavor but a different texture.   We’ll see tomorrow when it’s time to bake the dressing.

 We headed home to finish wrapping those last minute gifts and to call family and friends back home to say “Merry Christmas”.