Hello and Happy New Year’s Day! How was your New Year’s Eve? Festive? Plenty of cooking and baking? Lots of food? I hope you got to spend quality time with your family this year.

For us both our Christmas dinner and NYE were low-key especially as it was just the four of us. It was chilly and rainy on Christmas night which was perfect given the quiet mood we were in. As for NYE we were feeling festive but just not in a virtual partying type of mood. That’s why a simple dinner sounded great on both the nights.

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Low key Christmas dinner

For our Christmas dinner Anjali made a delicious mocktail with blackberries and ginger syrup. She also made a delicious vegetable risotto. Rani made an awesome salad with toasted walnuts and gorgonzola. And for dessert we had leftover apple crumble from our Christmas Eve dinner the night before.

Christmas dinner menu

Blackberry mocktail
Salad with toasted spiced walnuts and gorgonzola
Vegetable risotto
Apple crumble

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Soul!!

Our dinner was the perfect backdrop to a phenomenal movie we watched that evening – Soul!! I highly recommend this new PIXAR animated movie. Our entire family loved it! We all had a big smile on our faces when the movie was over. The perfect way to end Christmas Day!

Leave it to PIXAR to come up with such a feel-good, original storyline like nothing I have seen before. Folks it’s so good Rotten Tomatoes gave it 95% positive rating!!! That’s crazy good ratings folks! This movie is that good!

I won’t say anything more about the movie, because I knew nothing about it before I watched it, and it really had a surprise from start to finish. It’s fast paced, funny, touching, feel good movie that you won’t even realize how fast the time zipped by. With all our spirits in a jumble as we end the year, this movie puts everything into perspective.

” Dare I say – Soul is the perfect movie to watch to end this year and begin the new one!!”

New Year’s Eve Dinner with the twins

New Year’s Eve was pretty simple and almost felt like any other night except that we decided to make cooking be the activity that keeps us up until countdown 😀 I made Indian fritters called bhajias. Since these are fried appetizers made with chickpea flour each batch of veggie fritters took some time to cook. NYE really was the perfect night to make these – there was no rush on my part 😀 Note to self – “These are great appetizers to make next NYE.”

Bhajias being fried

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Since bhajias are fried, I like to make another Indian dish called yogurt rice to calm the stomach down. Since yogurt is loaded with probiotics and my yogurt rice also has a spice called asafetida (which is good for digestion) I find this dish helps sooth the tummy after eating fried foods.

Cocktails and Cookies

The twins made what I call fruit and nut shortbread cookies and orange peach tea mocktail for themselves and with a splash of tequila for Hitesh and me. Both cocktails and cookies were so delicious folks!! What am I going to do when they head off to college 😢😢!!

Cookies they are a making

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Mocktails stirred not shaken

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Hope you enjoyed your holidays with your family and are ready to plunge into the New Year with positive energy! Have a fabulous weekend everyone.

Happy New Year!