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PS. This entry's been updated so scroll down! =D

A personal MERRY CHRISTMAS from Midnight~! Or... as personal as it can get on a blog =D Hope everyone had a wonderful time celebrating!! For those who don't celebrate... well, bear with me for this shall be a Christmas post, because being the dedicated blogger that I am (yeah right), I'm sitting in front of the computer blogging. On Christmas day. Sad, but yea, with all the shops closed on Christmas and Sydney being the Land of Boredom on public holidays such as this, there really isn't much to do.

Starting from yesterday morning, my sister arrived back in Sydney from Singapore for a couple of weeks- just in time for Christmas. We picked her up from the airport, headed home, and started on the preparations for our family Christmas dinner. While we usually celebrate special occasion dinners outside, Christmas is the one occasion when we stay in and home cook everything.

Of course, there's the turkey. My parents were lazy with this year's shopping for food, so since I work at a supermarket (as a casual, mind you. It's not my career!!) I bought a 3.6kg whole turkey! My brother defrosted and marinated it in salt, rosemary and what not about a week ago, so all we had to do was preheat the oven and... put it in.

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It didn't go smoothly because being Sydney, it was a very hot summer's day and everyone must have cranked up their air conditioning to full blast, overloading the electrical boxes.... we had a black out when the turkey's been in the oven for only two of the four hours it's meant to be in there. Waited half an hour, still out of power. We headed to Towers in hope of buying a barbecue stove thing (which uses coal... the REAL kind of barbecue), but they sold out. Thank God the power came back on after an hour. Resumed cooking the turkey. Yea, I know, you're meant to tie the legs together with twine... which we didn't have.

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My sister set about the task of making the salad. That just means washing the leaves, drying it and pouring balsamic vinegar dressing on top ^^'' Got the baby salad leaves and rocket leaves from Harris Farm... which was a real rip-off because around this time of the year, they put up the prices for vegetables by a lot =_= Got about a bag-full, and added half a packet of frozen mixed veggies from the supermarket.

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The aluminum foil wrapped stuff- they're potatoes which we shoved into the oven during the last hour or so of the turkey's time in there. Works perfectly~ crispy skinned and nicely soft inside. There's gravy, cranberry sauce...

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Turkey came out a nice amber shade =) Black out did not kill the turkey!

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Red wine? Not =P It's really just ribena. Traditionally, we get sparkling grape juice, but then I forgot to take money out the day I went shopping and sparkling juice was too expensive for poor me, so I got ribena instead. At least the colour's the same~

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My humble plate of Christmas dinner =)

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And my brother's heaped plate of Christmas dinner =D It doesn't look much- I mean, it's really just turkey, potato and salad... but then it doesn't have to be a big feast as long as the Christmas cheer is there and you're with people you love, right?~

We usually have our Christmas dinner on Christmas eve, and when it comes to Christmas, it's really just left-over turkey and stuff we couldn't eat the night before. Like the pudding.

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That's my brother's hand pouring brandy over the pudding.

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Aww. Can't really see it, but there's faint blue flames on top of the pudding. It didn't last too long because we didn't saturate the pudding with brandy.

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This, is OUR traditional way of having pudding. A tiny morsel, and many ladles of custard. Don't really like pudding, so drenching it in custard makes it taste a lot better~

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Our turkey from night before, cooked into a porridge (congee, whatever you call rice and water) in the magic cooker. Tasted pretty good =D The turkey was huge, so of course we couldn't finish it the night before. It used to last us a week or so, cos we were kids and didn't eat very much... now it'll probably last us 2 or 3 days max. We still have some cold cuts in the fridge for sandwiches. Usually, turkey's meat is pretty dry, but we cooked it well this year =D Wasn't dry, and the flavour went deep into the meat~

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Some decorations around the house...

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Guess where poor Santa's hat went? *accusing glare at icie*

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=_____________=

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Alice stole it!

MERRY CHRISTMAS ALL!! =D God Bless~ ^^

 Update:
We got sent some really nice Guylian chocolates from.. one of my parents' friends!

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They were really nice, and what the heck is with guys and doing the "peace" sign to ruin and block my photos =_= that's my brother's stubby V in the first photo.

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Christmas Day dinner! Preparations.

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I bought a whole turkey as well as a 1kg turkey thigh. My mum was fully complaining that we're not going to be able to eat it all, that I'm wasting money, etc etc. Eat your own words, mum! If I didn't buy it, we'd have nothing to eat in the house since no one bothered to go shopping AND all the shops are closed this Christmas. Looks kinda ugly, but...

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... with some magic, it transforms into a nice plate of dinner! Pasta, left over frozen mixed veggies, turkey thigh, cranberry sauce and gravy~

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On a very bored note, my keyboard's letters were rubbing out and since I couldn't see the letters anymore anyway, decided to glam it up a bit with some keyboard stickers bought during the Singapore trip. Tt has already done it to his (I'm sorry ^^'' made you have a girly keyboard) so I guess it's about time I did it to mine. Since my keyboard size is smaller than the usual ones, the "enter" key isn't in the reversed L form and the F1-F12 keys are way smaller, some of the stickers didn't fit... so I stuck F1-F9 on my number pad, and a few keys didn't even have stickers =( so it looks incomplete, but what the heck, it's just for fun =D The letters on the stickers ARE small though, not that it's for reading, guess no one can use my computer now unless they can touch type.... then again, everyone in this house can, except for mum, but she doesn't use computers anyway.

Christmas is almost over! Wonder what everyone did today ^^''