Christmas Eve Filipino Feast 2012

Merry Christmas from my parents’ house!

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Bailey’s been getting plenty of attention from my family, which he loves.

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My mom and sister decided to whip up a huge, Filipino feast for our Christmas Eve dinner this year.

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Mom made a dish she said we haven’t had in almost twenty years – morcon. Morcon is a dish made with flank steak that is rolled up with ham, kielbasa, hard-boiled eggs, and olives and then cooked in a tomato-based sauce. It sounds and looks kind of weird, but it tastes great!

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Here’s the spread.

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And here’s the finished morcon. We’re definitely not waiting another twenty years to make this one again. It was a winner.

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Sis is a dim sum fan, too, and she made a Filipino-Chinese fusion with steamed buns filled with pork adobo.

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These were so good that I had two more for an after-dinner snack! (dinner was really early)

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Lumpia is always welcome at a Filipino feast.

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They made this version with chicken and a wide mixture of vegetables, including cabbage, carrots, and zucchini. Yum!

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Here’s my plate – don’t forget about the pancit.

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{chowing down}

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Flan – a dessert we often had at holiday meals growing up. We haven’t had this one in awhile, either.

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{my piece – I’d forgotten how good this was}

Everything on the table was a winner tonight. I can’t imagine a better Christmas Eve dinner for our family.

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After eats, we moved on to open some presents for our guests – hubby and Matt.

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Bailey helped open presents.

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And after some gift-opening fun, mom, Sis, and I got started on a new food project – suman. We’ve never made suman before. Well, mom said she used to make it growing up. Suman is a Filipino dessert made with sweet rice, coconut milk, and salt.

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It was quite the process, but we did it. We ended up with twenty finished suman.

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The finished suman is then topped with sugar or served with sugar on the side. This stuff is good, and it really takes on the flavor from the bamboo leaf it’s cooked in, but I still prefer my Sweet Rice (the one made with brown sugar). Either way, it was a fun project to do with my family.

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I’m seriously geeking out on my Christmas vacation. I majored in Computer Science in college, but I’ve never really worked as a developer. But, I’ve been feeling the itch to code lately, so I’m trying to teach myself Python. I’d also like to take a look at some HTML5 tutorials since I’m only self-taught on HTML from several years ago. Who knows? I’m having fun, so I guess it’s all good. What have you been up to?

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Reader question: If you celebrated, what did you eat for Christmas Eve dinner? Do you have any traditional Christmas Eve eats?

4 thoughts on “Christmas Eve Filipino Feast 2012”

  1. Merry Christmas!

    Oh yum! All the food in this post looks so good! We had vegetable lumpia for Christmas Eve too. Flan we saved for earlier today, lol. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Morcon, though it looks delicious! And suman! I haven’t had suman in forever! Mmm. it’s a good thing I am still full, otherwise I might break into our secret stash of empanadas!

    Reply
  2. Your holiday table looked amazing! This was the first Christmas that I had with my husbands family, so it was all new traditions for me. Christmas Eve we had Pasta and Clams, and for Christmas we had tacos… both were good, but not very Christmasy at all for this PA girl. Looking forward to Christmas with my family next year.

    Reply
  3. Hi, can you send me the recipe of your mom´s morcon? Parang ang sarap2x. 😀 Di pa me nagawa nyan but I am willing to try it talaga for Christmas. Merry Christmas sa yo & to your family 🙂

    Reply

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