This Year's Noche Buena

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In our household, mom ruled the kitchen. She would always prepare dishes (especially on special occasions) because she wanted to be in some sort of control, but for nearly a decade now, she allowed us (her children) to cook – not just everyday meals, but also during special days. During the holidays, my sister and I would prepare dishes for Noche Buena and Christmas Day lunch, while brother would prepare dishes for Media Noche and New Year’s Day lunch.


I wanted to keep it quite simple for this year’s Noche Buena, afterall, it’s just us four – no relatives visiting us for Christmas.


Chicken Macaroni Salad
I totally forgot when was the last time we prepared this dish at home. Growing up, my parents would serve this for the holidays, but as we grow old and learn different recipes, we kinda let this dish take the back seat. I want to include a feel of nostalgia, hence this dish. A very simple dish to make, I think we all know how to prepare this one... but for this particular salad, I made sure I chopped certain ingredients so it won’t make an overpowering impression. I also added a little condensed milk into the dressing, and of course, I didn’t forget adding finely minced onions, because we just love the hint of onions in our macaroni salad.


Prawn and Pork Wonton Triangles
I was browsing old culinary magazines for easy recipes to try and saw this from an old issue of Yummy Magazine. Cooking this on Christmas Eve was a risk – I have no idea how it would taste like and I don’t know how would the family accept it, but I was so glad that it tasted good. I just felt sad because the wonton wrapper I bought said it had 100 wrappers inside, yet I made below 50 wonton triangles all in all. Needless to say, what I served wasn’t enough to satisfy the family.

Recipe for this dish will be shared tomorrow.


Banana Cupcakes
Noche Buena and Christmas is about celebrating Jesus Christ’s birth, so the cake will always be present at the table during this time. We all know how hectic this time would be – too many shoppers flocking the market as well as different bakeshops, so we decided not to buy cakes. Instead, I opted to go for the ever reliable Maya Oven Toaster cake mix, so we could also give some to our neighbors.

We have different types of the Maya Oven Toaster cake mix at home – Banana Cake, Chocolate Cake, Butter Cake, and Bibingka. The Bibingka was a bit difficult to use and there might be too much chocolate this time of the year, so we used the banana cake mix. A box of the mix yielded 18 mini cupcakes, definitely a great giveaway. As always, we used the steamer to cook the cupcakes, which turned out to be a better choice (than using the oven toaster) because it was moist and had an even color.
It was a different celebration this year. I felt a little sad that it was just us four celebrating it, and sister didn’t even eat with us that midnight. Well, I couldn’t blame her – she’s very tired from work and still has to go to work morning of Christmas Day, but of course I just couldn’t help but feel sad.

How was your Noche Buena?