RotoVegas Pt. 1: Christmas Day

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Everyone has different traditions for Christmas, for me it's all about family.
This year our family Christmas was held at my parents new house in Rotorua, after we had our immediate family's gift exchange the food preparations begin for the huge family lunch that we have with all my Aunts, Uncles & Cousins. Of course I snuck in lots of accidentally vegan things into the shared table including garlic bread and a Chocolate Hazelnut & Boysenberry cake that I made myself.


I used The Caker's mix for my base, they no longer stock the Chocolate Hazelnut mix but have other options in their online store. I've also tried the Raspberry & Coconut mix, and the Lemon & Plum - which was my fave! The best part about these mixes is most of them are easily made vegan (I think only one mix includes dairy milk chocolate.)
I decided to add boysenberries to make it more Christmas-y, so divided it into two layers and filled with a boysenberry sauce which I whipped up and decorated the top with fresh berries.


After lunch we decided to head to Rotorua's Blue Lake, for a swim and a spin on my cousin's Jet Ski. It was the first time I'd ever been on one - I also tried paddle boarding for the first time and paddled out to the middle of the lake to do some Yoga. I managed to only fall off the board once which I thought was a pretty good effort, no one saw me and I dried off in the sun before paddling back in so I could pretend I was an expert Yogi.



It was nice that everyone could come together, because our family is quite spread out it doesn't get to happen very often - I think that's my favourite part of Christmas, getting to catch up with the cousins I haven't seen all year.

I hope you all have had a wonderful holiday break.
Do you have any Christmas traditions? Let me know in the comments.

-Ash.

Comments

  1. Unknown30 December 2017 at 18:02

    Christmas Jetski-ing sounds like the coolest holiday activity to be honest. I'm for sure jealous. My family always has a come and go style get-together on Christmas Eve and then a big meal on Christmas Day.

    Typing this out actually made me realize there's another smaller tradition that because I was the youngest, I always passed out the gifts, but now that my niece is old enough, she's starting doing it and it was just this moment that I realized how happy that makes me to have passed that on to her. Family really is the best part about Christmas

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Unknown30 December 2017 at 22:53

      My youngest sibling totally has that role too!

      Delete

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