Merry Christmas from Dubai

Christmas 2019 has come to an end and hopefully we all get a chance to sit down, relax and put our feet up before New Year’s Eve kicks in. This year, I celebrated Christmas in Dubai with Poul, and we cooked a traditional Danish Christmas meal consisting of roast duck, Waldorf salad and caramelized potatoes. For dessert we had risalamande, which is a kind of rice pudding with whipped cream and almonds.

My mom makes the best roast duck and I have learned from her how to get it just right. The key to success lies in planning ahead and having patience. If the duck is frozen, you have to give it enough time to defrost properly, before the duck goes into the oven for many hours at low heat. I usually set the oven to around 250°F except for the last 20 minutes when I turn up the heat to make the skin nice and crispy.

Most of December Poul and I have been eating primarily plant-based, so having to cook a dead bird felt really strange, and to be honest, removing the guts and preparing the duck for the oven was rather disgusting.

Though I did not have any problems with eating the duck later. Roast duck is such an integral part of my perception of Christmas, so I think it will take a long time before I am ready to give up the roast duck Christmas dinner. However, I have decided to reduce my meat (and duck) consumption in 2020 significantly, and if flexitarian did not sound so much like an alternative way to spell hypocrite, that would be how I would be labelling myself in 2020.   

I guess that counts as a New Year’s resolution? And talking about New Year’s resolutions, I found a very old blog posts with some really strange New Year’s resolutions I made for 2013, including getting a haircut and stop wearing my bicycle helmet indoors.

What is your New Year’s resolution?