Tis the Season to be Jorry!

Traditionally, my mother's Christmas Eve dinner consists of stuffed calamari, which we call "boats". We cook fish on Christmas Eve to celebrate the Italian Feast of the Seven Fishes, also known as La Vigilia. First, she stuffs the body of the squid with breadcrumbs, Parmesan cheese, and egg. Then she cooks the tentacles and calamari rings in the marinara sauce to flavor it. It is my most favorite part of the holiday! When I took my boyfriend home for his first Christmas with my fam a few years ago, I was nervous about how he would react to our traditional Christmas Eve dinner. He loved them and we even took the leftovers in a cooler on our drive back home from the holiday. I look forward to it every year and now, so does JJ.

This year was a bit different, because we went to L.A. to stay with my sister over Christmas. My mom came too, but was not planning on making the boats....boo hoo! We all decided to go out to dinner on the Eve. My brother-in-law brought us to this restaurant in Little Tokyo called Daikokuya (pronounced diet-coke-ooo-yah). They serve traditional Ramen and claim to be the home of the original noodle and rice bowl. JJ ordered the traditional Ramen which included noodles, a hard boiled egg, and pork belly in a flavorful broth. I orderd a Bento box filled with sushi and other Japanese goodies. In the middle of dinner, I felt like the servers were about to break out in a rendition of 'Tis the Season to be Jorry... Fa Ra Ra Ra Ra Ra Ra Ra Ra Ra!' from A Christmas Story. It was a wonderful non-traditional Christmas Eve dinner. Sometimes it is fun to mix it up a bit!