The recipe for Peruvian Christmas Turkey according to Michael's aunt Mari:
1 turkey
1 bottle of white wine
as much of "ajinomoto"/monosodium glutamate as you can dissolve in the white wine
secret condiments (probably chili and pepper)
To deserve to parttake in the feast, you needed to go to Mari's house between say, 8.30 and 10.30 pm on Christmas eve and make conversation while drinking some beer. Certain relatives had started rather early on the beer, and were very cheerful indeed when we arrived. The red rubber grapes glowed in the Christmas tree, and everyone kept checking their watches. Tempting smells emanated from the kitchen area. By the way, I still cannot get used to the way that houses here lack proper doors or walls for that matter in certain areas - you walk through the house and suddenly you find yourself looking up at the sky! It hardly ever rains, and when it does, not for long, so people often have half the kitchen outside in a courtyard, or on the roof terrace.
That said, I have already been woken up twice at night by the sound that passing cars only make in the street if the street is wet.
Back to the party: at midnight, we all sprang to our feet and wished each other Feliz Navidad with kisses on the cheek - the living room looked a bit like musical chairs for two minutes or so.
We then toasted with sickeningly sweet sparkling wine (just the way I like it) in an assortment of glasses. After that, we sat down around the table and stuffed ourselves with the abovementioned turkey, pea and carrot salad, rice and grilled camote. Dessert was Paneton, which is brioche-like cake with raisins and candied fruit, and Lussekatter, mine and Michael's contribution.
As is the case with most Christmas dinners, we were barely able to navigate back to the sofa after the meal, let alone stagger home and up the five flights of stairs a little while later... we had to stop half way and snigger at our dear neighbours' utterly tasteless Christmas decorations (one of which consists of dressing the already terrible combination of garden gnome and Virgin Mary in holly leaves and such).
On Christmas day, I was actually working in the morning (nothing like a bit of Norwegian mechanical engineering to get you started). Then in the afternoon, Michael called and asked me to come and have ice cream with Adriana, his first-born. I was very nervous, but it went really well. We teamed up against Michael and ate the cherries on the huge ice cream cup that we got, and that was that. She is really sweet and can't stop scratching her flea bites, just like me.
In the evening, I finally got round to making some sort of mulled wine concoction with sweet red wine (never ever have I been in a country where the red wine is so sweet), oranges, cloves and cinnamon. It turned out nicely, and the Christmas spirit settled in the living room/kitchen area, with the light string in the cactus glimmering away on the balcony.
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