For the first time in years we celebrated Christmas at home. It was great to cook budni vecher, a tradition we started in Haarlem many years ago. It's a Bulgarian Christmas Eve dinner, made without any animals products like meat, milk or butter.

The main dishes we had were stuffed grape and cabbage leaves, various beans and a home made bread. The latter with a coin for luck, which fell to Sasha. Dessert was baklava from a Turkish store in Chapel Hill.

It was delicious and a lot of fun to prepare together.

Yesterday was an easy and relaxing day. This morning we woke up to a snowy world, around 4 to 5 inches of snow.

Making the surmichki.

Cooking them.

Budni vecher table.

Yours truly.

Baklava.