March 12th 2010 is the Mauritian Independance Day Anniversary (42nd Anniversary). We celebrated it in the Bay Area today with a pot luck lunch and gathering of all the Mauritians of the Bay Area.

We had some 40 Mauritians from all over the Bay Area - San Francisco, San Jose, Hayward, Fremont, Sunnyvale etc.. Always great as usual to meet up with all the good friends and share good foods and laughter. This time, we had some pretty good Mauritian Food - Anju and Mrs Rajkoomar had bothed cooked Vegetarian Briani !! That was so delicious and one of the most popular dishes in Mauritius. It's a major pain to prepare due to the extensive preparation stage. It was great to have some of that hard work they put into making it.

We also had the usual Gato Arouille (Grated Taro Cakes) and Achard Legumes from Yvette, Gato Piment from Aruna and multitude of cakes/deserts and other food by everybody else. Had a very wonderful time in good company and this time we had 3 new families that joined the party for the first time ! We finished off by singing the Mauritian National Anthem. Here are some pics of the delicious food and company that we had :)

As usual Caroline organized a dinner to celebrate the New Year for the Mauritian Community in the bay area. We had all voted for Indian Food in the South Bay and we picked Turmeric in Sunnyvale. It was a buffet and had great food. I loved their Goat Curry with bones, Malabar Fish Curry and all the other delicacies. They had so much food, that I did not even try it all out. We had a good turnout - about 30 Mauritians - this time though lots of kids ! It was great catching up with all the Mauritian folks !

Christmas day - I decided to invite a few friendsover for dinner at my place. While a lot of people were out or had other xmas dinner plans, there were still quite a few friends who were able to make it and we had the most wonderful time. Initially I was thinking to do a potluck, but then I decided to cook it all and feed them and rather ask each of them to bring in the drinks and deserts. We started off with chinese dumplings. Chopsticks were pretty handy to eat the communal dumplings. After dumplings, I had a freshly baked quiche with spinach. Following the appetizers, we went on the salad course - we had a nice red leaf lettuce salad made by Kendra. The main courses consisted of Roast Beef and Scalloped potatoes in parmesan and butter made by my housemate and I had cooked Basmati rice with peas and carrots, massaman thai chicken curry with dried peanuts, vegetarian thai red curry and stir fried chayotte. Then the desert course consisted of Upside down pineapple cake cooked by both Priscille and Deepti, Brownies by Brian and Chocolate bark by Deepti again,

After dinner, we had a white elephant gift exchange. It was real fun. We all had brought in a gift that were waiting under the Christmas tree. We took in numbers which determined the order which we picked an unopened gifts. We had a great nice variety of gifts, but I think the best gift though is the one Deepti brought - a yodelling pickle !!! That brought some good laughs :) Then we played lots of nice fun games - lies and truths... Had a great time in the great company of my great friends !

Annie hosted a christmas party at her place on Saturday night. Was great to meet up with all the yahoos and eat the great food that Annie had prepared.

We also had a white elephant gift exchange where I ended up with an atlas of the world that did not have Mauritius listed :)