Christmas Time

Good Times 2011–Part Two

Part One of this recap reminded me of so many fun times this year.  Hard to believe there’s another six months to get through here!

July

• Canada Day – always a festive good time in downtown Victoria.
• Canada Day Fireworks – which ended up being the actual anniversary of my relationship with Michael.  :)
• Bonfire Campout – good times with friends and dogs.

August

• ParmanFest 2011 – a reunion with lovely lifelong friends.
• A daytrip to Salt Spring Island – relaxation with a side of Harley, wine and cheese.
• Epic West Coast Crab Boil – the first of many dinner parties hosted by Michael and I.

September

• Oceanside Camping for two – the post that reminds me I need to win the lottery and buy my own RV. {We ate good too.}
• Great Canadian Beerfest 2011 – I volunteered to drink a lot of beer.
• I left for two glorious weeks in Greece with my BFF!

October

• I took a much needed blogging break.
• Greece Recap – don’t worry I made sure to post plenty of information and photos about my amazing Greek vacation!
  • Athens
  • Mykonos
  • More Mykonos
  • Delos
  • Santorini: Tour Time
  • Santorini: Fira
  • Santorini: Oia
  • Sifnos
  • Athens: Acropolis
  • Athens: Last Day
  • Cats and Dogs
  • The Food

November

• Nada.  Blog breakin’ y’all.

December

• I made my blogging comeback – and you were all thrilled to bits.
• Holiday Feast – Round One & Two – because I’m just crazy enough to cook a big dinner for Michael’s family.
• Holiday Feast – Round Three – because I’m smart enough to stand back when a man is making paella for eight.
• Christmas with my Mom – complete with gifts and good eats.

All that’s left is New Years Eve!  I may just sleep until then…just putting these posts together has exhausted me.  And here I thought I was boring.

Thanks to everyone for an amazing 2011!!  Blog readers and supporters are really what makes this all worthwhile and I can’t thank each of you enough for cheering me on throughout the year. 

Here’s to a great 2012!

Christmas in Collage

This year my family decided not to exchange gifts…except for me and my Mom.  Clearly I like songs, TV and kitchen stuff. :)

My uncle did contribute gifts in the form of reprints of pictures of my Grandparents in honour of my Grandfather who passed away recently.

Grandma and Grandpa got married in 1949.  Love this photo.

Then we spent 457 hours preparing dinner and 4.57 minutes eating it.

Our traditional family Christmas dinner:

• 15lb turkey
• bread and sausage stuffing
• gravy
• the best mashed potatoes in the world (!)
• smashed carrots and rutabega
• Brussels sprouts
• Nana’s Cabbage Salad
• cranberry sauce (from a can…shhhhh!)

Don’t worry.  The pumpkin pie gets in my belly right.now.

Paula Dean came to dinner.

I have two words for you.

Cheese. Ball.

No wait!  Three words.

Epic. Cheese. Ball.

A failsafe way to provide good food at your party is to invite Paula Dean.  If you can’t get her to accept your invitation, the next best thing is to make one of her recipes.  Especially when the recipe involves the cheese trifecta of cream, cheddar and blue.  Oh and bacon.  Never forget the bacon.

This was honestly soooo delicious.  It costs a few extra pennies to make (although in all fairness we landed up with leftover bacon, blue cheese, and pecans and we used the parsley in other dishes) but it comes together fairly easily and everyone truly raved about it.

Even though we served a full ham dinner after this, I sort of feel like this was the show stealer.  But maybe that’s because I was in a delicious cheese haze.

Nutty Bacon Cheese Ball

adapted from Paula Dean

Ingredients:

• 1 package (250 gram) cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 cups old cheddar cheese, shredded
• 1/4 cup blue cheese, crumbled
• 1/4 cup green onions, finely chopped
• 2 tbsp diced pimento, drained (I found a tiny jar in the pickle aisle at my supermarket)
• 3/4 cup pecans, chopped, divided
• 10 slices bacon, cooked, drained, finely crumbled and divided
• Salt and pepper
• 1/4 cup minced parsley
• 1 tablespoon poppy seeds  (I didn’t have any and we didn’t miss them at all.

Directions:

The original recipe says to use a mixer with flat beater but I was working on this at Michael’s and found using a hand mixer with regular beaters worked just fine.

1. Place cream cheese in a bowl and soften with a mixer for about one minute. Stop and scrape bowl. Turn to speed two and gradually add milk, mixing until well blended about one more minute. Stop and scrape bowl. Add cheeses, onions, pimentos, half of the bacon and half the pecans. Turn to speed three and beat until well blended, about another minute. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
2. Transfer mixture to a large piece of plastic wrap. Form into a ball and wrap tightly.  (This is a bit mucky but just get the basic shape and don’t worry about it being perfect or pretty.)
3. Refrigerate (or freeze) at least 2 hours.  If you opt to freeze, remove it approximately 10 minutes before moving on to the next step.
4. Combine the remaining bacon and remaining pecans, parsley and poppy seeds in a shallow dish. Remove the plastic wrap and roll the cheese ball lightly in the bacon/nut mixture until evenly coated. Wrap it back up in plastic wrap and refrigerate again until ready to use or serve right away.
5. Serve with crackers, fresh veggies and apple slices. Prepare to swoon.

* Note:  I found this to be a quite large cheese ball, so divided it up and made one large for the dinner party and a small one for the freezer.

Holiday Feast Side Dishes

Did you see the deeeeeelish, juicy Maple Dijon Glazed Ham?!!  Did you?!  If you didn’t, go look.  Or we can’t be friends anymore. 

Besides…without seeing the main dish, how are any of these side dishes going to do you any good?  Hmmmm.  You know I’m right.  :)

This should be a post about three side dishes, but I’ve deemed the Scalloped Potatoes unworthy of any further discussion.  Except to tell you that if you think parboiling the thinly sliced taters before mixing them with the sauce and baking them sounds like a good idea I’m here to tell you that it’s not.  Food Network recipe FAIL.  The slices all fell apart.

But it’s OK because we rocked the Maple Carrots and Dijon Braised Brussels Sprouts.  Oh yes.

Easy Peasy Maple Glazed Carrots

I read like 500 carrot recipes before deciding that it didn’t need to be rocket science.  Really, as long as they aren’t overcooked you’re golden.

1. Bring chopped carrots to a boil in lightly salted water.  When boiling, reduce to med-high heat and cook at rolling simmer for 7-9 minutes (or more if you have a huge quantity of carrots) until just soft enough to poke with a fork or sharp knife.
2. Turn heat off, drain carrots and return them to the same warm pot over still-warm element to “dry” any remaining water.  Add large pat of butter and drizzle of real maple syrup.  Stir to coat and keep hot.
3. To be a real fancypants, stir in a handful of chopped parsley and sprinkle with cracked pepper right before serving.

For the Dijon-Braised Brussels Sprouts take a trip on over to SmittenKitchen and follow her recipe.  I followed it to the letter and it was a huge hit!  Again, the trick is to make sure your sprouts aren’t over or undercooked.  Totally delicious.

So there you have it.  A holiday meal complete with glazed ham, scalloped potatoes, Brussels Sprouts, and carrots.  We added bakery fresh rolls and hazelnut cheesecake and called it all pretty amazing.  Family dinner WIN.

Me: I’m so shocked I pulled this shiz off!  Woah.

Ridiculously Easy Baked Ham

Dear people, if I can make this crazy delicious baked ham then so can you.  In attempting to add to my “home cooking, classic meal” repertoire I jumped at the chance to make my first ham dinner.  Turns out the side dishes were far more stressful than the main dish!

First, put on your retro apron.  It helps you channel the Mom from Leave it to Beaver, which is always the first step in making a home cooked meal.  :)

Second, don’t let your boyfriend take candid photos of you manhandling a ham.  There are certainly cuter things you could be doing in the kitchen.

Inspired by the Thanksgiving episode of Cake Boss, where he prepares a couple of bigass hams for the bakery staff, I got to hunting for my own recipe on Pinterest.  I liked the ideas from a few of them, so put together a method of my own.  Maple Dijon Glazed Ham.

Ingredients:

• 10-12 pound, bone-in smoked ham (I had a choice between ham butt and ham shoulder…I chose butt)
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup real maple syrup
• 2 tbsp Dijon mustard
• fresh cracked pepper
• 1 can pineapple rings, each sliced in half

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 275 degrees.  Place ham in large roasting pan cut side down, and wrap pan tightly with aluminum foil.  Cook ham for approximately 2.5 to 3 hours (depending on the size of your ham…approximately 15 minutes per pound) to heat through.
2. In the meantime, make the glaze by heating the syrup, sugar, Dijon and pepper in a small saucepan over medium heat.  Whisking to combine and simmering a few minutes to thicken.
3. About 30-40 minutes before you are ready to serve remove the ham from the oven and remove the foil.  Baste the ham with the amazing juices in the pan.  Attach pineapple slices with toothpicks, and brush the entire ham liberally with the maple glaze.
4. Return the uncovered ham to the oven for 30 minutes.  Baste and add more glaze every 10 minutes.  Right before removing from oven turn on the broiler to brown the pineapple for a few minutes.
5. Remove from oven, baste again, and let stand for 5-10 minutes before cutting.  We pulled the pineapple off to serve alongside, and also drizzled the sliced ham with leftover warm glaze.

*no Whiskey was harmed used in the cooking of this ham.

This was sooooo moist and delicious if I do say so myself.  Once I saw how great it turned out I completely stopped worrying about the shitty potatoes and loaded up on an extra ham slice or two.

A little applesauce and extra Dijon on the side made my plate happy.  And the pile of leftovers for pea soup doesn’t hurt either.

Now, who has that soup recipe for me?

Holiday Feast Madness

So Friday night we put on our fancy new Christmas clothes, sipped on some bubbly, then let the lovely people at The Fairmont Empress feed us dinner. 

Michael’s company holiday party treated us to a delicious meal complete with favourites such as turkey and stuffing, but also roast beast and to-die-for blue cheese cannelloni (!!) that I may have to replicate sometime, if only to swim in the sauce.

Good thing my new party dress is stretchy.  Holiday Feast Round One Success!

After snoozing in our glorious hotel king-sized bed and making friends with the resident seagull (Michael fed him chocolates!) we grabbed some quick brunch and then made our way home to start preparing Round Two of our Holiday Feast Madness.

Round Two involved a bigass ham dinner for Michael’s siblings and significants.  I’ve never made a dinner for eight for my own family, but sure!  Why not do it for his?!  Yes, I like to torture myself.

After a minor meltdown involving a scalloped potato recipe that failed me, we pulled it off!  *Ham, Brussels, carrots, and “potato casserole” for eight.  Who cares about the lame potatoes when you have a delicious ham the size of your head?  And wine…lots of wine.  :)

Holiday Feast Spiderman says Round Two Success!

* recipes coming soon to a blog near you.