23 thoughts on “December 20, 2021: Festive Foods”

  2. Food-wise, our Christmas is planned out thusly:
    Eve: lots of small plates (so not-fancy that we're calling them "appetizers" instead of something like "tapas") (breaking out the fondue pot is the fanciest we'll get there, and that's just chocolate).
    Morn: brunch with pancakes, hashbrowns, sausage, etc.
    Sunday: one of the 5 turkeys our family won at turkey bingo.

  3. Last night, the jalapeno and I made toffee, which turned out really well. I love making candy because it feels a bit like magic! (Plus, there's thrilling possibility of getting burned by 300-degree sugar!)

    I've made 3 kinds of cookies so far and want to make 3-4 more so we can bring cookie plates to friends and neighbors on Christmas Eve. For the family Christmas celebration, I'm making this chocolate tart, which is dead simple and always a hit.

  4. I grew up with a TON of different Scandinavian Christmas treats, but we've always been a fan of Sandbakkels (which my Swedish cousins corrected for me; now I call them Mandelmusslor). My mother gave Runner daughter a set of forms several years ago, so we are sure to make some every year. Unfortunately, only one of our cookies broke, so we had to share it, otherwise the rest are packed away to take to Christmas Eve get-together (along with the homemade ice cream).

  5. Yesterday the Poissonnière and I made sumac shortbread cookies. I followed those up with a double batch molasses cookies, which are my favorite cool weather cookie. A quart bag of each is set aside for the letter carrier. Last week the local whole animal butcher tipped me off that they would smoke a mess of loukaniko, so I made a point of swinging by Friday to get a bunch fresh out of the smoker, which I roasted last night. Intense, deeply satisfying flavor that was happily light on fennel. No plans as yet for Christmas; this will be the second year without Christmas Eve/Day gatherings with my family.

  6. So far Mrs. Twayn has made Chex party mix, maple walnut fudge, whiskey glazed cashews, spiced rum pecan pie balls, and peanut butter cookies (no-flour recipe, dipped in chocolate). She's got dough in the fridge for snickerdoodles and chocolate crinkle cookies. For Christmas Eve we'll do appetizers in the ultra lounge - meatballs, chicken wings, shrimp, charcuterie and crudités. Christmas morning we'll do a big breakfast with scrambled eggs (obligatory peppers and onions), sausage, bacon, hash browns, croissants, cinnamon rolls, coffee and mimosas. For Christmas dinner we're doing Mrs. Maisel's brisket (chili sauce and cranberry jelly), twice-baked potatoes, salad, rolls, green bean casserole (skipped at Thanksgiving), and two pies for dessert, pecan and lemon supreme.

    1. So much of that sounds so good.

      We've baked 4 types of cookies so far (my mom's nutmeg-lemon sugar cookies, gingerbread, peanut clusters, and little snowman pretzel things). One of the things I'm finding difficult is that two flavors still affected by parsomia (covid side-effect) are peanut butter and mint. So anything with either tastes terrible, which it turns out is a wide number of Christmas cookies. Sigh.

      1. Peanut butter I could honestly live without if I had to, but mint is about my favorite flavor family.

  7. I drove an hour and a half into the swamp yesterday to collect a 9 lbs skin on pork shoulder to make Pernil for Xmas Eve. I’ll likely make myself sick on the cracklin.

    1. Right? One mitigating factor for me is a dislike of sweets. There's still plenty of other minefields throughout the holidays, but that cuts them in half at least.

    2. I just came off all my diabetes meds and this CoC might make me have to go right back on them.

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