Christmas Eats

Christmas is a magical time.....and that's true for food too.  :)

Christmas Eve was a little low key, with a simple pasta supper.  But we had our tradtional late Christmas Breakfast...a dutch baby!  A dutch baby is essentially an oven pancake, topped with jam, powdered sugar, maply syrup or whatever you like.  I had received a gift of different butters from a friend of mine, so we went with Peach Butter.  Delicious.  :)

Then there were appetizers.....spicy shrimp cocktail and cheese and crackers.  Always good choices. 

Then dinner....oh dinner.  I didn't do too much of the dinner prep this year, Brian really outshone himself in the kitchen!  I prepared the buttered stuffed apples, and he did the rest.  Oh.....and our company helped too.....my cousin and my dad peeled potatoes, my mom put stuff together and so did my aunt.  My mom made a homemade vegetable soup as a starter.  I really like starting Christmas dinner with soup, it just makes it that much more special.  The roast beef came out perfect, with a slightly pink center.  All of the sides were fantastic.  And they all cleaned up after dinner so Preggo Ginny didn't have to do anything except continue to sip her coffee and chat with Auntie Kim!

Then there were lots of unwrapping gifts, followed by dessert.  Chocolate was the main theme, with Kim's brownies and homemade chocolate truffles, my aunt's trifle and a white chocolate and cranberry cheesecake that Mom brought.  By the end of the night if you were hungry it was your own fault.

I'm happy to say that I survived Christmas with gestational diabetes.  I did not feel at all deprived of treats, and my blood sugar numbers, though slightly high, weren't bad at all.  However, now my day of debauchery is over and it's time to start behaving again. 

Now for food-themed Christmas gifts:  I got a new 11 inch frying pan to replace the one that's losing it's nonstick coating.  Brian received Alton Brown's "Good Eats:  Reminiscing the First Six Seasons" book.  It turns out that the jacket cover opens up to a huge movie poster of Alton.....and he wants to frame it and hang it in our kitchen!  We shall see.....Brian also surprised me with a Better Homes and Gardens cookbook called "9x13: The Pan that Can!"  Every single recipe in the book is made in a 9x13 pan, from breakfast to roasts to casseroles and cakes.  That's a pretty neat concept.  I've always liked casseroles but don't have a lot of recipes for them.  So I know what we'll be putting on the menu over the next couple of weeks.  Plus, it wouldn't hurt to have some casseroles for when the baby arrives!

It was a very Merry Christmas in our house, not to mention delicious.  Hope yours was Merry and Delicious, too!