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I'm 60-something, so I can't crank stuff out like I did in my 40s (see my back-in-the-day foodblog), but you're right... it's hard on the back unless you're really, really careful about matching the height of your work surface to the height of your chair (or your standing height, as the case may be). In this case I was mostly using small parchment cornets, rather than a piping bag. The ones requiring a solid fill I just dipped, rather than piping and then flooding with the royal icing, because although the result isn't as professional-looking it's a whole lot faster. The fun bit is doing the Christmas trees, dotting them with "decorations" in different colors. When I make my cornets for the higher-volume piping (like the blue decorations on the sugar-cookie snowflakes, or the white ones on the gingerbread cookies), there's always a strip of parchment left over at the end. I use those to make smaller cones for the little "detail stuff" like this. I do one color at a time, starting with blue because I make lots of that for the snowflakes, and then finish up with small bits of yellow and red that I mix up on the fly. I just try to mix 'em all up randomly, so each tree is different. Occasionally I see specialized, themed "quins" for decorating cakes and cookies, and maybe one day I'll find some that would work as miniature decorations. I did find some mini candy-cane quins a couple of years ago, and put them on some of the trees with tweezers, but I didn't have time to do it properly with all of them and multiple kinds of decorations. Now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure I remember seeing yellow star-shaped quins at Bulk Barn (for the Americans, that's a wonderful bulk-store chain* we have up here), so I could maybe give each tree its own star next year. That'd be worth the extra effort, maybe. Last year I did one where all the "decorations" were at the bottom, and told my GF "Little kids decorated that one." *Bulk Barn's site: https://www.bulkbarn.ca/en/Products A young American's reaction to encountering BB during a visit went viral in 2022, and it's still fun: https://www.blogto.com/eat_drink/2022/11/american-tourist-bulk-bar/

It's never too early for a glass of wine--for you, not him 🙃

My husband just suggested that the buns weren’t over toasted, the ham was under sauced. He waits till now to tell me?! Damn.

@chromedome I tried to do the dozens of cookie + decorating thing once and realized how hard it is on my upper back to hold the piping bags steady. Never did it again, you definitely have to have stamina. And I was a much younger person back then and gave up due to the pain of decorated cookies. @Duvel I am in awe of that soup. That reminds me of the old children's story "Stone Soup", at least how I imagined the soup to be at the end of the story. I want to make something like that, just need to find a few dozen or so like minded carnivores to participate. I saw a video of a Calabrian soup, with all the possible pieces of pork on Pasta Grammer youtube channel and have been mildly obsessed with the process and the celebration of these types of soup. I know there's a ton of work and planning but Wow, the payoff looks amazing. Hopefully you enjoyed your own fruits of the labor as much as the guests.

One of Moe's favourite breakfasts whenever we have left over roast beef. In this case it was beef tenderloin leftover from the Chateaubriand served with scrambled eggs and gravy.

We wanted something simple for dinner last night so I made a quick tomato, garlic, basil sauce with Kalamata olives and grilled Italian sausages.

I think it all looks AMAZING. I'd definitely dive into all of that.

@chromedome That is an amazing array of cookies. That's what I call a job well done. Congratulations!

Sorry it has taken me so long to post about this CFM! Christmas week was jam packed and I had a couple of moments of high anxiety, wondering if I’d get it all done. On Tuesday morning, I started with two bone in hams. They were coated in mustard and a homemade rub. I poured a 12 oz bottle of Coke in the bottom of each pan, covered them tightly in foil, and then two hours in the oven at 275. Removed from the oven and covered in a combination of Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce, apricot preserves, and apple cider vinegar, and back in the oven, with the temp raised to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. After the first two hours, as I was preparing to cover them in sauce. I thought they were done, but I was sadly mistaken (misunderstood the internal temp goal of 200 for pulled ham, vs 165 for “done” ham). So much to learn. Later that evening (hours later) it was pullable. Tasted good, too. The pulled ham sandwiches were accompanied by broccoli salad. (Thanks for the suggestion @Shelby!) My recipe calls for raisins, but I subbed with Craisins. Broccoli, bacon, cheddar, red onion, sunflower seeds, Craisins. My husband was turning his nose up at the broccoli salad from the beginning. (He is now a believer.) I made and dressed the broccoli salad on Tuesday for the Wednesday delivery. Before dressing: The dressing was made of mayo, sugar, red wine vinegar, salt, black pepper. Nothing unusual or edgy. I toasted the buns, and you can see that they are a beautiful color. Unfortunately, they were still a little over toasted and the sandwiches didn’t have any give. It made me sad. Maybe the chocolate chip cookies with flaky salt helped. I hope so. [ There was a family and two single guys waiting for food as we unloaded. I apologized for the over toasted buns and one of the single guys insisted he preferred crunchy bread. 😂 That was nice of him. I feel good that we were able to complete and deliver for 11am on Christmas Eve.

That sounds like an amazing soup stock @Duvel And wow, quite the cookie extravaganza @chromedome

This is an extraordinary amount of talent and work! Anyone who is getting these beautiful cookies is a very lucky person! And, yes, WOW. I would so love to dive into a bowl of that soup. You did amazing!

" . . . in place of . . ." malted powder and diastatic malt powder are not the same thing . . . that said, I use it all the time. so 'in place of' I suppose there maybe a difference - per some 'experts' diastatic malt powder gives the same/similar flavor boost, but also helps the yeast do its thing.

@Duvel Wow, just wow!

No pics of Christmas Eve dinner (gumbo) or Christmas Day lunch, but last night was finally a relaxed meal, and it was meatballs (frozen Costco) and baked ricotta, and air fryer roasted broccoli.

@Duvel Very impressive . ' outdoors ' due to various aromas ? did guests have to bring their own chairs ?

Lunch on Christmas day in Catalunya is Escudell i carn d’olla (or soup and meat from the pot). Tradition in my wifes family dictates that every family of the 5 siblings of her parents takes over one festive day, and my parents-in-law have the first Christmas day. So I make soup … The escudella is a two day affair. You boil pigs ears, snouts, skin, beef short rib … Chicken carcasses … Salt bones, beef bones, ham bones … in a gigantic pot outside the house. Two days. The result equals a great ramen stock - salty, umami, a lot of body: it gels once it cools just a timy bit … Veggies … Once the stock is ready, potatoes, cabbage, blood sausage and regular sausages are boiled in it … After that, the pilota - a giant meatball, heavily spiced with garlic and parsley and star of the show - is gently poached. Meanwhile the guests arrive and start with pica pica. I prepared everything, but was too busy to take a picture of the prepared table. It is traditionally enjoyed with red vermouth or beer … Just before service, large pasta shells called galets (“cookies”) stuffed with meat are boiled and the soup is served with them as first course. Wines … Everyone happily slurping away … Second course is a sampler of all the meats, cabbage and potatoes from the pot, served with olive oil and salt. Third course is almost irrelevant, but consists of chicken poached in its own juices together with sweet wine-macerated dried fruits (plums, raisins) and nuts … … followed by a fourth course of stewed apples with savory minced meat filling). The dinner concludes with turrons (assorted sweets probably unchanged since the middle ages), cava (sparkling wine) and brandy. And some whisly for me 🤗 And the kids citing traditional Christmas poems and collecting money from everyone. Little one did well … Total duration was about 5 hours. Definitely no complaints …

Wow!! That's a lot of cookies!!

I'm glad you posted these pictures, reminded me that I have a couple slices vacuum packed in the freezer. They also used to have a store in the Hong Kong airport that I could stock up on passing through. I can recommend the chilli pork as well!

I haven’t heard anything yet. After Purolator returned my order to Goûter, I was told via email that FedEx”s process required them to charge those costs to Goûter and Goûter would let me know so I can pay.

When I was a kid, astronaut ice cream was all the rage...

Provides more nutrients for the little yeasties. Gives a darker, redder crust. Should not affect the flavor.

Yes, thanks! It's a small electric deep fryer, with no temperature adjustment. I'll post photos. I'm rather embarrassed to admit that it's fitting the bill for this purpose. We had set it aside for our cooking and health purposes, and forgotten its existence.

Lovely haul! Any word about tariff fees or customs?

By request, some photos of the cookie binge. First, here's an overview of the spread. ...and some of the decorated cookies. Closeups of a couple of 'em (note the food-colouring stains on the fingers...). Last pic is cookies monogrammed for three grandkids out west (initials S, M, and L, because the yellow icing gooped a bit and they're not entirely as pretty as I'd have liked). Glad to have it all done with for another year; they're all packed up and ready for mailing/hand delivery. For the curious, if you scroll back to the panoramic view, we have (clockwise from top right): snowman sugar cookies, Christmas tree sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies, the three big personalized sugar cookies, some zimmtsternen, vanillekipfeln (not sure of the spelling on that, there may be an 'r' in there somewhere toward the end), a shortbread-ish ball cookie known to us as "Russian tea cakes" but which is also known as "Pecan meltaways" and many other things, linzers with raspberry and apricot filling, the "faux linzers" I spoke of earlier, gingerbread snowflakes and gingerbread people, and finally snowflake sugar cookies. I had tubs with additional quantities of several of these, but this was enough to give you the idea. Not pictured were ginger crinkles, which are much like gingersnaps except soft and chewy (I'd parked those on top of the fridge and forgotten them until after the pics were taken), and chocolate-filled sandwich cookies because I realized while setting up the photo that I hadn't actually made the ganache or filled them yet.