Shelby

Happy New Year's Eve! Working on eating up veggies that needed to be eaten before I (hopefully) get my Misfits box today. Made a broccoli salad--lightly blanched broccoli with a lemon juice/olive oil/red wine vinegar mix and some onions. Not too bad...needed something though. Maybe a sprinkle of grated parm would have livened it up. Venison meat sauce spaghetti to go with. Reheated the last of the prime rib using sous vide --had that with leftover mashed potatoes and bok choy

@Kim ShookYour holidays always look so warm and perfect!!! Your tree is gorgeous and love your blue wine glasses.

Ronnie got me the 8 quart Instant Pot Duo Evo Plus for Christmas. It's sure pretty and BIG. Has anyone discussed using the sous vide setting or the bake setting? I did a quick search and couldn't find anything. I used the sous vide setting yesterday to do some chicken. I was skeptical because the water doesn't circulate...ok, maybe I should use the word nervous instead of skeptical. I was going to fry the chicken anyway after the sous vide so I was hoping I didn't make us sick or kill us (it's all good we had no ill effects and the chicken was great lol). I tested the water temp several times with my thermapen and it was always 2 degrees under what I had set it for.....I don't know if it's my pens fault or the IP. Anyway, I'd love to know if others have tried these different settings and what you think.

Night before last we had another Caesar salad with the rest of the cioppino Eggnog for dessert Last night I sous vide and then fried chicken along with Yukon gold mashed potatoes

Yeah some folks consider Mac and cheese a vegetable.

It's a southern thing down here....I don't make it all the time, but @kayb's family would revolt if she didn't 🤣

Prime rib for Christmas dinner...pictured with a bottle of wine that I was gifted for a very special occasion, that I saved for a special occasion Brussels sprouts with chestnuts in heavy cream With lobster Mac and cheese and stewed tomatoes Dessert was Italian rum cake

Ronnie said "Ok, you have your two smaller ones and now this one....is this enough????" 🤣

Merry Christmas!!!! I just semi-finished putzing around and getting the kitchen cleaned up and some gifts put away. I was a better girl than I thought I was this year lol. Christmas Eve dinner was SO good. I kind of felt guilty about ordering the cioppino, but I got over it quickly....the amount of seafood included was AMAZING and so good. I served it over a bit of linguine along with Wellfleet oysters, Caesar salad (which included two anchovies which counts towards the seven fishes) and sourdough bread. I have thought about @ChocoMom's apple snickers dessert since she very first posted it. I happened to have granny apples and cool whip so I ordered some Snicker's bars from Amazon and made. O M G. We devoured it. I even got up in the middle of the night and ate some...which resulted in having to brush my teeth again, but it was worth it. I had another glass of wine while looking at the tree for a while This morning we had the kolaches I ordered. I had been wanting these for a very long time. The sweet ones are blueberry and cherry and the savory are sausage, cheese and jalapeño. The sausage is really good. It's links. No gristle. Spicy. Mimosas Eggs, hash browns and boudin to go with. I'm ready for a nap lol. BUT it's almost time to start on dinner

I'm soooo jealous--not only of this, but of everything. I am CRAVING shrimp cocktail. Ronnie's brother and his wife gave us homemade horseradish from their garden and I really wanted to make cocktail sauce out of it to go with that tonight but I'm out of shrimp. I thought I was, but sometimes a miracle happens and I find some that are buried in the freezer. Not this time. I will live vicariously through yours.

Just so you can track Santa--who is wearing a mask.... https://www.noradsanta.org

Yeah, they are considered a big pain in the butt around here too. They congregate in huge amounts and pick the seeds out of the fields...farmers hate them. And in the city they poo allllll over the sidewalks. Ick.

The young ones are tender...dark meat. Very good. He doesn't shoot many other kinds of geese. Teal are my favorite ducks...the goose meat is darker than those. The old Canadian geese are not my favorite. Tough tough tough. Those I roast and then pressure cook and use in goose and noodles.

Merry Christmas Eve everyone! Ronnie got 3 young Canadian geese a few days ago, so I had him pluck and brine them. I vac packed two of them and dropped them off on my friends (my cleaning angel) porch. She, her husband and two young ones love ducks and geese. Anyway, I saved one for us and roasted it. Last night was chicken enchiladas, stuffed peppers and RG beans

@Ann_TWhen you get a chance, I'd love to see the Chile sauce recipe.

I couldn't have...that is a good price! Last week the ones I saw were almost $8 a pound.

Quail have been very scarce around here for a lot of years, but Ronnie went hunting and was able to get three--a perfect meal for us. Did them in the CSO with mushroom risotto and stewed tomatoes to go with. My mom started a tradition years ago that we have soup for the first day of winter, so I follow in her footsteps. I bought myself some cute Christmas bowls and we had lasagna soup last night.

Sorry, yes. Black eyed peas. I'm thinking I'll make Texas Caviar with them this year.

I should finally chime in here. Like Thanksgiving, I'm honestly happy for it to be just the two of us. Holiday gatherings stress me out--it's not them, it's me. I have a few more gifts to drop off on porches which I will do early next week and then I'm done (I think). The rest of the days can be spent doing nothing but cooking and watching Christmas movies and just letting my brain settle down and enjoy. Christmas Eve will be cioppino that I ordered (yes more splurges but I don't care this year lol). I am pretty sure I'll have to doctor it up a bit with some of my canned tomatoes ...maybe some broth. I've always wanted to eat like the Italians do with the 7 fishes (is that right? 7?) meal so this is my homage. Bread to sop up with....oysters that I've saved in the freezer. For Christmas Day breakfast/brunch I ordered Kolaches. Major throw back from when we lived up in the mountains and my mom worked at the bakery. I ordered both savory and sweet. I've been craving them for a long time. Will make scrambled eggs to go with (some of the kolaches are sausage). Christmas night I have a prime rib aging in the fridge. Truffle Mac and cheese to go with and some kind of veg...or maybe more a splurge with potatoes too. Have to figure that out. I also have an Italian rum cake coming. Delayed because of the snow so we will see if it gets here. NYE will be our 21st anniversary. I got sick sick sick last year on our 20th and I'm still having residual effects (Covid? had relatives that flew in from Florida so ..I'll never know). I pray this year I can actually enjoy NYE and NYD. NYE Ronnie wants to recreate what we made for our wedding night (my mom, stepdad and us made all the food). Fried fish and Mac and cheese. NYD will have all the lucky foods I can think of--for GOODNESS SAKE EVERYONE EAT ALL OF THE LUCKY FOODS!!!! Ham, some kind of BEP dish--maybe cowboy caviar. Greens etc.

Sure! They are easy--I like easy dessert recipes lol. My house is usually around 60F so I lay the butter and cream cheese out before I go to bed. I thought I had red sanding sugar but I only had white and green. Regular sugar gets lost --you really want sanding sugar. Christmas Cookie Sparkles

Got my cookies baked yesterday. Nothing super exciting, just my usuals. I just couldn't find any new recipes that called out to. me this year. I was feeling like making fudge but I'm sure I don't have the ingredients for that and I'm not going to the store. Soft ginger, sprinkles and thumbprint. Gave a good bunch to my UPS man, some went in the freezer and a few are out for us to eat.

Got my Misfit box just now. Really impressed with the freshness. Herbs look really good. Red Grape Tomatoes Valencia Oranges Bunched Broccoli Green Bell Peppers Napa Cabbage Lemons Anaheim Peppers Red D'anjou Pears Red Onions Curly Leaf Parsley Red Butterhead Lettuce Yukon Potatoes Cilantro English Seedless Cucumber Then I added on : sprouts, shelf stable milk and the bok choy

Yesterday I made a double batch of the Chef Mix from pg. 221. REALLY good and easy too. I didn't have exactly the ingredients that she used, but it still worked. I did a cup of Chex, a cup of Cheeze It's, a cup of Cheerio's, a cup of mixed nuts, a cup of saltines and a cup of Gardetto's Garlic Rye Chips (highly recommend adding these). I'll give a batch of this plus some of the Christmas cookies I'm going to bake in a bit to our wonderful UPS man.

Roasted chicken I found shishito peppers yesterday!!! Sandwiches to go with.