Christmas 2025

[Shelby]

46 minutes ago, patti said:

 

 

Shelby, your food speaks to me. (“Eat me!”) Your chocolate crinkle cookies have so much more crinkle than my lemon crinkles, and your broccoli salad looks better than mine, too. It all looks stellar, and damn, that was some work!

 

And @chromedome, the people in your life who receive those beautiful treats are very lucky, indeed. I was going to proudly display my cookie tray, but hahahahahahaha, joke’s on me. 😜 Not that we’re in competition. 😍 So I will humbly display my cookie tray. 

 

 

From left: salted vanilla toffee cookies, dark chocolate cranberry oatmeal with walnuts, dark chocolate dipped peanut butter, chocolate chip with flaky salt, lemon crinkle cookies. 

Are you kidding me?  Your cookies look amazing, too!  SO much work.  I love the dipped peanut butters.  

[blue_dolphin]

I have no cookie displays to share nor did I perform any epic multi day cooking extravaganzas but I’m posting what little I did.  

The main spread was with my cousins on Christmas Eve.  Turkey, ham and beef tenderloin were the mains. There are always Swedish meatballs and lefse, which I commented on over in the lefse topic. My contributions were roast delicata squash tossed with a sesame-ginger dressing.  Quick and easy since I had the dressing already mixed up. 

 

And the autumn chicory salad with persimmons, Gorgonzola and pecans with house dressing from Samin Nosrat’s Good Things.  I’m posting this photo mostly because it was a quick iPhone snap taken on the kitchen counter, well after dark and I’m ever so jealous of my cousin’s kitchen lighting as it looks nicely lit without me needing to adjust it!

 

I also contributed a huge pan of Anna Banana’s ‘Nanner Pudding that I picked up from ZEF BBQ. No photo as it just looks like a catering pan of whipped cream but it is very good and has become a tradition so I’m now stuck bringing it. 
To make the ZEF pick-up worthwhile, I treated myself to a pit smoked, Peking-style duck and some nice pastrami to play with here at home. 
 

In between dinner and dessert, there was a visit from Santa, who brought a gift for each of the little ones.  There was much yelling and squealing going on, even before the sugary stuff was put out.  At one point, a high-decibel warning popped up on my Apple Watch advising me that 15 more minutes of this would result in temporary hearing loss!  
 

I enjoyed a very quiet Christmas morning here with the cats! 

[Shelby]

21 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:

result in temporary hearing loss!  

🤣

 

As an only child that gets overwhelmed when more than three people are in the room,  I would need a lot of wine lol or something stronger