24 hours of christmas

Since I wrote about Thanksgiving, I feel I need to write about Christmas as well- partially for holiday closure; partially because Christmas eats kicked Thanksgiving's golden brown ass.

Our scene begins Christmas Eve after us 4 family members have survived, with various degrees of scarring, through 5 o'clock mass at Catholic church. Our dinner was scheduled to be kind of a tapas thing. My contribution to this menu was Rye Brot- the thing where you hollow out a round loaf of rye and put that sour cream dip in it. I wasn't able to obtain rye but pumpernickel served as a fine replacement. We were also without some other ingredients but luckily hearty pumpernickel + sour cream is a pretty fool proof start even if you're missing some seasonings. Other menu items were:

-Cheese (good cheese from the public market) and crackers
-Shrimp cocktail (again, wicked good shrimp from my mom's fish guy at the public market plus homemade cocktail sauce)
-Stuffed mushrooms
-Pigs in a blanket- mostly for my nephew's benefit. My parents would want you to know that the cocktail weiners came from Aldi. Apparently they've done a decent amount of research about where to get the cheapest/best cocktail weiners.
-Pickled herring. Although always present at Christmas in this household, this was the first time I tried it, not being able to resist a dare from a 5 year old. It basically tasted like a pickle but the texture of fish. Odd but I could grow to like it.
-Oplatek- this is pretty much exaclty the same thing as a Communion wafer. Not really part of the meal, but a Polish tradition with wishing and whatnot. If it hasn't died out by the time we live in our mansion, I'll bring some. Nephew calls it "the holy cracker".

We enjoyed our apps with gin & Fresca as the default cocktail of the evening, since somebody, not me, neglected to buy tonic water.

Christmas morning, after an early start and a couple of delicious cups of Dunkin' Donuts coffee, we started drinking mimosas around 9 o'clock once present opening started to dwindle. Mimosas were my contribution. I added raspberries for a festive touch. For breakfast, we had the most amazing quiche ever. My mother made it, of course, and I don't know what she did to make it so great. It was Swiss cheese and bacon (is that Quiche Lorraine?). The main part was so creamy and custardy and the Swiss was perfectly blended throughout the egg part. The bacon was used as a top crust. It was pretty freakin' amazing.

Although we had a bit of a wait between late breakfast (at 12 noon) and dinner, the smells of boef bourgignon being created wafted throughout the house for the whole afternoon. This is a bit like watching the preview to a movie you are dying to see over and over for a couple of hours. Maybe a better food analogy for us would be getting a whiff of Roma's every 5-10 minutes for 3 hours leading up to ordering your sandwich. In short, it's great because you know you are going to get to eat that smell soon and it is going to be awesome.

We had agreed that if your making BB, you don't need much else. But I had suggested a salad beforehand just because our main meal didn't include green veg and doesn't lend itself to side dishes. Well, my mother made the best salad in the history of the earth- lovely hydroponic greens (again, Rochester Public Market voted best in the nation), lovely goat cheese (guess where she got it), perfectly cooked beets, and her homemade balsamic vinigriette that is what I imagine crack would taste like if it were a salad dressing.

The main dish was spectacular. If you've never had boef bourgignon, which I am probably spelling wrong and am not going to take the time to look up right now, you really have to make it. Get together with a group and each contribute ingredients, because it's expensive, and drink while you make it, because it takes a long time to cook. It will be worth it. For this particular BB, our hostess again forgot a couple of ingredients- mushrooms and pearl onions, which we did without; tomato paste, for which she substituted some Canadian sauce (does anybody else know what this is?) It still turned out amazing and life changing even with the improv.

I think BB is pretty much beyond description. Well, I guess you could describe it as "beef stew", but that doesn't do it justice. Use Julia's recipe. I have it if you need it.

Finally, after doing a couple of Mad Libs in order to digest the rich meal, we dug into dessert. Dessert was simple, and awesome, and satisfying....and my idea. Hot fudge sundaes, bitches! Haagen Daas Vanilla Bean ice cream, Wegmans Triple Hot Fudge (come to the Roc to experience...it would be worth the trip), whipped cream, and a mini candy cane garnish. I had actually thought orignally of a mint ice cream, but the vanilla really worked best as the chosen hot fudge was so rich (I did the needed testing well beforehand). The candy cane added a slight bit of mint for those who wanted it. I must confess it was a huge hit- obviously the 5 year old in our group thought it was the bomb, but the adults enjoyed the cool vanilla chaser after the rich hot meal.

So, that was our 24 hours of Christmas eating. Even though He can magically multiply fish and conjure up wine, Jesus Himself could not have planned a better birthday dinner!