Christmas Day 2017 - Merry Kiltmas

Monday, December 25, 2017

I wore my kilt for Christmas Day dinner.

So nice to spend the day with Mom and Day.

Mom brought over chocolate covered cherries which were always Dad's favorites.

Christmas Day 2017 - Beef

Monday, December 25, 2017

Dale decided he wanted to make Julia Child's beef bourginon recipe for Christmas dinner. I helped and was more involved in the production I think since the first time we made it years ago.

To start, my job was to slice the onion.

Dale got the meat dried off with paper towels.

I also took care of getting the carrots sliced. The recipe calls for one carrot. We had baby carrots so I used about 7 of them and sliced them into quarter rounds.

Dale got the stove set up.

I cut six (they're doubled up in the photo) good sized slices of bacon into thirds.

Dale had the brilliant idea of each of us frying the  bacon off at the same time. I used the skillet and he used the casserole. 

Then we did the same thing with the meat, searing it on all sides. I'm surprised one of us hadn't thought of this before since it made it go twice as fast.

We then fried the vegetables and then added the bacon and the beef and put it in the oven for about 4 minutes, took it out and tossed it, and then put it back in for 4 more minutes.

When it came back out we added garlic,

thyme,

the wine,

chicken stock,

and about a tablespoon+ of tomato paste,

brought it to a simmer and then put it in the oven for about 2 and a 1/2 hours.

As it got closer to the time to take it out, Dale fried off the mushrooms.

When it came out of the oven,

we drained off the broth,

put what was left back in the casserole,

and added the fried off mushrooms to the casserole.

Dale needed to boil down the approximately 3 and a 1/2 cups of broth we had down to 2 and a 1/2 cups. He said it probably started out as 5 and a 1/2 cups when we put  the whole casserole in the oven and reduced to  the 3 and a 1/2 we had when we took it out.

After the broth was reduced, Dale skimmed off the fat although there wasn't much since the beef was pretty lean to begin with. We added the broth back to the casserole and waited for it to rest a bit. The smell was insanely divine.

Mom came over for Christmas dinner. She got here at 3:00 p.m. and we watched The Bishop's Wife serving appetizers of smoked gouda, pears, and crackers. 

We ate around 5 p.m. with the beef over egg noodles. Dale made brussels sprouts in the oven. Pumpkin pie for dessert.

Christmas Day 2017 - Wake Up!!

Monday, December 25, 2017

Christmas 2016 - Christmas Morning and Merry Kiltmas!

Sunday December 25, 2016

Dale was awake when I got up. We had a quiet Christmas morning of coffee and reading. 

Last night, on Christmas Eve, I began a ghost story titled One Who Saw by A.M. Burrage. It was atmospheric and creepy to say the least. I've taken an interest in ghost stories for Christmas over the past couple of years beginning when we started telling personal ones at Noel's annual holiday fete a couple years ago.  

And by the way, Merry Kiltmas!

Christmas Morning 2015

From Dale's blog:

"So this is Christmas at our house right now.  My present happens to be sitting next to the tree in a Santa hat.

We were listening this morning to this Annie Lennox album.  Her versions of these songs may be the best renditions of well-known Christmas carols I’ve ever heard.  She makes all the songs fresh and interesting.

Finally, I am laughing in the second picture because Joe is singing along to some silly song and has no idea (I think) that I was taking this picture of both of us."

"We’ll have our very non-traditional Christmas celebration later this afternoon with Christmas lasagna, stir fried green beans, tons of garlic bread, and an “IT Crowd” marathon (or at least half-marathon), I hope.  Funniest damned British comedy I’ve ever seen … and I’ve seen quite a few.

I hope you got everything you wanted for Christmas!"

Christmas Day 2015

The rest of the day turned out to be quite lovely. Mom and Lynn came over around 3:00 p.m. While Dale entertained them I made a lasagna. Our friend Mark from choir joined us shortly before eating at 5:00 and a lovely time was had by all. Mark was a big hit with Mom and Lynn. After dinner we watched our own mini-marathon of IT Crowd episodes.

Didn't see the moon tonight as it was overcast so I'm glad we had a chance to see it last night. Visible or not, I was aware of its presence. We'll have to wait 19 years for it to occur on Christmas Day again...

Christmas Day 2013 - Christmas Day Dinner with Mom

Mom came over at about 3:30 p.m. and we ate around 5. In addition to the beef bourguignon we had a sald of field greens with grape tomatoes, walnuts, feta cheese, and Annie's mango poppyseed dressing. Dale did some oven baked Brussels sprouts. For dessert we had a lovely chocolate cake from Kowalski's. 

Christmas Day 2013 - Chef Dale

Dale and I had originally planned to make Julia Child's beef bourginoine recipe for this year's Christmas Day dinner. That would have meant spending a good chunk of Christmas Eve day preparing it and with having to sing for two Christmas Eve services we decided that there wouldn't be quite enough time without making the day overly stressful. Instead we combined the bourginoin recipe with out crock pot beef stroganoff recipe which cut the total prep and cooking time by more than half.

Christmas Day 2012 - Joe, Dale, and Mom

Dale and I stopped by the house of our friend and neighbor Warren on Christmas morning.  He hosted a light breakfast and we were able to meet his delightful parents.  After that we enjoyed a very relaxing afternoon.  It was very cold outside but the sun was shining brightly and it was lovely having snow on Christmas.  Last year was a brown Christmas - the first in about six years.  In the evening Mom came to dinner.  We served beef stroganoff.  Pete and Stephanie texted us to wish us a Merry Christmas.  The above photo is what we texted back to them along with a Christmas greeting.  What a beautiful Christmas it turned out to be. 

Christmas Day 2012 - Joe, Athena, and Dale

Christmas Day 2012 - Mom and Joe

Christmas Day 2012 - Mom and Dale