What we ate for Christmas - Christmas morning

Christmas morning is one of my favourite mornings of the year. After the presents have been opened and everybody is basking in the glow of new toys, books and other diversions, I make pancakes for the kids and David puts on a pot of coffee. As much as I like making pancakes for the kiddos each December 25th they aren't my idea of the perfect Christmas morning breakfast. Last year I bought a stollen for the grown-ups but this year I really wanted something home-made. (Christmas morning seems to demand home-made.) While flipping through recipe books and scouring the Internet in the weeks leading up to Christmas I toyed with the idea of making stollen myself but something nagged at me that this wasn't the satisfying Christmas breakfast I was seeking. Then I found it. Or rather, we found it, as I had roped David into my quest: yeasted coffee cake with sweet cream cheese filling. Yes please!

Beef Tenderloin Mini Sandwiches Appetizer

I am very behind in documenting all of my kitchen capers. We are now all fully back to reality, i.e. back to school and work which has taken some adjustment after an extended hiatus from 'normal'. Plus I keep coming up with ways to keep myself busy. For example last week I decided I *must* re-paint all of the wood work on our main floor. This stems from having laid a new cork floor in our library/dining room just before Christmas. One home improvement project seems to lead to another which leads to another... So this weekend I have caulked and cleaned and painted along with cooked.

I still have a few blog-worthy food items from 2011 to share before moving on to 2012. One of the last new dishes I tried in 2011 were these awesome beef tenderloin mini sandwiches:

What we ate for Christmas - cookies

The boys love decorating a gingerbread house at Christmas but I, for all of my culinary aspirations and experiments, do not. I find it a fussy, unpleasant task that fills me with rage. Last year when I found myself getting out the glue gun in an effort to make our darn gingerbread house stay together (after four kinds of icing failed) I vowed never again. I felt bad banning the gingerbread house from our Christmas repertoire but not for long since my proposal to make gingerbread cookies instead - shaped ones that we can decorate and actually eat - went over very well. We never ate our gingerbread house creations (particularly those that I stuck together with toxic glue, obviously) so I wanted a recipe that would make some good looking and good tasting cookies. I turned to my trusty Joy of Cooking for this particular task knowing that on page 828 is a simple recipe for Gingerbread People that delivers both great looking and great tasting treats.

Can't Stop Making Soup!

Blame it on the snow. When the snowflakes begin dancing down from the sky my immediate reaction is to throw open the fridge and see what I have that can be turned into soup. After the excesses of Christmas and New Year's I knew I would find some potential soup ingredients lingering in my crisper drawer. What I found: a huge bulb of fennel that I had needed only sparingly for my ill-fated Chestnut Soup adventure and a bag of carrots. Quick as I could Google 'carrot and fennel soup' I wound up at One Perfect Bite.