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.

Spicy Roasted Sweet Potato and Carrot Soup

Just before Christmas I made this amazing soup. I quite liked it despite the 'spicy' part. Normally I'm not so in to spicy. But this soup had enough sweet (from the potato and carrot) to win me over. At the time I thought it was very good and would be even better on a cold, snowy evening with some homemade biscuits. It snowed quite a bit today so tomorrow I plan on following through and making both soup and biscuits for a cozy lunch. This soup is easy - peel your veggies, toss them in olive oil and spices (red pepper flakes, paprika, cumin and ginger) and roast in the oven. Throw the roasted veggies into a blender with some chicken broth and milk (the original recipe calls for half and half) whiz it all together and enjoy.

spicy roasted sweet potato and carrot soup with ginger from sisters running the kitchen

4 carrots, peeled & cubed
2 sweet potatoes, cubed
Olive Oil
1/2 teaspoon of red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon paprika
2 teaspoons cumin
1 1/2 Tablespoons roughly chopped fresh ginger (I substituted 1/4 tsp dried)
1 1/4 cups Half-and-Half (I substituted an equal amount of 1% milk)
4 cups of chicken broth



Preheat the oven to 425F.  Chop the sweet potatoes and carrots into equal sizes.  Combine sweet potatoes, carrots, olive oil, red pepper flakes, cumin, paprika, and ginger on a baking sheet. Roast in single layer for about 40 minutes.

Add roasted veggies to large pot.  Add chicken broth, half-and-half, [ and chopped fresh ginger, if you didn't use dried].  Using an immersion blender, puree the soup until smooth.  If you do not have an immersion blender, then use a regular blender or food processor.  Reheat the soup slowly and serve.

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...

...sounds so inviting. However Jack Frost is not likely to be nipping at my nose this Christmas. Twill be a green Christmas around these parts. Which is really bumming out the kids. The adults, not so much. Kids don't have to worry about long commutes or rising heat costs. Where was I? Chestnuts roasting...right.

It might be my own reaction to a green Christmas, my recent obsession with roasting chestnuts. I bought a huge bag of chestnuts a couple of weeks ago and decided I was going to make chestnut soup. I found a recipe in The Essential New York Times Cookbook that sounded quick and easy, so I filed away 'make chestnut soup' on my to-do list for Christmas Eve day. As it turns out, I got to make chestnut soup the day before Christmas Eve. We all decided to take Friday off - from work, from school - from the hustle and bustle of the mall and the grocery store. And we all did whatever we wanted Friday. Wore our pajamas until 2:00 in the afternoon. Read every word of the newspaper. Made a huge mess of the kitchen making chestnut soup.

Caramel Corn

Our house smelled like a carnival on a Saturday night. Not the dodgy area of a carnival where the gas generators are belching out smoke to keep the Tilt-A-Whirl going and you find row upon row of Port-A-Pottys. And certainly not the part where you can hitch a ride on a pony or pet a goat. Our house smelled like the concession area of a carnival where you can enjoy fresh-squeezed lemonade, bright pink candy floss and sweet, sticky caramel corn.