Today is Saturday, January 2nd 2010, and we have consumed our last of the New Years eve dinner left overs. It was delicious and now Donna and I are reminiscing about the happenings of the last 10 days.
Ten days ago it was Christmas and we spent a wonderful day with all the family here.
We got together on Friday around 1 in the afternoon and enjoyed a pork roast, zucchini & yellow squash Provençal and traditional mashed potatoes and gravy. For dessert I baked a cheese cake with sour cream topping, what was really delicious, but most everybody is so health conscious I ended up eating the whole cake myself. (I got to stop that). They really don't know what they missed!!
We all opened our Christmas gifts, had some good Wine, played the wii, watched the kids play with there new toys, overall an enjoyable afternoon.
My Christmas cookies where a big hit. We ended up giving some to all my neighbors, (maybe there will help me rake the leaves next Year). We even got surprised with a white Christmas and everybody was loving it except Brian, he had to go to work with his salt truck.
Monday I had to do some shopping for our new Years festivity. I prepped and cooked for next two days so everything would be perfect for New Years Eve. And it pretty much was.
We started with a dish called " Seafood Campechano" . It is served ice cold, a ceviche like
dish, you could only find in the Hazienda Restaurant at the Princess Hotel in Acapulco or of course
in the Euro Garden Restaurant on Mackinac Island.
More stew like, it is prepared with onion, tomatoes, chile cerano, hearts of palm, cucumbre, Tomatoe juice mixed with diced flounder, cut shrimp and chunks of meat from king crab legs all marinated over night in fresh lemon jus.
Afterward we had "Prime Rib of Beef au jus" with "Orchard Lane Potatoes" and fresh "Asparagus Hollandaise". Donna and I used to live on Orchard Lane in St Charles where we several times had poolside barbeques and that is where Donna use to wrap potatoes, onions and garlic in foil and baked them on the grill. I took this a step farther and added some sour cream, butter and chedder cheese and wraped the filling in puff pastry dough. That's how orchard lane potatoes where born.
For dessert I prepared a fresh "Rasperry Roulade". The filling consisted of Mascarpone Cheese, Philadelphia cream cheese, vanilla pastry cream and fresh rasperries. It was delicious,light and moist and it seemed everyone enjoyed it.
After dinner we play darts and card games and had a champagne toast at midnight.
I do not know about everybody else, but I had a wonderfull time this holidays.
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010
