Cooking and Christmas!

Baby moves fast!

Sorry for neglecting the blog a bit. Things always get crazy around the holidays, this year more than usual. I took off a whole week for Thanksgiving and was fortunate enough to spend it in Atlanta visiting family (and my grad school friends who drove many hours to see me!). I got to play with my niece, which made me feel good. At one point I made her laugh so hard that she drooled, so I felt successful!

Sitting in the chair next to her Aunt Em.

Anyway, now we are 15 days away from Christmas and I'm lined up to work every day except Christmas day itself, which is really a drag. I keep finding myself thinking about what I want to do over my "break," forgetting that that is only a single day. In reality I am sure I will chisel away at my already dwindling vacation time in order to not go insane trying to work on Christmas Eve. We will see.

This is my first Christmas away from my parents and therefore it is Brad and my first Christmas just the two of us. We got a fat little tree and I put up a lot of decorations in hopes of making it feel cheery. I would really like for us to start or continue some holiday traditions that are meaningful to us, but I'm not quite sure what those will be.

One of the things about being on your own for a holiday like this is deciding what to eat. I've never cooked a big holiday meal before, so I really want to try it this year. However...it really will be just Brad and I to eat it, so it can't be THAT big of a meal. Here is my plan so far:

Christmas Menu

• Main Entree: Nut Loaf! Sounds like it could be nasty but the photo with the recipe is so inviting and delicious looking (recipe link)
• Side Dish 1: Mashed potatoes and cauliflower. I've never done the "mashed cauliflower" thing before, but I think it will give me license to eat extra mashed potatoes, so that's why I want to do it. 
• Side Dish 2: Roasted broccoli with garlic (recipe link)
• Bread: Cheddar rosemary biscuits (possible recipe link)
• Dessert: Haven't decided yet but I'd like to have some kind of chocolate peanut butter pie...
• Drink: mulled cider! planning on having this in the crock pot to just drink throughout the day (and have it making the house smell good). I've tried mulled wine before, but if I made that for drinking throughout the day, I doubt I'd get this meal made at all or be able to go to work the next day. So we are sticking to cider...

What do you think? Too ambitious? I figure I can make the biscuits a day in advance and reheat in the microwave. The dessert could also be made the day before. That just leaves the nut loaf (which can sit and cool I'd think), mashed potatoes, and roasting some broccoli. I think it will be easy enough. And then we can eat nut loaf sandwiches from all the leftovers I hope to have. Seriously, I don't want to have to cook for the rest of that week if I really pull off this meal for us!

I have been cooking a lot recently from some used Moosewood cookbooks I purchased. I always wanted one of these cookbooks and I'm so glad to finally have their knowledge in my hands! I came up with a system where I book mark recipes I want to make with sticky notes and then once I made the recipe, I make notes on changes I made or how well we liked it on that same stick note and keep it on the recipe page. Except of course then I have to force myself to keep up with this system...but it at least seemed clever at the time.   

I will post some pictures of our decorations soon! Maybe in one big Christmas post where I divulge whether or not our dinner was a flop!