Without further ado, I give you most of the GPaK Crew's meals from December 25th!
SuperScrunch
--Marinated Pork Loin, Sweet Potatoes, and Green Beans with Carmelized Shallots.
Overall rating: 10+
GPaK
--We had delicious ham (bacon's almost-as-tasty cousin), funeral potatoes, Jell-O (blue!) and Coke (I'd give it an 8 on the fizz-o-meter).
Overall rating: This one goes to 11
GMac
--
Overall rating: 5
Pancakes: I made. Fluffy and just right! With butter and maple syrup.
Scrambled Eggs: Kim's chickens made and Kim cooked. Well done!
Oatmeal, Cheerios and eggs This is the chicken flock's Christmas dinner. She swears they won't get mad cow disease if they eat their own eggs.
Wingnut
--
Overall rating: 9.5
Jules and my sister Lisa are amazing chefs...seriously, I'm not trying to butter anyone up. Our meal rocked.
And Big Red, those fresh green beans were wonderful.
My sister, who can multi-task with the best of them, LOL, made some killer scallop potatoes with Sun-dried tomatoes on top...the only problem was, she left them under the broiler too long despite being warned by Jules.
Other than that....the food was excellent, even the potatoes.
My favorite had to be Jules' cranberry salad which includes grapes, walnuts, cream and of course, cranberries....yummmmy!
-Wingnut
big.red
appetizers:
cooked shrimp, cocktail sauce, lemon wedges. perfect for the shellfish eaters in the crowd, chief amongst them, my daughter. these were delish, crisp and fresh.
spinach dip, dark and russian rye bread. staple at any of our parties, and this was prepared by my sister, angie. she kills it every time. gotta go with the orowheat russian and dark loafs.
assorted chips, dips.
main:
caesar salad. mom mary brought this, and hit it out of the park. romaine was perfect. the dressing was key: cardini's. we missed the fresh parm, but it was still awesome.
honey-baked ham, garlic infused. already pre-cooked, easiest entree to prepare, just don't overcook it! threw in about 6 cloves of garlic between some of the cuts. went with the 140 degree medium rare temp on the thermometer which was perfect. only minor glitch: we didn't do the pineapple! egad.
twice-baked potatoes. these were heidi's. and they rocked. they were creamy, not too salty, not too much butter overload (is that even possible!). well done, baby.
beverages, spirits:
2006 gallo reserve pinot noir. vanilla vodka and coke. gin and sprite. uinta cutthroat pale ale. assorted sodas. eggnog. coffee. pinot was dry. cutthroat was cutthroat. eggnog was egg-noggy. didn't do the others. heidi and my sister angie enjoyed the flavored vodka. mary enjoyed her crown and coke.
dessert:
peach pie, apple pie (no photos!). store bought, alas. still good.
overall: a great christmas feast, for which i am grateful to have been able to serve, share and make memories. i give it a 10.
Quotes o' the day (Christmas special)
I want more penguin poop
Did you eat my salad yet
I'm full....my belly hurts
When your done your done
Sometime you don't want to be woken up
Be careful with them....remember they are fragile.
I'm sure not all Christmas dinners are as wonderful as the one we had
I don't want him running that truck over you
I say let them run till they stop and drop
It gives me heartburn
Julie loves her (own) cranberry salad
Do you by any chance have in tumms?
A little too much grease for me...tasted good going down
That's enough grandpa..save some for the rest us!
He's 31. She's 18. Do the math.
Now entering a drama-free zone!
It's a major award!
scrunch: pork loin looks awesome.
ReplyDeletegpak: you still got hammy leftovers? me too.
gmac: mmm. breakfast. wait, eggs, cheerios and what is that, grits? mmm. no photo of brodie?
wingnut: those green beans look fantastic!
can't believe no one had beef! alas.
cheers, fellas! happy day!
I do have hammy leftovers. And leftovers of the ham-bone soup my wife made the next day, which was also delicious to extremes. I really do appreciate pigs for their tastiness.
ReplyDeleteWe didn't really do a big Christmas meal. We did have make breakfast burritos for brunch. Does that count? But I forgot to take pictures. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you, Brady. We must have ham for salt content (balancing all that candy from our stockings), leftovers and general munching, but aside from that it's pretty much a regular Sunday-level meal for us. Thanksgiving is where I pull out all the stops and make everything from scratch and brine a turkey and stuff it with fruit, veggies and fresh garden-grown herbs, and all that. Christmas ... it's for napping, snacking, reading the cool books you got, general lazing about and eating ham.
ReplyDeleteAlso Greg didn't mention the enormous platter of homemade brownies and the equally enormous two-layer carrot cake with lashings of homemade cream-cheese frosting that some of our neighbors brought over Christmas Eve, freeing me from dessert duties! Yay! Brownies: gone. Carrot cake: still have some but it's less attractive now that our four-year-old son raked his fingers through the frosting and licked it off.
ReplyDelete