Breakfast/lunch/Dinner, what are you having?

For Christmas Eve, a ribeye beef roast with carrots and potatoes, fairly pedestrian... Tomorrow Cornish game hens, cornbread stuffing and other delectables. ;)
 
thekev said:
If you can find it at an ethnic market, the stuff is amazing. I wouldn't forego it. Maybe it's that the US has terrible bread.



I really like Indian food, but most of the stuff they serve at Indian restaurants in the US is basically stuff you would serve at a large dinner there, like a wedding or something of that sort. It's all delicious though.
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If I could find authentic injera bread, I wouldn't forego it, I would fall greedily on it.

What I meant was that life is too short for me to want to fight with the ingredients needed to bake a specific regional bread such as injera, I wouldn't be prepared to bake it, or cook it, myself, but would happily buy it from someone who knew how to prepare it.
 
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went to a really good fresh bakery. got the wife a chocolate eclair it is fantastic like chocolate pudding inside. then a Chocolate Gateau just almonds chocolate sugar and eggs so good. and a orange Gateau and two really cool almond cakes O think just almond butter sugar maybe some egg and maybe a tiny bit of spice amazing flavor with so little ingredients. a little beat up trying to fit the box in my bike bag. got a couple of some kind of sweet rolls for my kid and step son for tomorrow.

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we always had hot chocolate on Christmas Eve. we both used to have it and I would use a bar of 60 to 70% and a milk chocolate. but I can't do it anymore so I got a 55% that does not need any sweetening. just heat it up and mix it together more drinking chocolate. I use the whole bar and not all of the pint.
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fooferdoggie said:
went to a really good fresh bakery. got the wife a chocolate eclair it is fantastic like chocolate pudding inside. then a Chocolate Gateau just almonds chocolate sugar and eggs so good. and a orange Gateau and two really cool almond cakes O think just almond butter sugar maybe some egg and maybe a tiny bit of spice amazing flavor with so little ingredients. a little beat up trying to fit the box in my bike bag. got a couple of some kind of sweet rolls for my kid and step son for tomorrow.

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While both of - or, each of, - my parents had a sweet tooth, my father naturally, my mother on account of dementia, - I don't.

However, at Christmas, I do treat myself to brioche, a sweet French bread, with a wonderfuly high butter content. And brioche goes with absolutely everything, jam, cheese, more butter.....
fooferdoggie said:
we always had hot chocolate on Christmas Eve. we both used to have it and I would use a bar of 60 to 70% and a milk chocolate. but I can't do it anymore so I got a 55% that does not need any sweetening. just heat it up and mix it together more drinking chocolate. I use the whole bar and not all of the pint.
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I enjoy reading about the Christmas traditions of others; do enjoy.
 
my body does not let me have any eating traditions anymore. the Hot chocolate will put her to sleep so she has to have it late so she does not zonk out early.
 
going to be a odd Christmas meal this year. we really don't care and cant eat most of the Christmas foods. a lot of times we have Chinese but this year its going to be odd. some good cauliflower salad like potato salad some great Serrano ham. Anything else I can think of. lots of flavor and lots of salt (G)
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fooferdoggie said:
going to be a odd Christmas meal this year. we really don't care and cant eat most of the Christmas foods. a lot of times we have Chinese but this year its going to be odd. some good cauliflower salad like potato salad some great Serrano ham. Anything else I can think of. lots of flavor and lots of salt (G)
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You can't go wrong with Lomo or Serrano (or Iberico) ham.

Do enjoy.
 
fooferdoggie said:
going to be a odd Christmas meal this year. we really don't care and cant eat most of the Christmas foods. a lot of times we have Chinese but this year its going to be odd. some good cauliflower salad like potato salad some great Serrano ham. Anything else I can think of. lots of flavor and lots of salt (G)
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Almost my entire life, Christmas meant going to a matinee and then Chinese buffet. Thanks to Covid, neither is an option this year.
 
Alli said:
Almost my entire life, Christmas meant going to a matinee and then Chinese buffet. Thanks to Covid, neither is an option this year.
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Chatting to a friend last night (my best ever student, now a good friend), to cut down on seasonal stress, she mentioned how she dealt with Christmas: Yesterday, she sought (and received) individual preferences re Thai food from each member of her family and thus, proceeded to order a vast quantity of Thai takeaway food, which - on its arrival - was imediately stashed away in the fridge until today.
 
Gotta love The New Yorker. In time for those interested in what some of us have traditionally done about something to eat on Christmas Eve in the USA, the magazine's busy bees managed to dig out a wonderful piece by Joan Acocella from 1995 titled My Ex-Husband and the Fish Dinner...

my husband decided to Italianize our Christmas. The people in his grandparents’ generation had followed the old-country custom of eating their feast not on December 25th, but the night before. And it wasn’t turkey; it was a nine-course fish dinner. (December 24th was a fast day—no meat. Nine courses of fish was their way of fasting.) My in-laws, by way of assimilating, had switched over to turkey. This now seemed to my husband a hideous betrayal. We were going back to the old way, he declared. So the next December 24th, and every December 24th after that, we had a dinner that could kill an army.
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Apparently this guy disparaged any cookbook authors from the north of Italy, including Marcella Hazan...

In America, anyone can be President, and in Marcella Hazan anyone can make minestrone.This worried my husband. Pretty soon, he figured, you’d have Basques, Northumbrians, British Columbians making Italian dinners. He preferred cookbooks that kept a few veils on. A favorite of his was Ada Boni’s “Talisman Italian Cook Book,” which you used to be able to get by sending in four dollars and ninety-five cents with a coupon from the Ronzoni box.
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And apparently the pièce de résistance in a Christmas Eve fish dinner was... yeah, the marinated eel.

Right around the fourth course of the Christmas Eve feast, he would produce it: a big dead snake in a bowl of yellow oil. “No!” we would scream. “Take it away! Eat it in the kitchen!” And, beaming with joy, he would maneuver the thing onto his plate, eat it by himself, and look at us pityingly. The rest was magnificent, though: mussel soup, spaghetti with scallops, baccalà with olives, bass stuffed with vegetables. This year, he’ll probably be cooking it again, for a tableful of cousins. I can see them now, happily lifting their forks. “Wait!” he says, and runs back to the kitchen for the eel.
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Acocella doesn't explain exactly why this guy became her ex husband. Also I left out quotes from a digression about other feasts, including another favorite of this guy at what he figured was a decent dinner table: roasted sheep's head.

Moving right along, my Christmas Day brunch was entirely vegetarian as you may well imagine by now.
 
fooferdoggie said:
first time I have had the acorn fed one. we have one store that may sell it by the pound but you never know. so this is the way to go.
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The acorn fed Iberico ham is......sublime, and is actualy my favourite ham.

Dinner this evening - I dined in solitary splendour - at a splendidly laid table (French cotton tablecloth, French cotton napkins, American leather place mats and coasters, Waterford crystal - Lismore pattern - glassware, for both water and wine, antique silver fish knives and forks with ivory handles).

The meal itself comprised of shrimps, crab, smoked salmon, - served with two dressings, both homemade: My own aioli: A head of minced organic garlic, two organic, free range, egg yolks, sea salt and olive oil, and my own Marie Rose (i.e. cocktail sauce) dressing: Mayo, tomato ketchup, lemon juice, Worcestshire sauce, cream, sea salt, black pepper, and Spanish pimentón, smoked sweet, paprika.

Sides included organic roasted potatoes, (organic) cucumber salad, in a lime and lemon - both freshly squeezed,- sea salt and brown sugar dressing, (organic) tomato salad - dressed in olive oil, sea salt, black pepper and chopped fresh parsley.

Served with Chablis 1er Cru, an excellent white wine from Burgundy.
 
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Scepticalscribe said:
The acorn fed Iberico ham is......sublime, and is actualy my favourite ham.

Dinner this evening - I dined in solitary splendour - at a splendidly laid table (French cotton tablecloth, Frenhc cotton napkins, American leather place mats and coasters, Waterford crystal - Lismore pattern - glassware, antique silver fish knives and forks with ivory handles).

The meal itself comprised of shrimps, crab, smoked salmon, - served with two dressings, both homemade: My own aioli: (a head of minced organic garlic, two organic, free range, egg yolks, sea salt and olive oil, and my own Marie Rose (i.e. cocktail sauce) dressing: Mayo, tomato ketchup, lemon juice, Worcestshire sauce, cream, sea salt, black pepper, and Spanish pimentón, smoked sweet, paprika.

Sides included organic roasted potatoes, (organic) cucumber salad, in a lime and lemon - both freshly squeezed,- sea salt and brown sugar dressing, (organic) tomato salad - dressed in olive oil, sea salt, black pepper and chopped fresh parsley.

Served with Chablis 1er Cru, an excellent white wine from Burgundy.
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That all sounds very delicious and festive even if dining alone!

Amongst my kin it was largely phone conversations and dinners solo or with household residents only... and the favorite topic on the phone of course was which of the upstate lakes to head up to next summer for a "slightly" delayed Christmas celebration wrapped into a family reunion. Even if social distancing is still the word of the day by then, which is quite probable in the USA, we can plan on managing that and still have fun together in person outdoors after all this time apart.
 
Baked Camembert (seasoned with slivers of garlic, thyme, a dash of olive oil, and a little white wine from Burgundy), with toasted French bread and French wine (from Burgundy).
 
wife gets a boneless ribeye steak lots of garlic and a acorn squash with maple syrup and butter. I am having green beans where I cook bacon and onions and use just enough water to cook them. tossed in not quite enough country ham with garlic. then tossed in some small smoked sausages to make a one dish meal. and some mushrooms three kinds that were in a pack.


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