Holiday preps

Oh, holiday preps.  I did a huge grocery shopping trip on Friday.  The baby came with me and was touched/played with/tickled by no less than five complete strangers.  This happens all the time.  I totally get it though, It's almost  always elderly people doing this and when I'm that age I probably won't be able to resist touching strangers babies either.

The holiday cooking is underway.  

We're having family here for Christmas dinner.  I'm making a beef stew (done today) and chicken stew (still thawing the chicken).  Homemade bread.  

The ambitious part is that I've pulled all of the odds and ends out of the freezer to thaw.  Quail, the last duck, the last of the goose.  All of the giblets.  Because my Christmas gift to myself is going to be some fun cooking in a project secretly called "giblets be gone".  The plan is to have a big pot of duck and goose gumbo ready for the 27th when more family arrive in town.  It's the Hank Shaw recipe from Duck Duck Goose.  That stew is so delicious.  The rest of the meats are (hopefully) going to be made into Hank's wild game terrine recipe from the website.  It looks amazing and includes pistachios and brandy soaked fruit. Plus I get to bust out the meat grinder and play with that.  I wonder if I'll have extra ground meat? Maybe it could be ravioli filling?

To balance out effort with non-effort, all of the cookies this year came from pre-made dough.  Chocolate chip cookies, chocolate with chocolate chunks and these little slice and bake sugar cookies from Aldi that got rolled in sprinkles.

Also I've made 2 rum cakes today.

Bee.  Trying to decide what to try to eat off of the counter.

And that thing with the Amish lady totally happened.  Her friend was carrying a Coach bag and neither one of them looked like knock-offs.  Thy were buying fruit punch and frilly pink underwear.  You can't make this stuff up.

Happy Holidays.