Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Xmas for My Grandparents

12/25/10

Whew! This is it! Since my resolution just over a month ago, I have successfully caught up on my entire year's worth of back posts! Hopefully in 2011 I can keep it simple enough to stay up to date.

For Christmas this year my gift to my grandparents was an "in-home Bed and Breakfast," as I called it. Basically, I went over to their house and cooked them shmancy meals all day. I found all the recipes on epicurious.com, and will link to them all with my modifications. Photos of me were taken by my Grampa.


Reducing white-wine and shallots for the hollandaise sauce.

Grampa about to bust open the champagne.

English muffins topped with smoked salmon...

topped with poached eggs and hollandaise!


This recipe leaves the olives whole. If you wanted it to really be a spread, you could easily food process it to a paste, but I just mashed them with a fork after they came out, so it was more like a chunky tapenade.

My Mom got to be a special lunch guest :)



I couldn't find frisee so I left it out.


Boneless was painless.

I super-simplified this recipe and didn't use any of the fruit called for except for the pears. Also opted-out of the powdered sugar at the end. Pears are sweet enough!

Preppin.

I loved this recipe's tip to use a melon-baller to remove the core from the pears. They look so cute!

Spooning honey-mustard glaze onto the lamb.

Ready for baking with tomatoes, onions, rosemary, and thyme.

Wine toast.

The endive looked like magnolia blossoms and made great scoopers for the brussels and pecans.

Mmmmm. Turned out so good.



3 comments:

  1. Granny here, to tell you that the food was even more delicious than it looked in the pictures! It was definitely the most gourmet day of food we have ever had -- and even the brussel sprouts were WONDERFUL! It was absolutely the best Xmas present we've ever had!

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  2. Kate, this was

    THE MOST WONDERFUL CHANUKAH PRESENT I THINK GRANNY AND I HAVE EVER HAD.
    The breakfast was fantastic. When I saw you placing what I thought was slices of ham to the english muffin, I was stunned when you told me it was slices of salmon. Put together with the poached eggs and the heavenly sauce... I don't belielieve I'ver had a more delicious and unique breakfast in my life.

    Lunch - (hohum, another salad) - well, it wasn't a hohum or just another salad. It was unique and it was delicious. Bekets - I don'[t think I have eaten a beet in over half my life...maybe even longer.

    Dinner - well! as your readers can imagine, it was famously delicious. the lamb - what can I say - yum. The potatoes - I have never had a more delicious potato dish in my life.

    And, of course, the very best part of the meal was your giving us youe entire day; planning the meals...relaxing between meal preparations with us...assembling the ingrediences, preparing (lovingly) each meal, and, of course, sharing the meals and the day with us. Not only did you make Christmas for us, you topped it with a Chanukah gift to top all Chanukahs.

    That is all I have to say.

    Your Grandfather

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