I just made the potato latkes today! No ”bad first pancake” here! But I ate it anyway. :) 30, er…, 29 in the freezer. Andrew Zimmern's big mess, truly wonderful, recipe. The red onion, sweet potato latkes are done and frozen, too. Zucchini and cipollini tomorrow or Wednesday. Applesauce to be made day before. Debating my usual apples and sparkling apple cider, or just roasted apple. Caterer for the rest, since I can't do the cooking in two houses and hauling major poundage anymore.. It was going to be a small crowd, but they've been dropping like flies, so more like a dinner party. Sigh. I could have fed them, after all. A few days after Christmas, though. We were supposed to be going to the Christmas cousin on the 25th, but he hasn't been well, so we have no idea if we're on or not. If they want a pie, it may have to be one of my more..,interesting…ones from the freezer. Or, I guess, pumpkin. I have some pumpkins left…

John the duo of confit duck versus Beijing duck ( it will always be Peking duck to me ) sounds perfect. What a way to celebrate with duck for the occasion.

For the first time in many years I’m (…we …DH and I )going to someone else’s home for Christmas lunch. My eldest son has offered to have the festivities at his place, mainly because he has two little ones 5 and nearly 3 and he knows they’ll be wanting to play with the presents Santa has left under the tree.

Whew I am relieved. I will roast a small turkey breast and a pan full of roast potatoes and wrap in foil to take there as it’s only about half hour away. But that’s just a morning pleasure to do.

He’s talking about getting lots of large shrimp from the fish market and his wife will make things. I don’t mind what we have it will be such a pleasure to see the little ones joy of the occasion.

Son and Co arriving on 24th. I asked them to organise the dinner. Duck magret and gratin Dauphinois. Other friends arriving the next day.

Xmas day, I'll do a heap of nibbles then we'll have a roast lamb dinner, preceded by smoked salmon, oysters and foie gras. I don't know what I'm doing for dessert yet.

Boxing day will be leftovers, then pizzas (home-made, of course! I have finally perfected my dough after years of trying LOL) and salad in the evening. Lots of wine. And games. Fun.

I've just had a week where absolutely everything went wrong, and in the end, everything that was supposed to happen from this point forward will not be happening. I am suddenly presented with a blank slate and the ability to do whatever I want. It's liberating.

I've just started baking Christmas cookies for the family. I baked some a couple of weeks ago for work colleagues, the usual nine kinds and at least five dozen of each kind. They had to be lactose free and only containing almonds (I usually use pecans) so I couldn't make a lot and freeze some. The family ones will be all butter and pecans. :-)

Today I did four kinds, so 22-23 dozen all up. I'm pacing myself because my stamina is still low although I am officially in remission now. I also made the dough for one, which has to chill overnight. Tomorrow I will bake it up and try to do two other kinds.

Then I have mini quiches to make for a little Christmas party we're having in our block of units on Friday evening. I have the pastry made in the freezer so it shouldn't be too bad. On the weekend I will make pumpkin pie as requested by DD for the big family Christmas dinner, and a coffee chocolate swirl cheesecake and maybe some friands. I'll also do a lemon meringue pie for my sister in law's birthday on Boxing Day.

For the family Christmas dinner I do the ham as well as the desserts. On Christmas Day it's just DH and I, but we love turkey so I'll do a breast roast with stuffing and forcemeat and vegetables. I'll also make a salad of some kind for SIL's birthday party.

After Christmas I plan to do as little as possible :-D

Not a single cookie happening here. 8 of us plus baby from Monday onwards. I made the Christmas pudding weeks ago. A citrus cake, a chocolate torte, three dozen mince pies and an unfilled choc roulade have been in the freezer since November. Monday night sausages and roasted veg. Son's wife and daughter's husband are in charge of Christmas Eve. They're doing salmon en croute and scallops as a starter. They haven't revealed dessert yet. Christmas Day I'll do: turkey, gammon, two stuffings, pigs in blankets, bread sauce, cranberry sauce, roast potatoes and roast veg. Plain steamed sprouts. All the sauces and stuffings are in the freezer. Though not the gravy. I make that in the turkey pan. Turkey, gammon and fish to be collected on Saturday. Boxing Day probably Christmas Dinner pie.

Between times there will be lots of cheese, charcuterie, bread and salads. We have crates of booze in so all will be well.

Stop press. SIL has sent a list of ingredients he needs. I'm guessing Sticky Toffee Pudding.

Well I finished my shopping so now I can focus on food. I am hosting Christmas brunch and Christmas dinner for 8. I just ordered the Honey baked ham for brunch. Dinner will be prime rib and? I think salmon, we are doing surf and turf for my pescatarean MIL. Now I have to fill in the details.

A question for you all. When would you defrost a 11+ pound prime rib for the 25th?

For the first time in decades (excluding weird 2020), I won't be cooking for anyone but me. I'm roasting a 1/4 turkey breast and making a small batch of fresh cranberry salad. I may even make those on the 24th and just enjoy a stress-free Christmas day. I did something similar for Thanksgiving and enjoyed the leftover turkey for a week. I'm looking forward to doing that again.

All your ambitious menus sound delicious, but way more effort than I care to make any longer.

“When would you defrost a 11+ pound prime rib for the 25th?”

I would figure at least 24-36 hours in the fridge per 5 pounds and even a couple more days. No worries…it will stay cold enough to be fine. My experience is it can take longer than you think. Make sure to let it sit out before roasting to remove some chill.

My husband baked his anise biscottis and ginger pepper cookies, and those are in the mail!

For dinner, our friend will smoke pork shoulder and make posole with that, so that's leading to a mexican theme: Husband will BBQ turkey with red mole, I'll make homemade tortillas, and fiesta salad with beans, tomatoes, corn, avocado...

there will be roast pumpkin with rajas, and might purchase tamales as well!

For dessert I hope to make persimmon pudding if my persimmons end up ripening, and maybe I'll amp up the mexican spices for that with dried anchos etc - TBD . I have plum sauce in the freezer too, so if persimmons don't ripen that or pumpkin is a fallback plan for the pudding. This is not a flaming pudding ala Dickens, I wish I knew how to pull that off ! (I use the joy of cooking pudding recipe) . Maybe I'll put cognac in the whipped cream, or serve cognac alongside, since we have a teetotaler in the house .

It will be at least 4 of us, likely more like 10 - we are last minute ad hoc people, the more the merrier, and extended family doesn't get together, just us locals who happen to be available! The days of 15 or 20 seem to be in the past for some reason.

For my birthday we did a simplified Beijing Duck, it turned out very tasty and crispy, although not super authentic - we didn't have that malt stuff, used a little molasses, probably did it all wrong...

John Liu, do you have any tips for us amateurs? I'd love to get better at that, we don't have many places to pick that up and I miss being able to grab a duck from I-district in Seattle from all those years ago!

Happy Holidays everybody! I see Hanukkah starts on the 25th this year, so maybe we'll try our hand at latkes too, although my potato-loving daughter, for the first time ever, will not be here, so that's a milestone I am reconciled to.

Carol's uncle's spritz cookies are the best! I should make some. But then I'd eat some. And more. They're little. And very buttery. And one could easily just one more oneself into oblivion.

But the mention did remind me that John did start off asking about the cookies. I'm not making any cookies this year. Zilch. Unless I just have to make the spritz cookies. My favorite Moravian Ginger Cookies don't freeze well. And I don't really want to make cut cookies, anyway. Peanut Butter Popover cookies are dead easy, and only a dozen at a time, and they're really good, but there won't be any kids (they're all going to be off pleasure travelling), and the adults will limit themselves to a single chocolate chip. So I did e-mail The Expert that, as usual, his Toll House cookies are wanted. :)

I only make one kind of cut cookie, the rest are rolled into balls or piped with a pipipng bag or a spritz gun. I don’t really ”get” rolled cookies, they’re very pretty but a lot of work for a kind of boring taste.

I should add to my above post that doing all this baking, it’s been 105F+ for the past few days 🥵

Rolling doesn't make cookie dough boring—boring recipes do! I'm not saying you should roll out cookies at any temperature above 85F, but the ginger (molasses) cookies are totally unboring. You can add spices, nuts, seeds, dried fruit, stinky cheese (as in Chloebud's blue cheese shortbread leaf cookies, which are awesome)…maybe not beef. I haven't tried meat, but it doesn't sound good. Though, I suppose, a well seasoned and spicy beef jerky, crumbled, might actually be good. I'm totally impressed with all that baking, even moreso knowing how hot it is!

I have not made my favorites— Finnish Spoon Cookies—but have made Pistachio Shortbread and Chocolate Sables. Gave some cookies away, gave a log of sable dough to a friend who is not a baker but is entertaining, and extra sable dough in the freezer.

I'm baking Cranberry Pistachio White Chocolate biscotti for gifts, along with double chocolate biscotti. I'll also send a couple of boxes to friends with Pepper Parmesan biscotti to go with cans (yes, cans) of Cougar Gold Cheese and jars of Caramelized Onion Jam. Cougar Gold is the most amazingly delicious cheese made at WA State University and preserved in cans. It does need refrigeration but I figure it can stand being out in the world for a few days with our 40-50 degree weather. Nice to have a savory option instead of sweets. I'll also make Natal's Honey Chipotle Pecans for gifts.

Funnily enough, @plllog, the only rolled cookies I make are speculaas, which are a heavily spiced cookie with ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and aniseed :-)

Ah. Boring because they're your only kind… ?

My main rolled cookies are gingerbread

@plllog, no I was thinkig you meant those vanilla flavoured rolled cookies that are cut out with fancy cutters and beautifully decorated with piped and flooded different coloured glace icing. They are a ton of work and look gorgeous but I find their flavour boring.

Oh! No. I don't do those. I'm not sure about glace, but royal icing, the usual here for iced cookies because it dries hard, doesn't taste very nice. I usually make Scottish shortbread (as made by our Glasweigian nanny), using cutters with some design impressions. For a bit of color, they might have a small dusting of colored sugar or sprinkles (which might be brushed into the impressions to highlight them if I feel like fussing), and kids like to put a dragée eye on the Lion of Judah, but the dragée is the only thing not nice to eat, ever, and while they're simple, people love shortbread. My other cut cookies don't get any decoration, other than impressions from the cutters. They don't want the extra sugar.

I've made sugar cookies with plain icing (powdered sugar dampened with juice to give it color)—they need icing to be good, and would never be able to compete with shortbread for flavor. They have a nice pillowy texture, howver, which is a good contrast. Maybe they're similar to your boring iced cookies. Here, rolled gingerbread cookies are often fully iced with royal icing, but you can do that to any firm rolled out cookie, and people do. It needn't be bland. For awhile, orange cranberry was popular…

I don't make display cookies or cakes. It's all about the eating, and I'm hopeless with a piping bag so they wouldn't be pretty, even if I wanted to.

I don’t make the decorated cut out cookies as much as I used to. Martha Stewart has a sugar cookie recipe I like that calls for a couple tablespoons of Brandy, along with vanilla. Really ups the flavor IMO. This year I’ve just done shortbread, molasses cookies, toffee bars and fudge. Making the toffee bars today.

All your plans sound great. DH has been really busy and hasn’t gotten back to me about Christmas dinner. He is easy going and will enjoy most anything and even help.

John, now, I want DUCK! I have one in the freezer as well as a Prime Rib roast (I think). DH isn’t wild about rich food like duck or lobster, but is happy if I enjoy them. I think he would love a Ukraine or Polish meal such as really good (not grocery store) kielbasas and pierogi with caramelized onion mashed potato.

When we cook our prime rib, we use Bobby Flay’s ”Boy Meets Grill” recipe — so simple a d delicious.

DH has learned to make Deep Dish Custard Pie (perfectly smooth and just cooked, so maybe we will have that.

Add simple shrimp cocktail, a relish tray, maybe stuffed mushrooms or artichokes and some nice wine, a d we will be happy.

I have not made any greenery like wreaths this year, but I have a lot of Arborvitae that would welcome a trim, laurel and pine cones. But I love the fragrance of Balsam so may buy some.

I wish everyone a joyous and peaceful Chrisrmas and holiday season. Carolb, I know this might be a trimmed down Christmas and holiday for you, but it looks like you are approaching it with a very calm and level head. I applaud you for that.

It sounds like we're all going to eat, at least. As for the reindeer, well, we did have venison for supper this week, but I think Comet and his buddies are safe for another year.

We are planning our Christmas celebration on January 4, as Ashley's ex has the Small Princesses for Christmas break this year. We are having glazed ham, tenderloin (maybe tenderloin strips with some kind of compound butter, I'm still in the planning stages on that), scalloped or au gratin potatoes, homemade rolls, vegetables to be determined. I think dessert will be a flourless bouche de noel and some type of cheesecake, plus cookies and fudge. Chex Mix and Fire Crackers and a cheese ball for snacks, some devilled eggs if I don't run out of time.

Christmas Day will be spent in part with our lovely neighbors at the B&B across the street. They have no children and their niece and nephew will be travelling. One sister is still doing consulting and will be flying in on Christmas Day, she lives in Chicago but has been working in Paris. The sister who is the chef is making dinner so I'm sure it's going to be good. None of us drink so I can't take wine or booze, so probably a cheese selection or charcuterie. One sister is diabetic, one is gluten sensitive and one is a chef, so I'm not even going to try, LOL.

Annie

Annie, I don’t eat beef but do love compound butters. Some favorites to serve with beef: Gorgonzola butter, anchovy butter, red wine shallot butter.

Pretty low-key here, just 3 of us. Prime rib, baked potatoes, bread, vegetable and salad sides, and dessert of some sort. Will bake the bread the day before, so light cooking duty on Christmas day. Although, I don't know why I even bother with the sides, the others scarf down the meat and pay no attention to the rest of it. Except me. I don't really like prime rib very much {gasp!} so I'll fill up on salad and vegetables. IDK what I want to make for dessert yet, guess I better figure that out soon.

I make a roast duck once or twice a year. Nothing fancy like a Peking duck, just a regular 'ol roast duck. It's delicious but 1-2x/year is enough.

My Christmas vegetable order has just been delivered. The sack is spinach. You know how much it cooks down...

What do you do with the witlofs?

Either salad or baked. They're just for filling in impromptu meals, not for a specific purpose. I never know how many meals will be required for how many people.

lisaam, I have some morel butter in the freezer and some of the attendees would really like the gorgonzola butter, so thanks for that idea. I know, it's heresy, but I really am not much of a cheese fan which makes the rest of my family happy, it's more left for them, LOL.

Floral, lovely vegetables and such a nice variety!

The smaller princesses are coming tomorrow to bake cookies, that makes me happy. Sugar cookies, chocolate chip, peanut butter with Reese's cups and some white trash, Chex Mix if the oven is empty soon enough. Ahh, baking with the kids, it's my happy place! Sunday we may take a trip to the local Reindeer Farm although it's supposed to be a high of 25F. Winter Home 2024 - Rooftop Reindeer

Annie

I had to look up ”witlofs”. ;) We call it (Belgian) endive. They make excellent carries for just about anything. :)

plllog, I had to look it up too, I recognized the endive in the basket but couldn't figure out which vegetable was called "witlofs", LOL.

Annie

I love endive in salad. I associate them with my grandmother.

I started my baking yesterday. I made anise biscotti. I wanted a ’light’ crunch cookie to go with tea or coffee.

I also made dough for the King Arthur 2024 recipe of the year. Basically a fancy chocolate chip cookie - browned butter, tang zhong, several days of refrigeration and a lot of chocolate. I haven’t made the recipe before.

And dough for ginger snaps that my mom usually decorates but I think these will be basic wafers.

Today I want to make the dough for Havreflarn oatmeal cookies and some kind of thumbprint cookie. I made jam from wild blackberries and blueberries a few days ago. And I need to make dough for focaccia to bring to the two family gatherings I attend.

Happy holidays to all!

No baking here. I can't face the faff, and we don't need the calories. There will be enough of those in our festive meals. We'll be eating desserts which we don't usually have. I'm interested in all these cookies. When do you eat them given that there will be plenty of filling meals already? How do you have room for them?

I did make chocolate mousses for dessert tomorrow and spiced red cabbage for Wednesday.

For regular cookies (not big iced display cookies) or oversized ones, when there isn't room for a rich, plated dessert, there's always room for a cookie. :) Also, I read something about the science of dessert. IIRC, the sweet actually makes you feel less full. It's an illusion, of course.

Cookies are often served as snacks, as well, and while not approved of for breakfast, can be served at any time of day A sack lunch often has a cookie.. Where petit fours, small cakes, slices of cake, etc., might be served with tea, substitute cookies and coffee here. Often at a gathering, people will step away from the table for a time, and return, or gather in the living room, for coffee and sweets. It might be half an hour between, but time for dinner to settle. Also, I don't know if this is just my family, but we don't tend to pig out at festive dinners. I've seen Christmas tables with thirty dishes on them in the media. Either that's for one heck of an open house, the food the family will be eating until New Year's, or they're taking the leftovers to feed the poor (which I know is done, but it would be nicer to take them fresh food rather than the leavings).