Dinner was soup, eggs and pita chips with whipped cheddar.

Wednesday: roast vegetables and fried eggs.

Defrosted other half of a sirloin tip roast for tonight.

Thursday: kippers!

Breaded chicken fillet with salad and nuked potato.

I fell asleep. Hard day. The picture lies. The big pieces are on top. The bowl is full of vegetables and soup, plus a healthy slug of Marsala.

Floral - The plate would suggest a frenzied feeding but the intact bones, a delicate dissection. I like the juxtaposition. Looks delicious, or like it may have once been!

Love that photo, floral.

I made some Beef with Broccoli a few days ago.

The next day there was a small bowl of leftover in the fridge. I decided to eat it just as it was — cold and without rice. Fantastic.

I need new chopsticks — Chinese style w blunt tips. Any suggestions on where to look?

If there isn't a Chinese market or housewares store near you or large pan-Asian store, I'd guess your best bet is online.

Friday: Thai green curry with chicken. Inauthentic brown rice. Not pretty but very tasty.

it looks appetizing if not staged for photos....

Saturday: homage to Pillog. Partridge. But cooked with apples rather than pears. I have some but they're not ripe yet and are too good to throw in a pot roast.

That looks splendid!

Sunday: roast night. Roast chicken, roast potatoes and carrots, purple sprouting, gravy.

I love the caterers! There's no way I could do the whole Hanukkah dinner on my own and too many of the kids aren't here.. Crudite with dill dip and red pepper dip, hot hors d'oeurve inc. latkes as the base for canapes, as well as mushrooms! with chickpea fritters, gravlox, onion rings, and a couple others. Dinner was brisket and caramelized onions, fried chicken bits with whole grain mustard + horseradish sauce, mesclun salad, spinach and pear salad, fingerling potatos. Dessert was tiny berry trifles, mini-jelly-donuts (American style, but good puffy ones, and Toll House cookies made by The Expert. I had some of everything except the potatoes. It was all good. Candles were lit, songs were sung, much was eaten, much of that fried to honor the miracle of the consecrated oil. Memories were shared as were many hugs. New plans and new adventures were discussed. A good time was had by all. I ate too many sweets, but I didn't get a sodium headache from anything.

Your Hanukkah dinner sounds delicious plllog. Tiny berry trifles sound intriguing. Great meals floral, I haven’t had partridge. Meant to mention beef and broccoli from petalique looks good and further back annie’s Pork steak baked with homemade sauerkraut, butternut squash it calling me.

Squid ink linguine with seafood sauce. (again) … so easy to buy a handful of fresh marinara mix of seafood including mussels, salmon. white fish, shrimp, scallops, calamari rings and make a sauce sometimes tomato based and sometimes not with lemon and thyme. The squid ink gives a nice silkiness to the pasta - I’m hooked.

Anything seafood for me. Delicious.

Monday: random salad mishmash with cold chicken from yesterday.

Thanks, Neely! The mini-trifles were served in 2" square hard plastic boxes, which I've never seen before. They're like the acrylic boxes that jewelry findingd are stored in, but no lid or lip for one. Obviously meant for food service and to look cool. They came with little tasting spoons, like they have at ice cream shops for samples, stuck in straight up. there were cake, about 3/16" thick, and little berries, cream, jam, etc., as much like a trifle as you can get that small. All topped with a thich sweetened cream piped over it, mimicking the look of the cream over a normal trifle, but I didn't really like that part, and ate the rest out from under. It came off as more elegant, and less dolly tea party than it sounds, and tasted like trifle without being a wet mess.

So, they were supposed to dress the trifle platter with whole berries for those who didn't want cake or cream. When they were missing, I asked. They brought them out on top of the trifles! Oy! But I found a few today, in the fridge at not-my-kitchen. It doesn't photograph well. This is my best. They looked better without the big berries. The dish is actually flared slightly. Maybe 1.5”.

Tuesday: I ate lunch out so just a chicken sandwich for dinner. Last of the Sunday roast. Not worth a picture.

Wednesday: broke the no meat in the week rule. I was making a huge lasagne for the weekend so we just had some of the Bolognese sauce on linguine.

We have three vegetarians coming to Xmas eve crab feed. Two will be pescatarians for the night, the third is unrepentant, so I am trying to think of something fun for her.

My experiment tonight is a ”fish” made from zucchini and squash, topped and roasted. For try #1 I’m mostly testing if it will hold together and brown well. The provisional topping is flour, garlic, salt, lemon pepper, and melted butter. I may try another with miso and teriyaki sauce, if the concept seems worth pursuing. If not, then I have to come up with something else.

Another possibility is big mushrooms cut into rounds and cooked like scallops.

Actually assembling a crab from vegetables seems too hard.

That looks cool! How's the texture? Crustaceans and bugs, being invertebrates aren't classed with animals by some vegetarians, while others eschew all livings with independent mobility. (I've been reading about plant "intelligence" which makes the whole subject murky.) Perhaps before committing more time and effort you should make sure that they want to eat a representation of something they wouldn't eat? Perhaps they'd rather you made squash mushrooms or mushroom squash?

The local vegetarian is napping, and probably out for the night. Our ” French daughter “ is visiting, and still very much jet lagged. Since I made this for her, I’ll leave it for when she’s awake.

The topping is too thick, it obscures the “fish”, so I need to come up with something else. But I think the general concept may be worth try #2.

Even if you think the topping is too thick JL it still does resemble a fish and presentation looks really good.

Two meals both dictated by the weather.

First one a beef stew with mashed pumpkin, mashed potato and pureed cauliflower

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2nd meal below is smoked salmon salad. The round brown ’things’ are sliced pickled walnuts, and the white balls are mini bocconcini.

What kind of walnut is round?

Neely said the walnuts are sliced. A cross section of a pickled walnut would be round.

The walnuts are pickled whole in their shell, so roundish. I’m pretty sure they are picked and pickled green/ unripe, so the hard wood like shell of ripened walnuts wouldn’t apply.

Yes, they are pickled green well before the inner shell starts to harden. I made them once but they weren't as good as the commercial ones. Too salty.

I am assuming this must be an english walnut, rather than a black walnut?

Yes, they are made with Juglans regia, English Walnut. But they could be made with any species of walnut.

Mind blown! I've never heard of pickled walnut nubs before. Apparently, in the USA, they're popular amongst foragers, but need a bunch of sugar in the pickling to fight the tannins. We had friends with trees when I was a kid, and I had to crack hundreds of them. I don't know, but I don't think the people with the trees knew about, or perhaps liked, pickled. :) Cool!

When we had our other holiday home in the country it was in an area that is especially fine for growing fruit and nuts, being elevated and therefore cooler with winter frosts and even rare snow. The town is called Bright. Ages ago people had planted many walnut trees in orchards and in home gardens which had thrived in this climate, also many sweet chestnuts but that’s another story.

I know some women in the town used to pickle the green walnuts but I hadn’t tasted them …. yes the English juglans regia as opposed to juglans nigra the American Black walnut ( isn’t the internet wonderful ) Anyway, when I saw the jar in an English/ Irish speciality area of the supermarket I decided to buy and try.

Since coming back from Ireland this year I have been visiting the Irish / English area of our big supermarket mainly to buy Barrie’s Tea, an Irish tea which I fell in love with when I was there on holiday. The speciality areas have goodies from many countries.

We always have a jar of Opies pickled walnuts in our cupboard. They're eaten with cold cuts and cheese in much the same way as pickled onions or chutney. This is quite a good explanation. Pickled Walnuts Recipe - How to Make Pickled Walnuts | Hank Shaw https://share.google/LjrkMN6liMvZnPs4y They are brined first which removes tannins. The sugar is about 1/4 the weight of the walnuts. They will stain your skin unless you wear gloves.

It is important to gather the walnuts when they are green and before the shell inside the green covering has hardened. If a cocktail stick or pin hits a shell when the green is pierced they are too old. Here that's no later than June.

I put all of my energy into finishing the wrapping for tomorrow. Phew! It's done. So dinner was scrounging. There was a container of tomato feta soup from TJ's whick I'd gotten as too weary to cook food for the party. Well today was the day! It's not bad. Served with the shrimp and curryish roasted leftover vegetables salad I made with CF help, a nice young cheese, and bakery Hanukkah cookies.

What I need now is room in the fridge so I can cook—and the energy to do so.

I made a 16" pizza last night for dinner. We always have leftovers it's so HUGE! I made the dough in one of my bread machines....easy peasy....Delish! It was a meat-lovers pizza. Italian sausage and pepperoni. I've been making these since I was a kid. Mom's specialty! She was too cheap to buy a pizza pan, always a square cookie sheet. :0)

I've never heard of pickled walnuts....

It all runs together. I made a bunch of stuff ahead of the holiday and dangerous rain, but the downside to maaking room in the fridge is there's nothing much in the fridgee, and before that, there was no room for soup. At the last minute before the rain I got some delivery of basics to fill in. Maybe soup Friday. A nice chicken and avocado salad, with crunchy lettuce lasted until today.

We had our traditional Christmas Eve crab feed.

Crab hearts are so cute they look like smiling stars.

One friend is a big snob and brought her own lobster.

DD made these oyster mushroom “scallops” for a vegetarian friend.

Tomorrow the snoozy kittens will have their first taste of crab.

JL Looks like a fun and delicious evening was had by all, however those crab hearts give me the creeps, can’t look at them.

We had a traditional Christmas lunch with all the usual suspects plus a large rocket, beetroot, goats cheese and walnut salad.

We are now into Boxing Day the 26th and I must say the salad went better as a left over with the cold turkey and left over sage and onion stuffing below

The drink is Chinotto (Italian)

Oh mercy, I'm behind again. I had a couple of "set backs", but I think I"m good to go now. My family will have their Christmas dinner on Saturday, so I'm in the middle of planning and cooking.

John, kittens are so cute when they're sleeping. :-) I've never seen a crab heart either, that's....interesting.

Here we've been eating and I'm cooking. This was baked salmon with roasted potatoes and a pea and peanut salad.

I made a surprisingly good tomato basil soup with white beans:

And enchilada casserole with salad on the side:

And some of Diane/craftyrn's cuccidati. I know, not really heart healthy, but Elery loves it:

Saturday's meal is scheduled to be glazed ham, stuffed and rolled turkey breast, green beans, au gratin potatoes, homemade rolls, a potato dressing that I"ve never tried before, some sausage and cheese stuffed "shotgun shells" which is a manicotto stuffed and wrapped with bacon, then smoked, a Godiva chocolate cheesecake, lemon meringue bars, snickerdoodle apple cobbler and the usual plate of cookies and fudge, with some Chex Mix and firecrackers on the side. I'll try to remember to take pictures...

Annie

No pics but today I made, predictably, crab cakes. Lump crab, sauted shallots and garlic, eggs, panko, etc, panfried in butter and olive oil with truffle salt. Yummy.

Been a while since I posted here. Nice to see so many of the members still here.

We had our traditional Tourtiere for Christmas Eve Tourtiere

including "Sharon's Chile Sauce" that Moe loves that I started making 8 years ago. I had to adjust the recipe in order to use canned tomatoes. I canned 11 jars this Christmas and gave a number of jars away. Everyone seems to love this sauce.

And for Christmas dinner I went with Chateaubriand for two with a wine sauce, and sides of Parisienne potatoes, sauted mushrooms, Brussels Sprouts, cauliflower and glazed carrots for Moe.

Beautiful! she said waving ever so hard!

@thibeaultstable77 - Great to see you again! I forgot about tourtieres, and yours of course look great!

It IS great to see you again. Elery just asked me about tourtieres and said he saw yours on Facebook, I wondered if you had some of Sharon's chile sauce for them.

Annie

I made lasagna with a layer of spinach. Lots of leftovers! It was delicious! YUM!

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@thibeaultstable77...The Tourtiere is very pretty! The top swirl is artful....

Thanks Foodonastump and Annie.

Nicole, I like the idea of the addition of spinach. It sounds delicious.

I had a nice big chicken ready to roast for dinner. I gave Moe a choice between a traditional chicken dinner with all the sides or Fred's Italian chicken. Both are favourites.

His choice was Fred's.

When we lived in Sault Ste. Marie, we use to go to a restaurant called the New Marconi and the owner was a man named Fred. Fred liked to sing and he entertained his customers by singing old classics from Dean Martin, Sinatra, etc...

On the menu was an Italian chicken dish served with pasta that we both really enjoyed. After we moved away from the Sault, I recreated this dish and have served it often over the 28 years we have been gone from there.

Served tonight with Spaghetti Aglio e Olio.

Breakfast (a rare meal here) was bread and butter or marinated goat's cheese. I finally was up-and-down-able enough to bake. Nothing like the bakery ad worthiness of Ann's sourdough—but mighty tasty. It's the same general improv dough as I've been making all year, but stuff hanging in the fridge, rather than veggies. The crust is firm, but not hard, the crumb has a really nice sponge texture, open but without voids (exactly how I like it). in it, besides the basics are what's left of the roasted red pepper dip, herb sour cream dip, a judicious amount not-very-sweet of cranberry sauce, and a handful of diced pears. It's pink and tangy and surprising, totally irreproducible, but good, so to be enjoyed while it's here. And how jolly is it to wake up to pink bread?

Lovely to see Ann with her delicious food and great photos which I have admired for so long.

Lasagna with spinach sounds good to me.

And plllog your breads look and sound delicious even if the method is unfathomable to a non bread maker like me. Annie your tomato basil and white bean soup is calling me… we love soup and this sounds real good.

I have started a new thread as this one was getting a little long.