Oh my goodness. I want to kill blogspot right now. So I've had all my entries all typed up and ready to post, but blospot keeps having these photo upload problems. I take the time to create these food collages, but certain ones can only be uploaded. It's bizarre. I was hoping blogspot would fix this in the last few days, but nothing... so I'm forced to upload all these huge images and, thus, have these ridiculously long entries. Also, this entry was meant to be posted before the New Year. My apologies!
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Oh how I love the holidays! Not only does it mean vacations, spending time with family and friends, but FOOD (and thus, food comas and more fat—jiggle jiggle). C’mon. You should have expected it! It’s a food blog after all… With that being said, I cooked and baked quite a bit this year. Let’s start with Thanksgiving! So the weekend before going home for Thanksgiving break, some lovely people threw a Thanksgiving dinner at a friend’s house. I volunteered to make dessert and automatically went on Punchfork for inspiration. One of the top rated desserts were peanut butter s’more turnovers. You know what a s’more is (in case you don’t, it consists of a roasted marshmallow and chocolate sandwiched between graham crackers), but what is this peanut butter an turnover business? Basically, you add a dollop of peanut butter on a s’more (minus the marshmallow, which will be added to the top later) and wrap the whole thing in puff pastry! AH! Not knowing how many people were going to show up, I made 48 servings. Yes. FORTY-EIGHT. I was like a machine. Thankfully, this recipe is really easy and everything is practically pre-made. I got a pretty good response from diners (one girl took some to go! That make me especially happy!), but I wasn’t a fan of them. It’s a heavy dessert and the portion is quite big. Very filling.
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Oh how I love the holidays! Not only does it mean vacations, spending time with family and friends, but FOOD (and thus, food comas and more fat—jiggle jiggle). C’mon. You should have expected it! It’s a food blog after all… With that being said, I cooked and baked quite a bit this year. Let’s start with Thanksgiving! So the weekend before going home for Thanksgiving break, some lovely people threw a Thanksgiving dinner at a friend’s house. I volunteered to make dessert and automatically went on Punchfork for inspiration. One of the top rated desserts were peanut butter s’more turnovers. You know what a s’more is (in case you don’t, it consists of a roasted marshmallow and chocolate sandwiched between graham crackers), but what is this peanut butter an turnover business? Basically, you add a dollop of peanut butter on a s’more (minus the marshmallow, which will be added to the top later) and wrap the whole thing in puff pastry! AH! Not knowing how many people were going to show up, I made 48 servings. Yes. FORTY-EIGHT. I was like a machine. Thankfully, this recipe is really easy and everything is practically pre-made. I got a pretty good response from diners (one girl took some to go! That make me especially happy!), but I wasn’t a fan of them. It’s a heavy dessert and the portion is quite big. Very filling.
Onward to the next Thanksgiving dish… or rather MEAL! My sister and I were crazy this year and decided we’d make Thanksgiving dinner. Now, I won’t go into detail about every dish, but I’ll list what we did make: green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, onions stuffed with stuffing, cranberry sauce, lemon-thyme turkey, and banana bread. Just looking at these pictures makes me full. I think the dish I want to highlight in this meal is the onions stuffed with stuffing. First of all, they’re gorgeous (especially the red onions). My sister and I spent like half and hour hollowing out these massive onions and were bawling as a result. Oh, and my hands smelled like onions for the next few days. Lovely. However, the stuffing in the onions was a bit of a disappointment. It wasn’t moist and flavorful enough. We did forget to bring the bacon fat (we prepped the night before in LA and drove all the way to San Diego for the actual dinner), so that played a huge role in the resulting dish. The onions were a bit too thick as well. Despite what it says online, I recommend only one layer of onion for the casing. It’ll be a bit difficult to get it that thin without breaking the whole thing, but it’s definitely possible. Oh, and the mashed potatoes—my favorite dish—were so creamy and delicious. Lots of butter and cream cheese, folks.
And finally, strawberry crumb bars. I made these scrumptious bars for a Christmas party and they’re quite popular with my friends. Now I’ve mentioned this lovely dessert before, but I always forget to take a picture of them! So here they are! Now, the original recipe calls for blueberries, but I go according to the season (or rather, what’s cheaper). Because strawberries are so big, I sliced half of them up and then blended the rest to create this strawberry concoction. Also, I add a good helping of brown sugar on top to create a more crunchy sweet crust. If you serve this dessert hot, it’s like cobbler! But if you want to serve it as crumb bars, I suggest refrigerating it overnight. This dessert is pretty easy to make and just has enough sweetness and tang.
With all that said and done, I think I—along with everyone around me—gained several pounds this year. Oh boy. Well, the New Year’s is coming up and that means the oh-so popular resolution of losing the weight… But for the time being, enjoy that extra jiggle you got and Happy Holidays!
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