christmas recap

hello everyone! i've missed you! i'm back in virginia after a long but lovely week in NJ with the family. i have a habit of going basically radio-silent whenever i'm ensconced in the familial isolation of new jersey, so i'm once again behind on the blogging and blog-reading. i'll either have PLENTY of time to catch up while i'm at work for the next freaking FOUR DAYS, or those days will be legitimately insane because it's the end of the quarter and you won't hear from me again until january. which will it be? no one knows! how exciting!

my mom was super tickled with the response to her christmas menu, and i am pleased to report that it was every bit as delicious as anticipated. i forgot to take a picture of the truffled quail eggs, because we were busy playing a rousing family game of Monty Python Fluxx and drinking Cava during that course, but the lobster salad was fantastic:

and HOLY FREAKING LORD, the duck was insane. you all seriously need to come to my mom's house for dinner sometime, i am not even kidding. i couldn't get a picture of the duck that did it any justice, unfortunately... but here it is with the goose-fat roasted potatoes and the veggies:

i mean, trust me, i love me some christmas ham, but... dude. this is some seriously good stuff.

our menu on tuesday was a sliiiiiightly less highbrow though, mainly due to its inclusion of cheez whiz as an ingredient. ACTUAL CHEEZ WHIZ. i'm not sure if i can adequately explain how wildly against everything my mom stands for and believes in a jar of cheez whiz is. however, she is nothing if not authentic, and she was making cheese steaks... and cheese steaks require cheez whiz:

i guess i should also mention that the reason we were having cheese steaks in the first place was because my mom had some bison she had to use up. so while the sandwiches did include cheez whiz... they were with freaking bison meat, so.. yeah.

welcome to fast food at my mom's house :-)

as for christmas itself, i made out exceptionally well. i had asked for a "real" food processor and a speaker dock for my ipod, and i got both: a GORGEOUS kitchenaid processor, and a very sweet speaker system / radio / ipod dock that lets you "tag" songs you hear on the radio, and then later when you plug your ipod back into your computer, it remembers all the tagged info and sets you right up in itunes with all the saved info. pretty neat.

my cats, of course, also got some excellent gifts from their grandparents. pictures will be forthcoming shortly if i can get my act together this week. i hope all your christmases were fantastic!