back from my hiatus from cooking/blogging! it’s been a little hectic the past few months (combined with my laziness to unpack cookware or go grocery shopping). but anyway, it was my first christmas away from family (EVER!) this past year. fortunately i had some visitors! here was the menu for our christmas eve dinner:

caramelized shallot mashed potatoes
roast beef with mushrooms
corn casserole

two days before christmas eve:

salt, garlic and thyme mixture for the rib roast

all done and ready to sit in the fridge!

christmas eve:

preparing the wild mushroom sauce and rib roast all ready for the oven! 

medium rare - nomnomnom

this is the only picture i had of the preparation of the mashed potatos…lots of shallots!

corn casserole - a thanksgiving staple that i love so much i made it for christmas too!

good wine and good company :)

By JENNIFER SCHAFFER

Iced Tea

Not the kind you get for 99 cents at 7/11, but the kind you pay 4.99 for when you’re trying to cut back on coffee. You are so prep school, so ‘popular quotes from The Great Gatsby’ with your mint leaves and white sugar, you’re cool and condescending and I like you with my salads but you’re right, at the end of the day you’re not your warmer counterparts; you’re not there to comfort, I’m sorry for that night when I expected you to be.

Cheap beer

I’d apologize for acting on my impulses if you hadn’t been so fun. You’re hard to swallow at first, but you grow on me quickly, you make me feel exactly like what I am [but pretend I am not]: a broke college student with a taste for things she won’t be able to afford for another decade. You are no pretense and no prologue, you give me exactly what I expect, we’d both hoped for more but we’re okay like this for now, tongues together for a few hours that we’ll blush off the next day with a sore stomach and headache. Your charms wear off quickly but a few weeks later I’ll be there at your door again, doing things I regret, trying to grow accustomed, trying to accommodate my expectations to what you can give.

Sangria

In another world we’d be sophisticated and worldly but in your current incarnation, you are potential that will never be actualized, the quality just isn’t there, and you know that I can’t roll my R’s, you know that I can’t fake it.

Coffee

You make me think I want more, I need more, you make me shake, I love you and I’ve loved you for so long that the necessity of you and the pleasure of you have become interchangeable, and sometimes, very rarely but sometimes, I wonder if contrary to my conscious belief I wasn’t born loving you but, rather, grew accustomed to your taste because everywhere I went, there you were, the quickest drug, the cheapest habit, your face on every street.

Herbal Tea

I want to curl up in your lap and kiss you with just our lips and tap our toes together in fuzzy socks, I want you on the kitchen counter after I’ve finished walking the dog, there are times when I am restless and I tell you I’ve got to go, but you hold me to your chest, the smooth enclave between your neck and shoulder, and I fall asleep without protest. I want to lie next to you and read novels in bed.

Green Tea

You’re a little bitter but you’re smart, you make me a better person, I think.

Hot Chocolate

God will I ever get over you, will I ever be able to think of you without smiling, will there ever be a more adult treat I can love the same way I loved you, little marshmallows afloat in your smile, at first you were an indulgence but you grew to be more, you kept me warm and still so many nights when I wanted to kick or cry or kill myself, but you can’t drink warm cocoa for the rest of your life, and you’re not going anywhere, and in the summer you seem pointless, and when I’m not cold or lonely I’m okay without you, and I can’t be with someone I only need when it’s snowing.

Tequila shots

Damn you go down smooth, you are a quick kick to my synapses, you make me hot and bitter and then you make me cry. You are something I do not need, what I really crave is the bite of the lime, the sourness, the pucker in my cheek that has nothing to do with the burn in my throat, nothing to do with you.

Slurpie

You’re thrilling to the core, hyperactively sweet and I have brain-freeze levels of adoration for you. But you’re no good for me; the sugar rush of your wild cherry tongue and blue raspberry eyes leaves me discolored and discordant. I return to you every once in a while but I try not to think of that year, we had a good long run but I can’t stand the sound of an empty straw.

Absinthe

A disappointment. You were, you are, you always will be – no matter how much Hemingway I read.

Water

And then there is you.  You, of whom I cannot get enough.  You, who I am so lucky to have. You, with the blue eyes and the transparent heart and the endless ability to refresh me whether I am at my best or my worst, when my palate has tired, when I am left hung-over, over-caffeinated, over-sweetened, overcome with thirst. I have been grasping for you in every drink and now, unexpectedly, I have found myself doused. The essential, the only, the deceptively infinite. You, who I now see everywhere, who I now fear losing, but know – or rather, hope against logic and statistics and time – will not be lost. Water; baby, darling, I will love you while you last.

thoughtcatalog

i wanted something healthy to snack on so i bought some kale.

with truffle salt to dress it up

bake at 300F for about 15 min

voila!