First, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year (hopefully our Christmas tree conveys our sentiments to you and your families)! This year Casey was on-call at the hospital Christmas day and only had four days off the entire month so due to our lack of time to travel, our families joined us in our 770 square foot Winter Wonderland!
After living in an apartment for our entire marriage, I really thought that hosting a Christmas feast in our apartment would be impossible, but I pulled it off! Planning the feast took a lot of phone calls to Casey's mom about what to make, and how much to make. Since it was my first year to make the feast I really wanted to make everything on my own and I also wanted to make recipes that I could continue to make for years to come. I ordered a fresh turkey from Whole Foods and brined it in sugar, salt and a gallon of water for 24 hours. In the midst of pouring the salt and sugar brine over the turkey, that was sitting in the oven bags, I managed to brine myself in addition to the floor...not surprising. After licking, I mean, wiping the brine off of my clothes I made a fresh apple crumble pie, pecan pie and a sweet potato casserole. Following more cooking and calling for Batman to lick the spilled ingredients off the floor I wrapped presents, and prepared our winter wonderland for our first guests, Casey's parents.
Casey's parents arrived, Casey got home and we left to go celebrate my twenty.. something birthday :). We had a delicious dinner and a delicious bundt cake Diane and Chris, Casey's parents, brought from Southlake.
The next morning(Christmas Eve)we ate french toast, eggs and fruit salad and then opened presents. Casey FINALLY received the Snuggie he has been waiting for!
Nothing says sexy, like a Snuggie.
Following a fun morning, Diane and I began prepping for the feast while Casey napped and Chris ran some last minute errands to get some things at the store I forgot. The menu consisted of Turkey, cranberries, gravy, sweet potato casserole, garlic mashed potatoes, broccoli with pine nuts, sun dried tomatoes and Parmesan, and of course dessert.
Casey and I invited one of Casey's co-interns, Shawn, over to help us eat the feast. Shawn was nice enough to bring a key lime pie made with real key limes- it was delicious!
Enough with my talking, the rest of the pictures should explain our feast.
The table ready to go
Batty hoping to lick the turkey
The bird "Gobble, Gobble!"
Slicing the desserts (you can tell by how my bicep is bulging that I was working hard...if you look even closer, there are beads of sweat above my brow)
Shawn, our wonderful guest and photographer for the evening.
Everything tasted great (at least it did to me and all who were eating at least said so). The turkey was moist and not dry so my brine worked!
Who knows what the feast next year will look like but I am so glad I dominated the feast this year. Until next year....
To view the recipe click here.
