Christmas Dinner 2013

I prepared Christmas dinner this year. That was fine since I didn't cook for Thanksgiving.

My sister asked me a couple of weeks ago what I was doing for Christmas. I said nothing. (We don't have family gatherings for holidays. The last family gathering was when my brother Milk and Cookies came home from his deployment to Iraq.)

So she said she was coming over. And that meant I needed to cook.

Now I don't mind doing the whole traditional Christmas dinner cooking. She knows that. As long as she takes everything home with her. I don't eat a lot of meat, so any turkey leftovers left in the fridge will go bad.

But she wanted a plant based dinner... a vegetarian dinner. Heck, that is right up my alley. I could do that!

However I ask if she was SURE she didn't want turkey and dressing. She was... hesitant.

Hmmm...

So Christmas morning, I started cooking!  Here are, as we say in organic chemistry, my "starting materials"

I bought a plate of dressing from Big Daddy's dish, sauteed some more onions and peppers and threw them in there. Our student worker Kel is a vegetarian, and she said her father had found a stuffed mushroom recipe to acommadate her. I thought I would do something similar.

So here are the final dishes...

Sauteed kale and squash.

Sweet potato/ pear casserole, black eye peas, sweet english peas, wild rice and cornbread dressing...

Green beans...

And I stuffed the mushrooms with dressing. I also stuffed them with a wild rice mix (wild rice, pecans, cranberries- bought at whole foods).  And I also made roasted brussel sprouts (with basalmic vinegar)

Here's my sister's plate.

That's a nice healthy plate.

And Kentucky is kicking some nice fingernail polish there. I must take that from her.

That's my Christmas dinner.

I meant to roast some okra, but I totally forgot about it. I will do that this weekend. And we also nixed the salad. She didn't want any.

Oh, and we had pomegrante chip coconut icecream and almond/cashew vanilla ice cream.  I bought those because Kentucky has never had non-dairy based ice cream. I bought some that I eat from time to time. They are expensive ($6-8 a pint). But she wanted to know her alternatives.

Kentucky made some EXCELLENT chocolate zuchinni brownies. Excellent. Zuchinni (or spinach) relpaces the milk and eggs in a recipe.  I need that recipe from her. Or ask her to make some, lol.

We had a very good dinner overall, with not much "'itis" afterwards. And that was good.

And we had plenty of leftovers. Trust me, those won't go to waste. No sir. No ma'am.

No way!