A LadyLee Christmas Dinner 2014

So the holiday season is here...

And we are all getting our eat on...

This could be a good thing. Or not. I am fifty-fifty on that. I am making sure to get my fruit and vegetables, but I could be doing better.

So I did something a little different for Christmas. I'm not all that interested in the whole traditional turkey dinner. If it was just me I don't think I would've cooked anything. But I wanted to make sure my sister had something she liked, especially since she cooked for Thanksgiving. (I wanted her to cook for Christmas so I wouldn't have to, but that would have made me a BAD big sister).

So I decided to bake some fish. I found some flounder at a good price. So I baked that with a little salt, pepper, paprika and lemon.

That is simple enough. Can't mess that up. At all.

But then I got fancy. I baked some shrimp. I've never done that before.,

I also got the notion to make stuffed flounder. I stuffed it with a mix of pureed shrimp, peppers, onions and celery. That was interesting enough. Nothing to write home about. I suppose I have to work on the seasoning of it. But I don't see that happening no time soon.

I also bought a parchment of cod fish topped with cranberry sauce and winter root vegetables. That was good. I wonder who came up with that. It is more than a notion. I'm not that creative.

Then there is rice. I bought a little biryani rice and some wild rice.

The wild rice had pecans and cranberries in it. The biryani rice is a very flavorful indian rice, made with curry, peas, raisins, cinnamon and other spices. Both were very good.

And then there are the traditional parts of our meal. Cornbread and dressing.

That's that bootleg, i.e., make a pan of cornbread and use some of it for dressing. Save a little bit of the cornbread. Lord knows I didn't want to make another pan of cornbread. Unnecessary.

And then there were the beans.

I tell you what... Kentucky made some GREAT green beans for thanksgiving. She gave me the recipe. I carried it out in a crock pot and it worked well. A bit too much meat for me, though (used a smoked turkey leg). So I had to flick a lot of that out of the way. But my goodness... they sure were seasoned well. I'm gonna try it again just with an onion. I am sure they won't taste as good, but oh well.

I had a lovely fruit bowl!

I topped that with some chopped pecans and some sauce made from vanilla almond milk. Good stuff. Still eating on that these mornings.

Roasted Brussels sprouts are AWESOME. That is all.

I baked cookies for a few of my coworkers. These were the few leftovers I still had at home.

Kentucky likes chocolate chip cookies. I like oatmeal raisin pecan cookies.

And Kentucky had the nerve to make another million dollar pie.

Ugh. Don't get me wrong. It is very good. But she just wants to make a pie, eat a slice, THEN LEAVE THE REST WITH ME.

Just ugh. I start having issues if I fool around with too much dairy or white sugar.

UGH.

I have some small aluminum pans. She is going to have to make individual ones and freeze them. Or keep it away from me.

So that's my Christmas dinner. And it was pretty good because it wasn't heavy.

Thank goodness for that!