How to Make a Delicious Christmas Dinner

How to Make a Delicious Christmas Dinner


3 Days Before Dinner


Three days before our Christmas dinner, we bought all our ingredients, including a frozen turkey. Note for future Christmases, 3 days is not enough time to defrost a 17 pound turkey.


2 Days Before Dinner


Two days before our Christmas dinner, wash the half - thawed turkey to prepare it for brining



Prepare the brine. This year, we used a pre-packaged brine mix. We usually make it ourselves, but last year, we bought a brining kit for the brining bag and figured we might as well use the brine mix this year. It was by President's Choice, and pretty darn delicious:



Before putting the clean turkey in the bag, we took silly pictures of the turkey's bum:



We then triple bagged the turkey, and slowly filled the bag with the appropriate amount of water. Sadly, the only liquid measuring cup I have is a one-cup measure, so this took a while:



The water needs to be really cold, so we filled it with all of the ice cubes we had. Unfortunately, it meant that I had to sacrifice some robot ice cubes for the greater good:



The turkey fit perfectly in the fridge in the bags! No more sketchy sink or balcony brining for us, we're pros now!



One Day Before Dinner


I made custard and mixed it with pumpkin puree for the ice cream base for the delicious dessert. This has to be super cold when going through the ice creaming process, so has to be refrigerated for several hours.



All mixed up:



With the leftover egg whites (the custard required 5 egg yolks), I made meringue nests to hold the ice cream. I had a lot of extra meringue, so used it to make itsy-bitsy cookies:



The morning of the Dinner


Jacqueline prepared her famous stuffing using some bread, leftover crackers, onions, celery, eggs and magic. This must be done in advance as the stuff should be cold when stuffing the turkey to avoid scary things like food-poisoning.



The Afternoon of the Dinner


Jacqueline stuffed the clean turkey: 



Then she sewed up the openings:



The whole thing was wrapped in bacon:



We fashioned a splatter shield from tin foil:



After the turkey was in the oven, I made the ice cream using my fancy-pants ice cream maker. I just pour the cold custard into the machine, being careful not to spill it all over myself :)



When it reached the consistency of a thick soft-serve ice cream, I transfered it to a plastic container so it could firm up in the freezer:



We checked on the turkey to make sure none of the bacon had fallen out of place:



Then we pealed potatoes, a squash, and a rutabaga for the assorted side dishes. This one looked like a heart!



After the bacon looked nice and crispy, we took the turkey out of the oven:



Then, I took a pretty picture of the bacon before Casper jumped on the table, pushed the plate on the floor and gobbled up all the bacon:



While the turkey was doing it's business, we worked on sides.


Here are the roasted garlic mashed potatoes:



Turkey is ready!!



While the turkey was in the oven, we wrapped some sweet potatoes in foil and roasted them alongside the turkey. MMmmmmm



We mashed the roasted sweet potatoes with some nutmeg and cinnamon for the sweet potato casserole and topped it off with marshmallows. This went in the oven to make the marshmallows nice and melty.





Jacqueline made magical gravy from the delicious turkey and bacon drippings:





The Dinner!


A plate piled high with food and gravy :D





After the Dinner!


And the finishing act, home-made pumpkin ice cream in individual meringue nests!

Cookie Party 2011!

This weekend, Jacqueline, JP and I held out annual Christmas Cookie Party! This year was even bigger and better than ever! Jacqueline and I each made 3 kinds of cookies / desserts, and JP made some delicious savoury snacks.  This post will mostly be pictures of the amazing cookies, tarts, squares and snacks that we made.


I used my trusty cookie press again, and made some vanilla sugar cookies in the shape of snowflakes. Here they are all squeezed out on the cookie sheet:





And the finished product:







I also made brown butter rice krispie treats. I've made these a few times in the past, and they've always been a big hit, and I figured they'd be a quick and painless dessert that I could whip up without using the oven. For some reason, it seemed to take forever to melt the marshmallows. Here they are taking their time to melt:





Thankfully, they melted eventually, and I had nice smooth marshmallow to mix with rice krispies for delicious treats:








I smushed all the rice krispie marshmallowness into a cookie sheet:





When it was cool, I cut out squares and arranged them on a cake platter. The most difficult part was cutting the rice krispies, I thought I was going to accidentally cut my hand off! It's like a wedding cake made of rice krispie squares!







I also made molasses spice cookies which are always a big hit (but I somehow managed to forget to photograph them, whoops).


Jacqueline made a GIANT batch of gingerbread cookies. She says the recipe was incredibly involved, but based on how these turned out, I'd say it was worth it. The cookies were nice and hard on the outside, but soft and cake like on the inside!





She also made two types of chocolate tarts, one with chocolate ganache inside and the other with some sort of whipped topping, both won rave reviews:











I saw in one of my Martha Stewart books a decorating idea to make snowmen out of marshmallows, so I made a few plateful of those as well. I made 2 plates, one with snowmen on the "South Side" gang, and one on the "North Side" gang. Sadly, most of the marshmallow snowmen went uneaten, but I hope they added some festive cheer to the table :)








We also had an assortment of savoury snacks:


JP made prosciutto wrapped melon and prosciutto wrapped breadsticks, and it was all very delicious!








He also prepared some cheese and crackers:







Jacqueline's boyfriend Boyan made smoked salmon on mini-toast:





and a delicious (and colourful) veggie platter:



As an added bonus this year, I managed to learn how to take timelapse videos with my old camera and was able to put together a small video showing some of the party, enjoy!

One of a Kind Show!

I LOVE The One of Kind Show and Sale and have been attending every show for the past few years. I wish I had unlimited money to spend at these shows, because everything is so very very pretty.

This year has been extra exciting because I was part of the One of a Kind Circle One Advisory Committee, and had the opportunity to give the show some feedback and learn about exciting things they had planned! One perk of being in the committee was free tickets for each show this year (the Spring and the Christmas show) and $100 in One of a Kind dollars to spend at each show.

I visited the show twice this year, first on Sunday and again tonight so I could check out both the five day and six day vendors. On Sunday, I went with a few friends, and we all had pretzels during snack time:

This was quite possibly, the saltiest pretzel I'd ever had! On the bright side, we got to sit next to a giant Christmas tree!

Some of the vendors I really liked included:

This one that made little boxes and drawers out of driftwood. I wanted to go back, but forgot to, whoops:

I also loved:

- Biko jewellery - Very pretty jewellery including this really awesome acorn that OPENED

- Reiner's Originals - They had the most adorable elephant ottomans, but they were WAY too heavy for me to carry home on the streetcar and subway, I'll have to find them somewhere else when I have a car with me

- Rover - They had the cutest little peacoats for puppies

- Annie Tung- She had beautiful little pearl rings

- Thomas J Suh - Really nice piggy banks -- if only I were still young enough to have one

- Hoi Bo- Fancy pants bags!

- Beebop and Wally - I very nearly bought an adorable grey capelet from here, but it snowed today and I realized my window for wearing a not-so-warm capelet has already passed for this year. Sad.

One of the mainstays of the show are the personalized ornament sellers, here's one:

I ended up buying a brooch from the other one of a little gingerbread man!

It was only $2.99 and I've been wearing it on a gray blazer to show my Christmas spirit :D

It was really difficult to decide what else to get, but in the end, I also bought:

A really pretty cameo ring from Toodlebunny that was only $30.00! (EDIT: I just noticed that the ring is upside down, whoops, I am also too lazy to fix it -- so enjoy :D)

A Christmas present for Jacqueline from The Dog Party:

And, my favourite one of a kind find, a super awesome plexiglass elephant to display on my wall from Rabbet for $65.00!

I was debating between some bowls and the elephant, but in the end the elephant won because I really wanted to spend my One of a Kind dollars on something silly that I wouldn't spend practical money on :D I love it!

I can't wait until the Spring show!! Sadly I won't have any more One of a Kind dollars.