Christmas Madness!

Elizabeth, Chelsea and Candy in front of Chelsea's gorgeous centerpiece



The spread



Daddy carving up the turkey










Christmas Eve:

Starts out with me running around the grocery store looking for gruyere to make my savory cheese puffs, and CURSING myself for being too disorganized to get it in time from Steve's store. So, I'm wondering if Ementaler is going to be a good substitute all by itself, or if I should combine it with some cheddar or Havarti to kick it up a notch, so I call Steve. He first chastises me for not buying it at the store, but then greenlights my substitution. OK, good. I get home and shoot off an email to Steve apologizing for being so hyper-holiday on the phone, and assure him I'm not on drugs or anything. (Normally I'm very chill, but when I'm rushing and need to get a bunch of things done in a short amount of time I turn into what my ex calls "work mode," from my days working as a server.)

Now, gotta prep the dough for the rolls since it has to be refrigerated overnight. And it's sticky, why is it sticky? I put so much flour in it! Ugh! And the egg wasn't even that big! Now I'm wondering if I measured the milk incorrectly or put the yeast in too-warm water. Curse my inadequate memory! Ugh. Whatever, it's going in the fridge and I'll deal with potential disasters tomorrow. I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off since I have to leave at 1 p.m. to work at my parents' restaurant. Merry Fricking Christmas to me. And since Alessandra is in South Dakota with her husband, my options were 1) work at the restaurant, make money, and have lobster, or 2) sit at home by myself and cry watching some stupid Christmas movie. Naturally, I chose option 1.

Mmmm mmmmm mmmm and Francesco (the chef) can make him some lobster. He's cute, awesome, and I have a soft spot for a man who can cook. He's from Venice and we talked about Padova (where I used to live, which is 30 minutes from Venice). He used to have a one-Michelin-star restaurant there. Too bad he's 40 and married with child. *sigh* The lobster was grilled, so it was super tasty, and kind of crunchy, since he split it in two to do the grilling. And I started with a baby octopus salad, and my dad paired it all with this AMAZING Soave (white wine from my Dad's region of Italy). And almost all my tables left me 20%. Not bad for being out of practice for a few years. It's totally weird using a computer to send the orders (I know, I'm a fricking restaurant dinosaur), but whatever, I'm adaptable. And my dad keeps going to the tables and being like, "dis is my dodder, she is going to be bigtime lawyer," and I'm like, "Dad, shut the hell up, they don't want their server to be smarter than them, they want to imagine me going home to my trailer park and 3 children under 5." But then they think he is cute, and don't really understand what he says anyway, so, I ended up OK.

Christmas Day:

Morning Prep

The alarm goes off at 9. Ugh. I run around the kitchen deciding which dishes I need to wash, when I see it. A bowl with something that looks like ghee in it. Oh no. It can only be… the melted butter I forgot to put in the rolls. At least I figured out why they were sticky. So I take the dough out of the fridge, melt a new half stick of butter and work it in. Roll crisis averted. I KNEW there was something wrong with the dough. Now, onto the Zuppa Inglese. I made a custard for it (which was really better than the finished dessert), and layered it with Amaretto and Frangelico soaked poundcake slices, and topped it with some homemade whipped cream. Then, onto the cheese puffs. I’m starting to run short on time, but I’ll be damned if I went through the gruyere debacle only to not make them. In the middle of the recipe I get confused, BECAUSE THERE IS AN INSTRUCTION MISSING. I have two piles of dough, and nowhere did it say, COMBINE. So I hope that now is the time to do the combining, get a second opinion from Mom, and then start baking them. (Luckily, they turned out fine.) Now, for the hard part. Blue cheese stuffed dates wrapped in bacon. I don’t have a recipe, but I saw Sidoe do it. OMG I DID NOT BUY PITTED DATES!!!!! So now I have to figure out how to pit a fricking date. 30 minutes and one sticky chopstick and pair of tweezers later, they are pitted. What a pain, I am not making that mistake again. I awkwardly stuff them with blue cheese (Sidoe made this all look way easier, but she is a professional chef), wrap them in bacon and pop them in the oven after the cheesepuffs.



My cheese puff yummies (we ate all the bacon things before I could take a picture)

Then I take a shower. In the middle of the shower the smoke alarm goes off. I didn’t think about the fact that bacon releases a lot of grease and since I put the dates on a cookie sheet and not a jelly roll pan, all the grease is just dripping and catching fire at the bottom of my oven. It is at this moment I realize I have not wrapped any presents. I’m in my towel, opening windows and disabling the smoke detectors. I decide I need reinforcements. I call my parents. On each of their cell phones, and on their house phone, and they don’t pick up any of them NOR do they call me back. *ugh!* This is why people hate Christmas. Anyway, we finally get our crap together and leave.



My Zuppa Inglese------------>


Dinner!

So we arrive at casa Redcay, and let everyone go to town on the appetizers. Daddy opens this amazing wine, made by the people who do Sassicaia... it goes really well with the bacon date things. To my delight, Robby has in fact already MADE the eggnog, all we have to do is fold in some egg whites later. Robby also made the mashed potatoes. He has skill, but this time they were a little chunky for my taste, but the flavors were spot on. And the problem is if you overmash, they get gluteny and become inedible. So erring on the side of undermashing was a good call. The turkey was absolutely gorgeous, brined to perfection. Plus the Redcays actually know how to make gravy so it was super tasty too.



Elizabeth working her green bean magic --->



The modified stuffing recipe turned out good, they substituted corn and other veggies for the apricots, but it was a little too herby for me. Too many flavors and I just get overwhelmed. But there was this wild rice dressing with pomegranate seeds, and that was super incredible. Apparently a pain to make, but everything worth it is a pain to make, right? Of course there were my rolls and AG’s sweet potato buttery goodness with chestnuts. Green beans a la Elizabeth, Bristol Farms cranberry sauce, and creamed spinach to round out the table. Then we took a break, opened some presents and then it was onto dessert. AG made a pumpkin pie, and homemade cookies (which Elizabeth decorated) and then we had egg nog and my Zuppa Inglese. The Zuppa was O.K. With the eggnog it was just too much custardy alcohol. Oh well, you never know you don’t like something until you try it. Now when is someone going to invite me over for Chanukah? I can rock some latkes and noodle kugel with the best of them!



My parents are too fricking cute!