Happy Holidays!

Well it's Christmas day at last. After weeks of working the buns off the shopping season has come to a close pretty much. All my plans for Christmas, as usual, went by the wayside. The holidays kicked my tuccas. My family and friends will be receiving their gifts late and I hope they don't mind. Most of my friends understand because I see them often and they know Christmas in retail is insane, especially for those in charge. My family, well that remains to be seen. None of them are here. My husband's family is in Europe and our jobs prohibit us from being with them during the holidays. I'm sure they get that we work a lot. And they must know by now we are crap at organization and timing. As long as everyone knows we think of them often, that's all that matters during this time of year or any time and we do think of them often.

So anyway, on with my Christmas. We've been pretty low key these last few years. Since it's just us and we don't really want for much stuff it's mostly a day of resting, good food, each other's company and A Christmas Story (the only Christmas movie I could seriously watch over and over again each Christmas without getting sick of it and it's the only Christmas movie I own).

For first breakfast we had our usual fruit, a couple bananas and cranberry juice. As I was preparing second breakfast, Lex juiced some oranges on our new kitchen aid juicer attachment and we drank that as preparations continued.

Second breakfast or maybe brunch looked like thisand consisted of Sweet Potato with Cinnamon Drizzle (my drizzle is more of a blob but it was damn good) and Tofu Scram from Get it Ripe and tempeh bacon from VWAV. This was delicious. It's only the 2nd and 3rd recipes I have made from Get it Ripe and both are winners.

One delicious meal is not enough. Not for the first day off I have had in two weeks so on with lunch.

Even though I did not get to prep like I wanted to for all this things came together in time for a late lunch at about 2:30. I was pretty proud of myself.
Dinner is served
We have some teriyaki baked tofu (I used a teriyaki marinade that Lex brought me from the tip top of Vermont), cranberry sauce, Poppy Seed Pull Apart Rolls from the Vegan Brunch testing, the famous green bean casserole, mashed taters with a touch of garlic and loads of chives, on top we have GIR recipe #4- Miso Gravy, and simple mashed rutabaga. This was all awesome and there is plenty of leftovers for later tummy grumblings.

I'm so glad everything turned out so nice. So on to the treats.
There was chocolate of course.
I found the Terra Nostra bars at Healthy Living. We've tried their chocolate before from City Market. They had carried them for a hot minute before they decided not to because they didn't sell fast enough or something. This is what happened with the So Delicious Coconut Yogurt and the Temptation Ice Cream but I'm not bitter (read here, I am bitter but I put up with it because they do still have some good stuff they just irritate me sometimes with their half efforts). The Lindt Dark Santa was a given as it's a delicious chocolate vegan Santa but what made this Santa even more special was my friend Dave adding a filling to this once hollow chocolate figure. Dave makes the most delicious vegan ganache, this one spiked with a little Amaretto. He penetrated Santa's wimpy aluminum foil defences topped it up with insanely good ganache. I mean really, this stuff is easily $3 a truffle good.

For my own homemade goodies I managed to make these ahead of time.

Peanut Brittle

Fudge from Ricki at Diet, Dessert and Dogs. This was rockin' awesome. Lex used some expletives in a good way to describe it's tastiness.

After all this chocolate craziness you'd think I'd be passed out on the floor in a puddle of my own drool but I do have an unusually high chocolate tolerance which I attribute to my mother who was also a chocoholic.

The only present actually open on this Christmas day was a gift from the inlaws. They definitely get that I spend a lot of time in the kitchen and wish me to do it in style.
If you can't tell from the worlds worst picture there we have an apron and oven mitts. This apron is much appreciated as it fits better then the BBQ man style one we currently have. Now we have a more his and hers apron set up. I am especially enjoying this apron for it's kind of vintage look even though it's new. Pretty neato.

I've rambled on enough I think for one post. Now that the holidays are over I hope to get more regular posts in. Even if they all aren't as exciting as this one.

Happy Holidays to everyone!

Oh and just in case you were wondering how Ralphie (Peter Billingsley) is lookin' these days.

Photo courtesy of A Christmas Story House