A Little Christmas Potluck

New Food Night.  Do you guys just sit at your computer waiting for notification from me that we have eaten again?  I know you anticipate our meals.

This week we did a Christmas Potluck. Just because it's almost Christmas.  Now, what do you bring to a Christmas Potluck?

Well, Mr. Rick Googled Christmas Potluck and came up with this:

Doesn't it look good?  It was.  We called it Chicken Stuff.  Not sure what the real name was but it had chicken, potatoes, cream cheese, cream soup of some sort, other cheese, rosemary, olive oil.  Do I need to go on?  Man it was good.

I need to apologize to his co-workers. He typically has his food cooking in the crock pot at work all day before he comes over to our house. I know they all hope to have some leftovers the next day. This was really good. Sorry for the co-workers I don't think we left to much for them.

Now Gary Googled Wienie Wreath because I had told  him what I thought we should make.I wanted to be sure we had some real food to eat because when I think Christmas food my mind goes to cookies, candies, etc.  I Googled what to take to a Christmas Potluck.

What do you think? Little smokies wrapped in crescent roll dough.  We just cut strips of the crescent roll dough and wrapped around the smokies. Arranged them in a circle on our baking stone. the wreath at the top is a red bell pepper. He brushed the smokies with some melted butter, garlic salt and I think parsley before baking. Don't put bow on the wreath until after it bakes.

Rick said those were some of the cutest little wienies he had ever seen.

The dish of sauce behind the stone is a bar-b-q sauce, grape jelly and some Asian garlic Chili paste. Had a little kick to it for our little wienies.

Miss Annette brought over a corn salad.  She said it's Christmas because it has red and green in it. We didn't argue because we wanted to eat it.  LOL

This was canned corn, onions, red and green peppers and crushed up corn chips.  This was good stuff, Maynard!

K.C. made a gingerbread cream cheese dip and served it with graham crackers.

Man was this good! She took cream cheese, ginger, molasses, cool whip. This is like some kind of crack that you could addicted to!

Now Gary wanted a fruit cake. He knew that as soon as the theme for this week was decided.

I couldn't find my mom's fruit cake recipe (need to really dig through all my cook books and recipes  so I can find it).  So I went to Pinterest.  I made my first ever fruit cake. Rare praise from
 K. C. on this one, she said it wasn't as bad as she thought it was going to be.  She doesn't like fruit cake.

I had a wreath shaped bundt pan that we bought many, many years ago when we lived in Bethany. Glad we made that purchase - this is like the third time we have used it. In fact, I wasn't even sure I had it after my painting renovation this past summer. Thought it might have been one of the items K.C.convinced me I didn't need to hoard.

The batter is eggs, sugar, butter, lemon juice and flour. I think the batter by itself would be a great cake. Add in lots of candied cherries both red and green, candied pineapple, pecans and walnuts. And I do  mean LOTS!  The cake has to bake for 1 1/2 - 2 hours. It tasted good!  Now fruit cake is not something very many people like. I happen to like fruit cake. Keep in mind if you ever want to make one - it makes a lot!  I cut the recipe in half and we still had a lot of fruit cake.

There you have it - our Christmas Potluck!  Sorry you don't have smell-a-rama so you could smell how good all this was or even take-a-taste-a-rama as it would tempt your taste buds.  We are taking a short break over Christmas but I have a couple of meals I haven't told you about yet so stay tuned, I will try to fill in with missed meals.

In the meantime, is there anything you might want to challenge us with? Or maybe you have something you have thought about trying but just didn't have the courage to do? Let me know, we are open for suggestions for our New Food Night.

{Note to myself: keep notebook handy at New Food Night - right by my plate. Take note of all ingredients used in each dish}

Some Elfen Fun

Last year Gary and I were adopted by a little Elf on the Shelf all the way from the North Pole.  Our little guy's name is Frederick Frankenheimer.  He was quite ornery last year and kept us surprised and on our toes all Christmas season.

Well, he's back again this year! He showed up on Thanksgiving evening just like last year.  He and his friends are known to get into mischief. A couple of his special friends are Doug Douglaschmootz and MMagic Fallos-Craglow.  Doug lives fairly close to us so I am sure they get together frequently.

Let me tell you what our little elf has been up to this year.  We woke up the day after Thanksgiving to find him hanging onto my chalkboard where he had written a note saying "I'm Back!"  Indeed he was.
He migrated from there to the kitchen, a particular favorite place of his.  We found him hanging out ready to dive into some cooking fun.

While we were at church that first Sunday morning Frederick got into the leftover pumpkin pie and the syrup and went into a diabetic coma I think.  We found him passed out next to the pumpkin pie and with the syrup bottle laying on it's side.  We left him alone - figured he got himself into that mess he could just suffer the consequences.

The first room I decorated this year was the dining room. This obviously made Frederick happy as he just hung out in the tree full of smiles.

From there he decided to go visit the snow scene. Hope he wasn't thinking he would enter the frigid temperatures he was used to.

And since he didn't find those cold temperatures with his snowmen friend he decided more drastic measures needed to be taken. He proceeded to help himself to my eggnog in the fridge!

We went to Branson over the weekend and since we forgot to advise him of our plans, he consoled himself with one of his favorite foods -- chocolate!

To bad for him there was not as many chocolate chips in the container as he thought there might be. He must have forgotten that one of Gary's favorite foods is also chocolate.

Well, we came back from Branson to find that he had decided to visit my Christmas village.

Things weren't to exciting there for him BUT -- I had started decorating the rest of the house!   Obviously I don't work fast enough for Frederick. He thought I took to long to just put the tree up so he decided to help me out with some decorating while I slept.

As  you can see, he couldn't find the hangers but was able to find the duct tape. Way to improvise, Frederick!

He was so happy to see all the tree decorations that he kept decorating. He choose his favorite ornament and decided to hang out with it for a while. It was from Alaska.

I think he just saw Alaska and thought it might be cold.

From there he moved to the stockings. He was checking to see if there was anything in them.

He should know that Santa won't fill them until Christmas Eve! Not to mention he chose 8- Balls stocking. Stupid cat is always in trouble so you probably won't find anything in there.

Now he decided to really make himself at home and watch my favorite Christmas movie!

Gary said the TV was pretty loud when he woke up. He had to turn the sound down. I was pretty upset that he didn't wake me up to watch the movie with him. You notice he has a bowl of sugary cereal to eat while he watches the movie.

Today I woke up to find him surveying the kitchen.

Who knows what he is planning for tonight!

I know that he's supposed to report to Santa on whether or not you have been good or bad. I'm guessing that Frederick hangs around my house to report on Remington and Lily and even Katy Rose when she comes over to visit.

Now, if you have been lucky enough to be adopted by an elf what kind of mischief does he get into?

Post-Thanksgiving Feast

Thanksgiving - thoughts of all the food we prepare to celebrate. Thoughts of all the leftovers.

By the time New Food Night rolled around this week we thought we would all be tired of turkey with the trimmings so we planned on another soup night.  Turned out to be a good  choice as the weather had turned off colder.

Gary chose to make a taco soup.

Looks good, huh?  Tasted good too.  I don't know how you could make a small batch of this. Well, I guess if you used small cans of the veggies you could.  He took a pound of hamburger and browned plus some taco meat we had leftover from tacos. Some diced tomatoes, canned black beans, canned corn -- simmer (probably more stuff too but I don't know).  Good stuff!

Miss Annette made up a gumbo.

This was very well received. Some chicken chunks, smoked sausage, Zataran dirty rice, seasonings. .  This was very good.  We all thought it would be good with the taco soup ladled on top. I don't know that any of us tried it, though.

Mr. Rick brought a pot of ham and beans that had been cooking in the crock pot all day.

I LOVE ham and beans!  We don't have them very often as they are not a favorite of  Gary's.  I remember I was so excited when we moved to Tulsa and went to church for Wednesday night meal and they were going to have ham and beans.  My mouth watered all day thinking of them.  I found out that here in Tulsa ham and beans consists of pinto beans!  What a disappointment for me!  They were good but not what I grew up with.

Northern or Navy beans with ham and cornbread!  Take the cornbread and put in the bottom of your bowl.  Butter the cornbread then add chopped onions then add a lot of ham and beans!  That is good stuff.  And the ham and beans Mr. Rick made were yummers!  We didn't have the cornbread but that was okay.  My Granny Lake called them dry beans.  One time she told me she was going to make dry beans and I had no clue what she meant -- she had to explain to me.  Makes sense as they are dry until they are cooed.

Kind of a side note here (nothing to do with this New Food Night) but I always think of cornbread and milk.  We would take cornbread, add butter and onions then pour milk over it.  Oh my gosh!  I love cornbread and milk!

So there we have three very hearty soups and they were all good.  I could not decide what I would have seconds of.

But WAIT!  We are not done.  We have a dessert soup.

K.C. made a Scandanavian Blueberry Soup.

It could be served warm or cold so we just opted for room temperature.  Blueberries, lemon juice, syrup, cardamon.  Serve with a dollop of Greek yogurt.  Good stuff.

Now I had made some Fall Leaf Sugar Cookies but forgot to take a picture of them.  Just used a plain sugar cookie recipe. Divided the dough into 3 balls and used food coloring to color it red, yellow, and orange. Mixed some of each color and rolled out then cut into fall leaf shapes and baked.  Very pretty and I do love a good sugar cookie.

There you have it - our tired of turkey meal.  Now just wait until you read about next week's meal!  I will give you a hint - we haven't had Italian for a while and it happens to be a favorite of Miss Annette and myself.  My mouth is watering right now thinking of the dish I convinced Gary to make.