Christmas In My Kitchen: January 2023

Happy New Year.  Welcome to another year in my kitchen.  Starting with some food from the fading festive season.  The Christmas decorations are put away!  The leftovers from Christmas are just about eaten.  I am back at work in a few days time.  It has been lovely to have a some holidays.  These started with busy preparing for Christmas, then much needed quiet days recovering from the year and then I got to catch up with family and friends.  I've had time at the beach, the cinema (Lyle Lyle Crocodile and the Fabelmans), the pool and some nice cafes.  We have even had proper hot weather.  And I have purchased a new sofa which should be with us in May.  

I have chosen to focus on Christmas food in this post as there has been a lot around our kitchen.  Above are some gorgeous gingerbread biscuits that Sylvia baked and decorated.  I still have a post to write up on Christmas food as well.

We made a vegetarian version of this mini hotdog Christmas wreath.  It was an easy alternative to making sausage rolls.  We cut the ready rolled squares of puff pastry into 16 squares.  On each square we sprinkled cheese, placed half a vegetarian hotdog on it and wrapped it up and baked it.  Then we took it to a carols service on a plate while still warm and served it with tomato sauce.  They were really good.  And I was happy to have an opportunity to use my new picnic rug.

Sylvia loves making guacamole and she loves the Grinch movie (2018 animated).  It was a no brainer when we saw a picture of a grinch guacamole that she would need to make it.  It was an easy fun snack to make.  There were no black corn chips at the supermarket but I found some oat the Vic Market.

I really liked the Parmesan and cracked papper flavoured popcorn.  There just aren't enough savoury flavours for popcorn!

We usually have a city visit to buy the Krispy Kreme Christmas doughnuts.  This year we did not manage it in city trips so instead bought one of these cute boxes from the supermarket.

We were interested to try some different mince tarts.  The Luxury Black Forest Crumble Mini Tarts were quite nice but tended to stick in the foil cups.  I much preferred the Apricot and Peach Pies.  They were like traditional mince tarts but with lots of dried stone fruit in them.  I prefer a pastry case rather than a crumble top.

We had a shopping trip to Aldi to check out all the specials in the centre aisle.  Strawberry and apple flavours are not very Christmassy but the colours fit so we bought some of the liquorice.  The shortbread tin had a wind up knob on top to play christmas carols.  It made a novel present.  And we were amused to see Aldi had its own version of Tunnocks Caramel waver bars that we love.

This pull apart Christmas tree of Brioche scrolls filled with custard and choc chips was really really good and did not last long!

Sylvia requested we do a practice of these concertina potatoes which are/were all the rage on Tik Tok.  We used Not Quite Nigella's recipe and really loved them.  They had been intended for Christmas day but were a lot of work and Sylvia decided she preferred the fluffier roast potatoes.  Thank goodness!  I will get a post on our tofurkey and Christmas day meals.

It's been a while since we've had paper serviettes but I decided to buy these cute ones for Christmas.  They don't get used much so I assume they will last quite a while.

On our Friday pizza night before Christmas I decided to go festive.  I opted to add camembert and a cranberry sauce to my favourite potato pizza from Heaven.  It was nice because the potato pizza always is but there was too much sauce and not enough camembert.  We have been having fun adding ingredients to takeaway pizzas.

I made fruit mince for the panforte for Christmas.  Sylvia wanted chocolate mince pies and made them as she could see I was busy with other preparations.  She added a lot more choc chips than usual but they were pretty good and went all too quickly.

Here is some of our Christmas even baking.  The chocolate mince tarts from above, the nutroast, the tofurkey and some thyme from the garden, fruit mince, and nachos for tea including the guacamole that Sylvia likes to make in the avocado shells.  Not photographed are the overnight sourdough cranberry nut rolls and panforte.  Thank goodness it was a bit cooler than Christmas day!

We are still not getting through quite as much fruit as usual.  Watermelon is a challenge.  We had some watermelon over and whizzed it up with lots of ice so it was like a slushy.  Sylvia enjoyed eating hers with a spoon.  She garnished it was mint and lime.

And on New Year's Eve had had veg haggis nachos for tea and the instead of making a dessert I just made up a platter of sweet food and fruit: shortbread, white christmas, chocolate lebkuchen, apricot delight, Celebrations chocolate, panforte, stollen, grapes, cherries and peaches. It is crazy to have all of that in the house.  We are gradually making our way through the leftovers but I have been trying not to buy more sweet food while we still have so much in the house.
 

I am sending this post to Sherry of Sherry's Pickings for the In My Kitchen event.  If you would like to join in, send your post to Sherry by 13th of the month.  Or just head over to her blog to visit more kitchens and her gorgeous hand drawn header.