christmas food

my family is all about food. as long as i can remember, all of our family traditions have revolved around food or taking roadtrips in our old van to disneyland. even the roadtrips involved food. so this christmas, i thought i'd take some pictures of some food we made and ate. it's amazing i returned back to salt lake in the same size jeans i left in. i can thank a stomach that won't let me eat very much for that, i guess. so i'll start with these cookies that we love. pfeffernusse. we used to call them "pepper-nuts" when we were little cause we couldn't pronounce this little spice cookie the right way.

normally, for christmas eve, we make a big fancy dinner. but this year, since it was just me and my parents, we decided to do a dinner of appetizers for christmas eve and safe the fancyness for christmas day. my mom had some marinated shrimp at an office party, i found some potato latkes on one of my favorite food blogs, and my friend casey told me about this crushed cranberry sauce you pour over cream cheese, so we made those and a few other things for our dinner of appetizers and it was soooo good.




for christmas morning, my mom made this bread pudding that had little bits of cream cheese in it and a caramel sauce over it. yes, i know i'm spoiled. thank you.

and for dinner, i made roasted brussel sprouts, yams with pine nuts, and my dad made pork tenderloin which was garnished with a blueberry chutney my mom made. along with the famous butterhorn rolls and twice baked potatoes. plus a pair salad with goat cheese and a pomegranate dressing. yuuuum.





somehow i was too enraptured with the traditional dessert my mom makes, a pecan turtle tort, to actually take pictures of it. i have no one to blame but myself. but i think i am probably sparing anyone who reads this a major case of mouth-watering jealousy. and you'd probably gain weight just looking at the pictures. it is not a light dessert.

so that was my christmas and it was awesome. i hope everyone had a great one, too!
love,
caroline

yam wontons

i know this is more cooking than baking, but i just loved these so much and was so proud of myself that i took pictures and want to share.

i saw a recipe for this very thing in a cooking light in a doctor's office and felt too bad to rip it out but figured i could find it online. no such luck. i found a bunch of different recipes but none that matched what i saw in cooking light. so basically i just made this up based on a few different ideas from those different recipes.

ok, so i took two medium sized yams and peeled them and cut them into french fry sized pieces. i cooked them in coconut oil, salt, pepper and red pepper flakes (i do this a lot when i just eat yams plain, but not to the point where i can mash them easily, like i needed for this recipe) once i could mash them, i added a bit of goat cheese and made sure there was enough flavoring from before. i put them in wonton wrappers, sealed 'em up and browned them on both sides in a little bit of olive oil (just enough so the pan isn't dry). and that's it. super easy to make, just a little time consuming with stuffing the wonton wrappers. but they are super good and pretty healthy with the minimal amount of oil i used and basic seasoning.