Christmas Review

Happy New Year, everyone! Can't believe it's already 2009. Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. It was a busy one for our family, but we had a great time. Matt's mom was visiting from Seattle, and the grandkids sure ate up the extra attention! One of the first Grandmother bonding activities? Making Christmas cookies.
It was really funny to see how different Joey and Kristin approached cookie decorating. Joey was very precise and focused. Kristin was slinging sprinkles everywhere - not even caring if they made it onto the cookies or not.

Here's a photo of Simon in his Christmas outfit. I love the look on his face. "Mom, don't take a picture of me in this stupid hat! Kids are going to laugh at me!"
I was really excited about Christmas Day, because I was going to be hosting my first big family dinner. Before we bought the house, we lived in such a tiny apartment, there wasn't even room for the whole family to come over, much less sit down and have a meal together. Being able to have a big family dinner at our house was something I'd looked forward to for years. I knew someday we'd get there! I took a lot of time getting the table to look pretty. I bought a special table runner, red napkins and napkin rings. I also bought new plates, silverware, and stemware because I didn't have enough of my regular every day stuff to serve our whole clan! Our family has really grown over the past few years. Anyway, here's a photo. My mom bought me the centerpiece:

And I've had several folks ask me about the Turducken. It actually pretty much looked like a turkey from the outside. It wasn't entirely boneless like I'd thought. Cutting into it, of course, reveled its...unique qualities.


So, as you can see, there's a layer of turkey, then stuffing, then duck, then stuffing, and then chicken supposedly. The chicken part was miniscule. Anyway, when you cut the slices, it really wasn't the most attractive thing in the world:

But it didn't taste bad. The turkey part was delicious. Duck really isn't my thing, since it's sort of oily and gamey, but it was tasty. The stuffing was a little funky because it was sweet and had raisins in it. And we all know raisins are like my kryptonite. So, I had a little bowl of regular stuffing on the side that I'd made...just in case. We also had tons of other great food. Ham, delicious garlic mashed potatoes, yummy green bean casserole, and homemade rolls. No one went home hungry!

Here's what the Turducken looked like after we'd all eaten. You can see the layers better here.

For you adventurous eaters out there, I recommend trying it. If only for the novelty of saying you've tried one. Or you can just swipe these photos and claim you've had one. I won't tell if you do.

Here's to a wonderful new year!!