Holidays -- 2011 wrap up

Cranberry Blackberry swirl mini-cheese cakes

The holidays are always a stressful time, and nothing is more stressful (for me, anyway) than a meal that doesn't turn out. My Thanksgiving dinner this year included a few panic-attack-inducing flops, but one of the highlights was my cranberry blackberry sauce (recipe below) that I used not only as a condiment, but swirled into mini greek yogurt cheesecakes for dessert.


Cranberry Blackberry Sauce
18 oz cranberries (a bag and a half); divided
water
scant 1 cup sugar
2 cups blackberries
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
zest and juice from one lemon


Pour one bag of cranberries into a pot and fill add about an inch of water to the pan. Bring to a simmer and wait for cranberries to pop. Then add sugar, blackberries, spices, and lemons and stir to dissolve sugar. After 1-2 minutes, add the rest of the cranberries and bring back to a simmer. I like to add the cranberries in stages because it offers more texture to the sauce, but they could certainly all be added at once. Also, I wish I used way less sugar for this-- I like my cranberry sauces on the tart side I guess. As it stands, you can still taste a little of the tartness, but the syrupy sweetness of the sugar and blackberries is more pronounced.

Stuffing with sausage, acorn squash, and kale. 

After surviving Thanksgiving relatively unscathed, I went full force into Christmas planning. Tim and I baked about six different types of Christmas cookies.  

They included: sugar cookies shaped like Christmas trees, maple nutmeg sugar cookies (see Smitten Kitchen for a recipe), peanut butter cookies with dark chocolate kisses (Tim's favorite!), chocolate thumbprint cookies with dark chocolate peppermint ganache, and the least pretty of the bunch-- candy cane butter cookies. I still can't believe how ugly they were! I followed the recipe to a T, but somehow the candy canes melted all over the pan. Oh well, at least they tasted like Christmas. 

Christmas tradition at my mom's house for the last few years has been to have crab legs and Caesar salad (a much better tradition than the oyster stew at my dad's house).  This year, we had just enough leftover crab to make an amazing crab frittata the next morning. Yellow bell peppers, shallots, parsley, and Parmesan all complimented the sweetness of the king crab. It was the perfect holiday brunch!