The original menu wound up with a few tweaks after the testing phase, a few substitutions once I was in the grocery store and couldn’t find a couple of items, and a few total changes when I decided to just totally change things (or just forgot about them).

We normally do a separate Amuse, but decided to just do a bigger appetizer once we (my sister and I) saw these huge new plates my parents had bought.

On Christmas Eve I put some fresh sage and about a cup of whipping cream in a jar and set aside in the refrigerator to marinate? season? make sage yumminess spread to whipping cream. I whipped the cream (leaving in just a few smaller bits of sage) a little before serving time, and the taste of sage was definitely present and delicious. Scallops were seared in olive oil, plated immediately, and then topped with a bit of the sage cream and a dollop of caviar.

The other side of the plate houses an escargot pie. I used a cream cheese crust (1 c butter, 16oz cream cheese [2 c], 3 c flour – mix and form), and filled it with a mix of egg, milk, and butter/garlic sauteed escargots.

Of course nothing is complete without alcohol, and everyone in my family does better after a personality drink, so we make sure to get something extremely yummy so no one will consider not having any.

Have I used the word yummy enough yet? Probably not. I’ll make up for that in part 3.

A few years ago, maybe 2006?, my sister and I decided that this whole buying Christmas gifts for our parents was totally crap, and we weren’t having any more of it. Instead we made the Christmas Dinner the gift. Until then we had always had turkey et al for Christmas dinner; now we put together a 7 course meal complete with wine pairings. I act as the chef, and my sister is the sommelier. Each year we pick a theme and base the menu around it; we’ve had a cheese theme, a seafood theme, and this year we decided on:

A Time for Luxury: 7 courses, 6 drinks, much merriment

The drink: Champagne

The Amuse Bouche – Mini escargot quiche

The Appetizer – Caviar on toast points

The drink: probably a Sherry, but really, whatever is good to soak chestnuts in

The Salad – Roasted chestnut, apple, and squash with Boston lettuce, warm goat’s cheese, and a vinaigrette

The drink: something with alcohol, who gives a shit by this point?

The Soup – Creamy mushroom soup with truffle oil (because as much as I love my parents, I’m not buying actual truffles)

The Sorbet – Champagne sorbet (though this time it’ll just be something cheap and bubbly)

The drink: some sort of white wine

The Entrée – Lobster Newberg with some sort of vegetable and either saffron rice or saffron mashed potatoes

The drink: Sweet warm milk with brandy

The Dessert – Chocolate 3 layer cake, vanilla bean cream, strawberry filling, dusted with edible gold

Should be yummy!

I just realised that there is a pretty sizable percentage of people I know who have never interacted with me while I was entirely sober. Or at all sober. It’s an inverse relationship, the less I know you, the more you can expect that I’ve been drinking. Think about how you mingle at a party: you arrive sober and greet the people you know best, you get a drink, you greet the people you know but haven’t seen for a bit, you keep drinking, you get introduced to new people and greet those you rarely see. Repeat at each occasion. If you only see certain people at drinking occasions, they never see you sober. Especially so, if you consider yourself socially awkward and for the benefit of humanity consider it best to enjoy a medicinal cocktail or two. Though, on that note, I’m realising that almost everyone I know considers themselves to be socially awkward.