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.

When someone tells me that they’re doing a ‘cleanse’ I usually have to try not to roll my eyes. As soon as cleanses are introduced into a discussion, toxins are not far behind. It’s embarrassing. I have to tune out of the conversation in order to maintain respect for the person I’m talking to. Would you like to buy some Kinoki foot pads? No, that’s foolish – everybody knows that the only way to get rid of toxins is through the digestive tract. Alternatively, wearing the t-shirts offered in my GurgleSlurp shop are a surefire way to extract toxins from your chest and back, protecting the heart and vital organs. In fact, if you’re not wearing a GurgleSlurp shirt, toxins are already causing irreparable harm!

So anyway, I’m doing this cleanse.

Yeah, I know.

Every once in a while my post Ulcerative Colitis tummy starts to hurt. Nothing to call the Gastroenterologist over – a colonoscopy would reveal a perfect colon. It just hurts. The cure is just to stop eating for a couple of days, but that pretty much sucks too. I hate being hungry. I’d rather have a tummy ache than hunger pangs. So instead, I figured I would try a ‘cleanse’ of some sort.

I have the whole UC thing to work around so all of the pro poop cleanses were out of the question. I didn’t want anything that lasted more than a few days – so none of those 3 week no meat no cheese no gluten no anything you might actually want to eat plans. I didn’t just want to drink fruit juices – I can eat sugar for days on end, but I don’t really like to drink it – but I also wanted to avoid a lot of chewing. Also, I don’t really want to lose any weight, so it would have to have enough calories in it. So I tried one of the shakes and vegetable juice plans.

Today was day one. And I think I might be done with it. The shakes are disgusting! The vegetable juice is okay, but … the shakes are disgusting! Who could drink this more than once? Maybe if I believed in toxins I could scare myself into drinking it, but I don’t, so I can’t. Maybe it’ll be better in my porridge, that’s a chew free meal.

Maybe I should just stop having chocolate for breakfast.

Tomorrow night The Princess and I are going out for a ‘meet The Littlest Princess’ almost fiancee’s parents’ dinner. I’m sure they’ll be nice people, and I expect we’ll have a great time. I’ll be careful not to make too many obscenely dirty or horrendously morbid jokes. I won’t even accidentally on purpose have the parents overhear me asking The Littlest if the ointment took care of everything.

As far as I can tell, between the 6 of us there will be:

• 3 men
• 3 women
• 3 people under the age of 35
• 3 people over the age of 55
• 5 Jews
• 6 brunettes
• 3 doctors
• 2 guitarists
• 2 bassists
• 3 singers
• 6 bleeding heart Liberals
• 1 lactose allergy
• 3 potheads
• 1 nicotine addict
• 2 shoe addicts
• 2 chocolate addicts
• 6 foodies

Should be good. There’s no reason for them to be, but I think I’ll really enjoy it if The Littlest and his gal are incredibly nervous. Like, fidgety, laugh too loud, sweating through the jacket nervous. And then they’ll have to do the whole thing again with The Littlest’s mom and stepfather!