Xmas dinner

[ellen_datlow]

Ugh. Too much food and too much drink. Party of 12 in the east village:

Lots of champagne. Several appetizers: chicken liver and hazelnut terrine, Pork rillette, ham and Roquefort loaf; scallop, red pepper, and basil mousse like bread-shaped thingie; cheese (mixed with something) on toast put in the oven (very nice grilled cheese); chopped clam and mushrooms (I think) on toast.

More champagne.

Caesar Salad, Goose, Brussel sprouts, rutabaga, cranberry sauce, bulgar rice stuffing, wine wine wine. And the most amazing home made duck sausage.

Sweet potato (homemade) pie and Pecan pie (bought) home made whipped cream, Italian cookies, home made brownies, and after dinner liqueurs, coffee.

Home and tums and lots of water.

Edited slightly in the morning...

Comments

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

My friend Claire has been doing this for at least a decade...and in the different places she's lived (two lofts, now an apt) and most of the same people have been attending all this time. Her friend Sid makes the most amazing sausages: sometimes venison, this year duck.

There have been the occasional lapses. Claire once made the Brussels sprouts so bouncy you couldn't cut them and because I complained that they were TOOO UNDERDONE, didn't make them again for another year or two. This year they were perfect (but she thinks they were overdone). One person doesn't eat meat or fowl so bring his own fish to cook (at Thanksgiving, the old pyrex pan his fish was in exploded in the oven--so he was carefully picking glass out of his soon to be dinner).

The rutabaga this year did not impress me.
Claire is a wonderful cook except for pastry--she cannot make pie to save her life. Luckily she's given that up and leaves it for someone else to do (or we buy them).

But it is indeed a wonderful tradition. (sit down dinner, after munching appetizers for a couple of hours). The adult son of one of our crew now joins us, which is nice, too.