Christmas Season Meals

This Christmas season has been a lazy one. Daughter is home so that is nice but hubby was in Malaysia. It was just the three of us- mother, daughter and son. Just hanging out together, laughing, watching lots of tv and movies and eating what nots. We decided we would make one special dish a day for dinner to celebrate rather than one great feast.

Day after daughter L came home we headed up to Temecula. Her friend J joined up. I made Salmon en Croute up - a dish I just saw being made on that morning by Laura Calder on French Food at Home. It was good.

There is no straying too far from my children's favorite dishes during the holidays. Always the same thing.  For Christmas Eve we had their favorite Oven Roasted Crabs but with RICE. Apparently, none of us had rice all week and the Chinese in us were screaming for rice.

 Christmas night was Beef Satay and mini apple and pumpkin pies for dessert. I will post the recipe for Satay another time.

I had bought a Breville Mini Pie maker a year ago. I hated that it works best with store bought frozen pastry. This year I bought the Mini Pie book as it had a recipe for home made pastry. I was assuming that they had tried the pastry recipe with the pie maker. As you can see, I was not able to form the pie nicely. The oven was too hot and pastry stuck to the mold before I could shape it properly. It was pretty burnt by the time it was cooked. More experiments is still needed but I will get it it right. Maybe, I will start the pie off in a cold oven as it tends to get too hot. Be on the watch out for updates.

Pumpkin Pies - pastry was hard to shape

Pumpkin and Apple pies - ugly but still very delicious

On Boxing Day, my son made some fabulous Crab Taco with a delicious hot sauce. Sriracha sauce does it own magic. His sauce taste like the sauce in spicy tuna roll !

Husband came come 12/27 and family was complete again. Son was off to Taco Tuesday with his friends so the rest of us headed out to the local Thai place for dinner.

Yesterday 12/28/11 I pull out all the stops!!! I use a Christmas Gift to myself and a Birthday gift from my husband for maybe 5 years ago, which I not not used till now. Check on it in my next post.