Cookbooks

This was my kitchen island today... it's hard for you to tell, but there are five different cookbooks in play here, all opening to different spots and being used for different purposes.

In the last week, I've found peace with my cookbooks and have fallen in love all over again with cooking.  Planning our Christmas dinner was just the start, but then I began planning what we could have for Christmas breakfast and Christmas Eve night and Christmas Eve morning and that morphed into, "Oh, Adam's home early today, what can I whip together for lunch?"  It's been a lot of fun digging through my cookbooks again, finding recipes I haven't yet tried and foods that tantalize the taste buds.

One of my goals is to try a number of new recipes before Adam leaves for Siebel.  I think we can have a lot of fun with different meals in the month or so before he leaves, before it's just me and the kids and before we're on a skinny grocery budget.

One recipe I found today that sounded promising was for poori.  From the description of the recipe, it reminded me of Indian (Native American) fry bread, but upon further research, I found that poori is Indian (from India) fry bread... the main difference between the two being the use of sugar in the Native American version.

Regardless, I whipped these puppies (see below) up in a short amount of time and between the four of us, we tried all sorts of concoctions... horseradish, cheese, jam... and Adam and I turned a number of them into tacos.  (If you have ever had Tasty Tacos fried tacos in Des Moines... well, have I got a treat for YOU.  Heh.)

So... what's on the menu for the next few days?

Breakfast tomorrow (Christmas Eve) morning... Raspberry Cream Cheese Coffee Cake.  (I taught myself how to make "pie filling" from a few glaze recipes I found and was able to use some frozen fruit that I had instead of buying a can of pie filling.)  I'm very excited to see how this turns out... I've been wanting to make a coffee cake for some time.

Tomorrow night... ha, well, I still don't know.  I have some ideas.  We'll see.

Saturday (Christmas) morning... fried donuts.  Yum!  Tomorrow I will be preparing the dough... Adam and I have discussed turning this into a Christmas tradition.

Saturday evening we are having some friends over for dinner, and the menu that night includes...
Turkey (made the Alton Brown way, and bought from our friends Ryan and Janice of Wild Rose Pastures)
A Corn Casserole (provided by our friends Derek & Ann)
Mashed Potatoes (again, another Alton Brown specialty)
Gravy (no idea on the recipe yet... I'll just pick one out)
Stuffing (the only way to go is Stove Top... ha!)
Cheesecake (again, thanks to Derek & Ann)
Mile High Peanut Butter Brownie Pie (requested by my hub; I'll make this tomorrow)

We also are having slush (a Draeger family tradition that we've brought to Iowa) and homemade Irish cream.  The slush still isn't... slushy frozen yet... so that could be interesting.  I don't have room in the freezer for it, so I've had to set it out on the deck hoping that the temp drops enough in the next 48 hours to turn it semi-solid.  The Irish cream... I'm looking forward to making that tomorrow... I found it in a recipe magazine at my Grandpa John's over Thanksgiving.

I hope you all have a fabulous Christmas holiday and enjoy any food you might have as well!

erin