So You're Dating a Brit- Christmas Dinner

I played sous chef for Dan as he prepared a traditional English Roast dinner for my family on Christmas day.

The dinner necessitated a trip to the Friar Tuck Shop in Sherman Oaks to pick up some imported goods. Naturally, we couldn't even begin to think about shopping, until we had lunch and a few pints of beer at the adjacent Robin Hood British Pub. It was Dan's first time at the pub, but it had been one of my regular hang out spots back in the late 90's. They have great food and a cozy atmosphere. I always feel like this is the perfect place to spend a rainy afternoon.

Another Guinness please!

Coaster

My Steak and Mushroom Pie.

Dan's plate of Bangers & Mash.

The bar at Robin Hood.

Full of beer and comfort food, we got down to the serious business of shopping for Christmas dinner. The Friar Tuck Shop is small and the shelves were fairly cleaned out by the Saturday before Christmas. Word to the wise, like everything else related to the holidays, do your shopping early!  

Still, we managed to find everything on the list, except for the traditional Christmas cake. I've since learned that the cake really should be made a year or more in advance, so if we decide to go homemade next year, we are already behind schedule! This Christmas stress just seems to linger, doesn't it? Can't win.

Here are the special items that we picked up for the dinner.

I should tread lightly, but I am going to go ahead and say that this was way better than my mom's stuffing recipe.

I'm not a gravy fan, but in the spirit of trying everything, I had a little and it was really good stuff. Again, better than my mom's.

Yorkshire pudding mix. It turned out okay, but I think that this is one of those things that may have been better if made from scratch.

Dinner was hectic. My aunt has a huge kitchen, with a little, tiny oven. We had more food than would fit and even had to dump the parsnips in order to make it all work. We had all five burners on the stove going and the oven completely packed. I actually was amazed that it all pulled together in the end, but Dan is a pro and knocked it out of the park.

Christmas dinner- Turkey, Yorkshire pudding, sautéed mushrooms, roasted potatoes, carrots, peas, stuffing and corn. Not pictured- English sausages wrapped in bacon.

All of the plates, ready to be served. A very messy kitchen.

Dan made the first turkey since my mom died, that this family has seen turn out properly. It didn't explode or come out undercooked. Not only that, it was amazingly delicious. Dan taught me a trick, stuff the turkey with quartered limes and oranges to keep it moist and flavorful. 

Unfortunately, we didn't get pictures of it, but Dan introduced our family to British Christmas Crackers. I had always wondered why some of my friends wore paper crowns in their holiday pictures, but never knew that the crowns come from the crackers. Each one contained a crown, a little toy ( I got a pirate patch!) and a joke. It was a little awkward having Dan teach us how to crack them, but once we had our crowns and read the jokes, everyone got into the spirit.

Home-Made Adventures - Mom's Fudge

Last week, when I said that my mom never made anything, I exagerrated a bit. She always liked to make fudge and butterscotch morsels to give to friends at Christmas. People loved these treats and she freely gave out the recipes, as neither were any sort of family secret.

She got the butterscotch morsel recipe out of the Los Angeles Times in the 80's. It was a mix of chocolate, butterscotch and peanut butter coating Corn Chex. We used to alternately call it Reindeer-Crap, because it didn't look appetizing at all. However, it was so delicious that a whole tin could be gone in an entire sitting. I have a friend, who liked it so much, she would hide it from her husband! Unfortunately, I've been unable to locate the recipe. It's somewhere in this house and that's why I am proclaiming 2013, The year of Organized Living. Let it be known!

Mom got her fudge recipe from the back of a jar of Kraft's Marshmallow Creme. The recipe that my mom found predates me and the recipe on the jars has been changed many years ago. Mom had many people tell her that they followed the jar recipe and it just wasn't the same. Two things, first, of course it tastes better when someone else does the work and second, the recipe is different. Here is the tried and true recipe that my mom used.

The stains on the card are my fault, I dropped the card into the pan sprayed liberally with Pam.

My aunt still carries on the fudge tradition, but since she has had so many surgeries, she found it tough to do this year. It required a lot of stirring and lifting. On Sunday, Dan and I went to Tustin and made a batch for her.

Dan slicing the fudge.

The pan of fudge.

The first Christmas without my mom, 2009, I felt the pressure to carry on this tradition for friends expecting the treats. I got out the fudge recipe and thought that I had followed it properly, but it was a disaster. It tasted great, but I couldn't cut it into neat squares. It was a big mush of fudge. The big trick is to let it cool in the fridge for 45 minutes and no more. It needs to be soft enough to cut, but not too soft where it won't form squares.

I let go of the tradition, it's was my mom's, not mine. Last Sunday was my first time making fudge since the disaster of 2009. Dan and I made it as a team and it turned out perfect, in perfect squares.

This week also brought two new great recipe discoveries from one of my favorite sites, Allrecipes.com. On Monday night, we had the Tantalizing Tangy Meatloaf, which uses pineapple preserves as a surprise ingredient. Dan liked it, but thought it was a bit too sweet for dinner. If I make it again, I might follow another member's suggestion of crushed pineapple to cut the sweetness. I really enjoyed it though and really liked using the leftovers for meatloaf sandwiches.

Tantalizing Tangy Meatloaf Recipe

The big hit of the week was the Poppy Seed Chicken Casserole. It's very easy to make and boiling the chicken breasts gives it almost a slow cooker texture. Dan scarfed this up so fast, not only did we not have any leftovers, but I had to battle for my portion of dinner. I loved how this one required very few ingredients, most of which were already found in our kitchen. Cheap, easy and yummy, this will be a frequent meal in our home.

Poppy Seed Chicken Casserole Recipe

Home-Made Adventures - Old Dog, New Tricks

It goes without saying that everyone graduates from childhood having missed learning a certain skill or several, that is vital for a successful adulthood. Some have parents that never teach them about budgeting or how to balance a checkbook. Some know nothing about basic home repairs. Others can't sew a button. That's me (raises hand). I graduated into adulthood without many basic domestic skills.

I grew up an only child in a single parent household. We weren't rich, but we were well off enough to afford several luxuries. We had a house cleaner, we ate out most nights and clothes went to the dry cleaners. Probably most shocking of all, is that I didn't know how to pump my own gas until years after I started driving, because my mom told me to always go full service. When the full service stations started disappearing in the late 90's, we both had to learn to do it ourselves and guess what, it was a piece of cake.

My mom worked for a bank and as such, she passed on a lot of financial advice. She also spent a great deal of time focused on education, specifically things like geography, that she did not feel were being taught enough in school. She spent zero time teaching me basic domestic skills.

I did laundry for the first time when I went away to college. I learned to use a dishwasher when I moved into my first apartment. I ironed for the first time in my late twenties, when a friend helped me sew a costume. My friend walked me step-by-step as I made a Edwardian dress (first and last thing I sewed), she helped me with the difficult parts and it held up during an costume ball! i felt victorious and learned that sewing is not my thing.

One really, really basic thing that my mom never taught me, was cooking skills. Except for making the holiday turkey, my mom rarely cooked. Our kitchen might as well have been used to store extra towels for all of the use it got. I never did anything beyond heating up stuff in the microwave.

Mom was a very picky eater. She often had a sundae from Baskin Robbins and called it dinner. I am the polar opposite. I love vegetables, tofu and anything even remotely healthy. My mom is meat and potatoes, where I love international cuisine. Growing up, we ate out a majority of the week, so that my mom could have dessert and I could get a balanced meal, all without us having to mess up our kitchen.

I used to go to my grandparents house for several weeks out of the year during school holidays. My paternal grandmother was not known to be a great cook, but I always loved her cooking. They would always ask if I wanted to go out to eat, but I was sick to death of eating out. I wanted home cooked meals! On my first day with them, they would take me to the grocery store and let me help plan the menu for for my stay. I loved this.

One of the trips, I came home with frozen containers of my grandmother's spaghetti sauce, which I really liked, so grandma made extra. I told my mom and she tossed it out. She was offended that I liked grandma's sauce over her own. My "mom's sauce" was original Ragu with hamburger beef thrown in. That's it. I didn't get it at the time, but there was a lot of animosity between my grandparents and mom and it had nothing to do with sauce.

My mom did make one thing that was all her own, her potato salad. People loved it. I loved it. She often had requests to make it for friends to take to their own gatherings. The secret was fine chopping and Miracle Whip. Even ardent haters of Miracle Whip liked the salad. Since my mom has passed, my aunt has made the salad several times. She tries, but it just isn't quite the same and I can't put my finger on what's missing. I wish that I had helped my mom make the salad and knew how to do it myself.

My aunt is an awesome cook. She makes my single favorite homemade meal, her tacos. Nothing is better than my aunt's tacos. It's all in the shells. I've assisted her enough times to know how to do it. I'm not letting anymore family recipes disappear. She also does an awesome pot roast and the best tuna casserole.

When I moved into my first apartment, I discovered that I really enjoy cooking and I'm even pretty good at it. I am organized in the kitchen. I read the recipe several times and don't get too crazy with adding my own touches until I've done it successfully a few times. I tend to favor things that can be baked or thrown in a slow cooker, but I am branching out.

One of my favorite sites is

Allrecipes.com

i've used allrecipes for years. It's a great site, filled with reviews and tips for all of the recipes and a virtual recipe box to bookmark favorites. The last two weeks, I've been trying out new dinners culled from the site and have had a lot of success. 

I made this delicious pork chop recipe last night.

Make This

It's not easy to teach an old dog, new tricks, but I am trying to learn this new skill as a thirty-something. There will be some fumbled dinners, where we end up ordering pizza. Dan will probably encourage the fumbles, as he likes pizza!