Christmas Odds and Ends

Christmas here at the House of Boy and Girl was spent with Michelle's family. Her grandparents, two brothers, and sister came over for the day. We all had a nice dinner - leg of lamb, potatoes, tabbouleh (from the recipe in the post below) and green beans, along with a couple of wines and assorted cookies and ice cream for dessert. This was Dan's first experience with lamb, and I think it turned out ok. A tiny piece at the first pass, and then a heaping pile of seconds.


The table, pre-feast (please note the new everyday use plates we got for Christmas)


Nathan demonstrates brotherly love to Joella


After dinner, we all played Trivial Pursuit, boys vs. girls. Grandmother and Grandfather were so eager to answer questions that they occasionally answered for the wrong team...



Fang and Errol got new blankets from Jeff's family. Fang had plenty of fun ripping into the package. Errol saved his fun for the blankets themselves.





Miscellaneous Christmas decor from around the house

Rick Tramonto's Moroccan Lamb with Tabbouleh and Crispy Garlic

We spent a day a couple of weekends ago trying new recipes. We picked several out of one of our cookbooks that we love to read, but have never actually cooked anything from: "Amuse-Bouche" by Rick Tramonto. Then we narrowed it down to two recipes and hit the grocery store. The first recipe we tried didn't turn out so well, so we're not going to talk about that one until we get it right. This one, however, was quite tasty and pretty easy. It's broken into three main steps: the tabbouleh, the garlic, and the lamb. We made the tabbouleh and the garlic a couple of hours ahead of the lamb. As you can see from the picture below, we turned it into two main courses for dinner, instead of the six amuse bouche sized servings that the recipe actually makes. It will taste good served hot or cold, I'd do hot in the winter and cold in the summer (duh).


Ingredients:
1/2 cup bulger
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
3 tablespoons finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
2 tablespoons finely diced tomato
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 pound lamb shank or shoulder
1 cup chopped onions
1/2 cup chopped carrots
1/2 cup chopped celery
3 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves
2 cups dry red wine
Vegetable oil
2 cloves garlic, sliced paper thin

Instructions for the Tabbouleh:
1. Add the bulgur to a large pot of lightly salted boiling water. Reduce the heat and simmer the bulgur for 10 to 12 minutes or until just tender (ours took closer to 15 minutes). Drain the bulgur in a colander. Allow to cool and then transfer to a small shallow bowl.
2. Add the lemon juice, parsley, tomato, and 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and toss until all the grains are coated with the dressing. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Cover and refrigerate.

Instructions for the Lamb:
3. Preheat the oven to 350 deg F.
4. Heat the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil in a medium-sized, heavy-bottomed casserole or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. When the oil is almost smoking, add the lamb and sear for 8 to 12 minutes or until nicely browned on all sides.
5. While the lamb is browning, add the onions, carrots, and celery to the pan along with the thyme. Stir the vegetables occasionally.
6. Add the red wine and cook until reduced to a few tablespoons. Add enough water to cover the lamb and bring to a boil, stirring the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon to dissolve any browned solids into the liquid.
7. Remove from the heat and cover the casserole with a tight-fitting lid. Place in the center of the oven and cook for 1 hour or until the meat is tender and almost falling off the bone. Set aside and allow to cool. When cool, refrigerate the lamb until serving. Discard the vegetables and herbs. (We think we'll reserve some of the veg and broth next time and puree it to make a little sauce to go with the dish.)

Instructions for the Garlic:
8. Pour the vegetable oil into a small, deep saucepan to a depth of 1 1/2 inches. Heat over medium heat until a deep-frying thermometer registers 325 deg F.
9. Fry the garlic slices in the oil for 1 to 2 minutes or until they turn golden. Watch carefully because they fry very quickly. Remove from the oil with a slotted spoon to a paper towel to drain. Transfer to a flat plate, season with salt, and allow to cool completely. As they cool, the fried garlic slices will become very crispy.

To serve:
10. To serve, pull or cut the meat from the bone and cut into small pieces. Place some of the tabbouleh on each of 6 small plates along with some lamb. Top each serving with crispy garlic.

(The picture above shows what happens if you turn the 6 small servings into 2 bigger servings. We used an 8" pasta plate for our service. In other words, if you're making this for a family of four, I'd double the recipe, and have an additional side dish ready.)

Decorating for Christmas

Joella came over on Thursday night to help us put up and decorate the Christmas tree. We had fun...

We did this for EVERY ornament :P

Michelle with one of our ornaments from Germany

Joella with a "warp drive" ornament

Michelle points the flash in the wrong direction while Jeff poses nicely by the tree

One of the ornaments from our wedding seven years ago

Thanksgiving

We packed up the pups and ourselves and drove over to St. Louis to see Jeff's family for the Thanksgiving holiday and weekend. We arrived a couple of hours before dinner which allowed us to get settled in before the house was invaded by all of Jeff's relatives. We had a nice dinner together, and then spent a couple of hours chatting and looking through old photo albums together before everyone headed home for the night.

Errol in his Thanksgiving garb

Aunt Mary Jane gets the pie fixins ready

Jeff's mom, Bev, with Errol and Jeff

Aunt Lynn, Nikki with Cousin Brad, Grandma A, Ken (Jeff's Dad), and Uncle Larry

Cousin Steve and his wife, Joyce, with Errol

Jeff and Grandma J

Fang sports a Thanksgiving bandanna

On Friday, Jeff and I got up early to go into the city to visit a couple of stores to look at plates and to visit our wine storage locker. Yes, we were aware of the potential dangers of shopping for plates on Black Friday, but it really wasn't so bad. The first place we stopped was a mall to visit Pottery Barn. We parked pretty close because it wasn't crowded at all, waltzed right in to inspect the plates, and waltzed right on back out. We had an appointment with our wine locker guy after that, and it only took about 10 minutes to clear out our locker and we were on our way again, this time over to Crate and Barrel. We parked close again, and the store wasn't crowded at all, so we were able to find our plates and get help ascertaining if they had anything in stock. They didn't, but we were able to at least see the plates we thought we wanted, determine that we did want them, and then order them when we got back home (they should arrive on Tuesday, yay!).

We got back to Jeff's parents' house in the middle of the afternoon and sorted our wine into smaller boxes for transport back home. Then we headed out again for a nice dinner at Annie Gunn's with Jeff's parents. We try to take them out when we visit over the holidays as a Christmas gift to them. We had a good time at dinner and the food was delicious.

Jeff's parents, Bev and Ken, open their 2009 puppy calendar

Ken waits patiently for dinner

Saturday morning was spent at the gym (had to work off those giant steaks from the night before). After that, we were invited over to one of Jeff's friend's parents' house to watch the KU-Mizzou football game, so we went over there at about 11:30. His friend, David, is married (to Janet) and has two cute daughters (Cora and Lucy), one of whom we hadn't met before, so it was fun to catch up with them, as well as with Brian, the older brother, and Sandy and Lawson, the parents. We got to watch the game in HD on a 50" or so television, which was cool. I think we'd be all over getting one of those if we didn't already have three perfectly funtioning old-school tv's and one living room that I'm not so sure I want to have to redecorate/rearrange to accommodate a huge television. Oh, and we're too cheap to upgrade our cable to get all the HD channels... :) Anyway, KU won the game, which was a pleasant surprise for two of us, and a disaster for the rest of the group. Ha ha.

Cora, David, Lucy and Jeff

Sandy and Cora (Grandma and Granddaughter, aww!)

Saturday night was spent over at Jeff's Grandma J's house for dinner and conversation with her and his aunt, Mary Jane. Mary Jane smoked her famous ribs for dinner and we had a traditional bbq meal with cole slaw and potato salad. Jeff's mom made a cake to share for dessert.

Sunday was spend with Jeff's Grandma A. We ate out for lunch and then spent the afternoon back at his parents' house with her. We snuck in another trip to the gym that afternoon and rounded out the evening watching a movie.

We drove back home on Monday on a really, really, really cold and windy day. We brought our winter coats with us, but managed to forget gloves and hats and scarves. Our rest area visit to walk the dogs was not a pleasant experience. Thank goodness for seat heaters in the car! We made it home in time to get in a trip to the grocery store and a couple of loads of laundry before we started the work week.