Hi everybody. Well, our Christmas dinner was a great success! As usual, we starting making plans for next year’s dinner over breakfast. Could be a Greek theme or we’re even toying with the idea of Chinese although none of really cook Chinese food that often (but that would make it even more fun!)

One of my Christmas gifts this year was “Seattle Kitchen” by the famous Seattle chef, Tom Douglas. I’m really enjoying reading it. The recipes, of course, all look great. Perhaps a bit labor-intensive for the home cook but very inspiring and certainly adaptable to my style of cooking. It also completely nails down Seattle cuisine - what other cookbook has an entire chapter devoted to the art of bento and another all about crab? The best part about the book, though, is Tom’s guide to shopping in Seattle and all of the little asides about our fresh seafood and produce and wines and beers. It reminds me of why I love living here. Now, after reading through the book, I am dying to go to Mutual Fish for the freshest fish in Seattle and to seek out the little hidden places in Pike Place Market that I normally walk right on by. Just yesterday, thanks to this book, my friend and I went for pho at a little lunch counter neither one of us had ever noticed before. Perhaps next weekend, I will take a trip over to the Bainbridge Island winery for a wine tasting or maybe I’ll eat my way through the International District. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to cook with more fresh, local ingredients and this book will surely come in handy as my guide to Seattle’s great food!

Hi everybody! I’m over here at my parent’s house helping put together our Christmas Eve feast (actually, I guess you could say I’m avoiding helping by writing in my blog.) Our dinner theme this year is New Mexico! Everything seems to be running smoothly but, as usual, my mom is adding last minute dishes and throwing off our plans. Here is the menu as far as I know:

Appetizers:
Blue and Yellow Corn Chips with Salsa and Guacamole
Pickled Jalapenos and Vegetables
Pine Nut and Pumpkin Seed Crackers
Roasted Pine Nuts in the shell (from Robert’s aunt in New Mexico)

Main Dishes:
Sweet Potato and Chipotle Tamales with Red Chile Sauce
Carne Adovada with Flour Tortillas
Chicken Enchiladas with Green Chile Sauce
Spinach and Cheese Enchiladas with Green Chile Sauce
Anasazi Beans
Green Beans with Lime and Manchego Cheese
Green Salad with Oranges, Jicama and Pumpkin Seeds with Lime Vinaigrette

Our beverage selection includes Mexican beers, white sangria and red sangria. It should be a lovely dinner; I’ll be sure to let you know how it all turns out. Uh oh, it sounds like my absence from the kitchen has finally been noticed. Time for me to go. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!

Robert has been asking me to make oatmeal cookies for weeks now so I went to Trader Joe’s today and bought some oats and dried cherries (I hate raisins) and then got to work. I used the oatmeal cookie recipe from How To Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. I added dried cherries and I had some toasted hazelnuts on hand so I threw some of those in too. I wasn’t sure if I really liked oatmeal cookies (probably because of the raisins) but these turned out great. They were much cakier and less sweet and definitely less greasy than most which is fine with me. They’re more like mini scones and should be great with coffee tomorrow morning (yes, that’s right, I’m having cookies for breakfast!) For added presentation, I topped each with a single dried cherry. Yum!