Allora…

I got Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child for christmas and decided my first two recipes to try would be poached eggs and then sauce hollandaise. I was very nervous – esp about the hollandaise. I was also halving (half-ing) the recipe bc what the heck am i gonna do with 2 cups of hollandaise sauce besides have a cardiac infarction. So with a pot of coffee, apron, and an improper whisk I forged ahead:

Realized I don’t actually have a real whisk…decided to use a beater from my electric hand mixer:

Couldn’t manage to take photos while scurrying to poach the eggs correctly. With instructions like “immediately” and with lengths of time like “2 or 3 seconds” a camera wasn’t really happening. But here is the second egg – very nice!

I couldn’t manage to do two eggs at the same time. So i poached the first one and then put it in a bowl with cold water. To reheat after I made the hollandaise sauce, you just put the egg in a bowl of hot water w/ salt for a minute.

Beating egg yolks and butter into oblivion:

After adding nearly an entire stick of melted butter (seriously):

Not too shabby!

For dinner? SALAD! and some cholesterol medication.

Sleepy Hollow in the snow at 1 AM

Aunt Betsy is known for her “breads” aka Stromboli. Becca also is Queen of the Breads – so today I tried to make them – on a much smaller scale! I got the dough from a pizza shop and basically you roll out the dough and lay a thin layer of ham, provolone, and salami; roll it up and then i brushed it with egg wash and sprinkled on salt and garlic powder. Bake it for 35 mins at 375 in the oven. It is really delicious. The pros always make like a years worth in one shot, but this is just one little one:

Phew – so I have been baking and getting things ready for Christmas presents. For people I didn’t know what to get, I am doing a bottle of wine, and then a bunch of different kind of cookies. Yesterday I made Peanut Butter Kisses (the ones w/ hershey kissed in the middle). And today I made Oreo Balls – a recipe my sister Jenna gave me. Here is her recipe (these are her words haha)

Need:
pack of oreos
pack of cream cheese (full fat please)
chocolate to melt

Do:
smash oreos
mix with room temp CC
roll into balls
dip in melted chocolate
Immediately sprinkle on non-pareil (whatever its called- the little ball sprinkles) sprinkles. It looks fancy! This is optional, I have also used melted white chocolate and dipped in a wand from my handmixer and scribbled over oreo balls. This looks PROFESH!

cool in refrig on cookie sheets.

All went well. I needed to use my hands to mix the cream cheese and the crushed oreos together. The only thing that wasn’t so easy was that I had a hard time dipping them in the chocolate bowl. I tried putting them on a skewer to do it but that ended up splitting the ball in half. so i ended up just using my hand. It got messy! but they are incredible! yum!

This past weekend my roomates from college and I were all able to get together in Boston. It was great to see all of them….and also great to get back to Boston. Such a great city. Incredibly I forgot my camera! so i just stole a few photos from Kristin:

another great christmas party at uncle doms. my crew stopped over to my place for pizza pit stop/diaper changes before the party. The girls (and jack!) were chasing Pedro the cat all around. Pedro is pretty mellow, so no swatting at the kids or anything, just ran away and hid, but let the girls pet him all over first. they were so funny. Jack crawled after the cat, and Pedro hopped on the bed, and jack pulled himself up so he was standing up to peek up at the cat on the bed.