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Oh Stoaty. I hate to tell you.

We had bacon. Lots of crispy smoked bacon. We had BLTs. With about four pounds of bacon that JavaNephew spent the morning frying. I got up early and made our favorite buttermilk-honey white bread, and I’d made a bowl of macaroni salad the day before, plus two pumpkin pies. Nephew, his wife, and my Sister arrived around one o’clock and we feasted on wonderful bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches, with a perfect avocado and every kind of chip and dip. Big glasses of sweet tea (The Table Wine of the South). Then Nephew’s Wife—incomparable Rachael—hopped up and made fresh whipped cream on the spot, for to bury our pumpkin pie. It was a good day.

Ham, lots of ham. It’s raining ham. Ham and au gratin potato quesadillas for breakfast, ham and cheese dinner rolls for lunch, sliced ham chunks for snacks. Split pea soup with ham tomorrow.

That’s okay, last week it was three meals a day of oatmeal white chocolate chip cranberry cookies. Mrs D goes into baking overdrive at Christmas. Salsa, cookies, snack mix, banana bread and pound cake, amen. To paraphrase Blue Bell ice cream, we eat what we can and she gifts the rest (okay in truth I steal what I can before she gives it away).

So who won the boxing match?

Roast chicken, a pan of lasagna, and Ramen Nagi which is a fancy ramen from a local Japanese restaurant. During the pandemic, Ramen Nagi started selling kits so you can make the ramen at home. Not quite as good as in the restaurant, but still better than cup’o’noodles.

The roast chicken was good, with the hollow stuffed with lemon grass.

But the lasagna was excellent. I was eating lasagna all day long on the 25th and 26th, and it was finally gone last night.

And that’s it. Back to the diabetic / high blood pressure diet. Ugh.

@Durnedyankee – I can’t eat cookies any more, because of the sugar, but I eat tons of oatmeal. But I eat it savory, not sweet.

For breakfast, I’ll have a bowl of oatmeal with sauteed tomatoes and onions and two sunny-side up eggs. And lots of hot sauce.

For lunch or dinner, I’ll have oatmeal with a burger patty and a green vegetable – spinach is my favorite. I recently tried a bowl of oatmeal with curried chicken and it was surprisingly good. Even fish, particularly salmon, is really good.

I’ll use oatmeal as a starch (rice, potatoes) substitute. Better for my blood sugar, good for my blood pressure, and lots of fiber. Yes, this is my life now. I want to live at least 20 more years, so this is what I have to do. I hope it works.

My husband, a chef, made beef Wellington for us. We normally do prime rib. Prime is always the preferred grade. We had a hard time finding prime rib, let alone prime prime rib. My mama (who now lives with us) splurged for the prime whole tenderloin. It made a spectacular beef Wellington for 10 of us and we have enough leftover for another 2 meals for the 3 of us. $200 worth of meat for 16 meals…not so bad. Prime?…fantastic! The scalloped potatoes were snarfed down with nary a crumb left as was the asparagus. The cranberry relish barely made it to the table.

So for us, There are minimal leftovers and that’s a good and bad thing!

Oh!!! And my loving husband got me a basic bonsai class for Christmas. Held at a local craft brewery! 6 hours of beer and bonsai!

How fabulous is that man of mine?!

We had prime prime rib from the fancy organic beef butcher. A nice cut from the big end, a 4 bone roast weighed 11 pounds. With 8 people at the table there weren’t many leftovers. Loads of savory side dishes and deserts, and this after the Italian Christmas Eve party most of us were at the night before, gorging on all the fish dishes etc.

And then somebody brought out a box of proper English Christmas Crackers, and I was the only other person who knew what they were. Half of them didn’t pop, but I made everyone wear their paper crowns and read aloud the awful jokes. Each cracker had a little toy whistle inside. A few drinks later I noticed that each whistle was a different size, and played a certain note, so we went back to box and found that there was also a “conductor’s baton” plastic soda straw, and a little sticker for each of us to wear with a number on it, and a list of music we could “play” by tooting our own horns when the “bandleader” pointed at us. But she didn’t. Musical skill was entirely absent in this group, made worse by the conductor not lining us up or even knowing there was a baton, or telling us what the songs were, just reading out the numbers in bursts. Ok, it was silly fun for about 5 minutes, and we all came away from this experience convinced the English are all stark raving mad. So a good time was had by all. Buon Natale!!

@Tim Carlson. Spinach for the win! I’ve been playing with the various East Asian spinach recipes. I just discovered the Japanese Ohitashi spinach recipe, and the Korean Sigumchi Namul recipes, but…soy sauce probably not the thing for blood pressure issues!

And now you’ve made me wonder about using oatmeal as the starch for my curry experiments – well, the ones where I haven’t used “aloo” (potato) in the curry itself.

Yes, sometimes potato, cauliflower, green pea curry over RICE.
Startch much?

Yum…everything sounds wonderful…except the oatmeal as a side starch. But you gotta do what ya gotta do. I’m doing Keto-vore with intermittent fasting (also known as a normal overnight sleep).

Bring on the Festivus meats!!

I bought a small ham (Costco has small excellent quality ham cuts just right for two) to snack on and brekkie. Friday I roasted a big fatty Tri-tip with many whole heads of garlic…it is delish.

BTW- if you think meat is expensive, it cost a tad under $100 bucks to fill my car this week.

I digress, Christmas Day, I roasted half a turkey breast and two legs. I made a rich cornbread & sourdough bread dressing for the Spousal Unit, and pumpkin Crème Brûlée.

Today I have a small casserole of scalloped ham & potatoes and a pan of roasted Brussels sprouts in the oven…something for each of us to nosh on.

A friend gifted us a box of homemade cookies and Victorian toffee. 6 wedding cookies jumped out of the box into my mouth before I gained control. Re-gifted those suckers to the stucco guys…they wolfed the whole box down with copious pots of coffee.

@Deborah…If you can get leaf lard, deep fry bacon and eat it like chips or crackers.

I hope that all enjoyed their holiday and feasting.
For me and my Borzoi, every Christmas I make lamb.

This year was a 6.665lb boneless Lamb marinating in red wine, in which I steeped an entire bulb of fresh-minced garlic & 1/2cup of rosemary. I try to use fresh rosemary whenever possible, and if so you only need steep it for 1-2 hours or so with the garlic. With dried, I steep it in the wine overnight, then add the crushed/minced garlic 1-2hrs before I marinate. Sea-salt the lamb while the garlic steeps, and let rest at room-temp. Marinate for an hour or more, then it’s ready for the coals.

I grilled it over lump charcoal, and also grilled red onions, poblano, and serrano peppers. The smoke of the onions and peppers lends a hint to the lamb. I’ll be making salsa with the peppers in the next day or so.

Ate myself into a proper food-coma.