Twelve Days of Christmas

We are currently on day 3 of Christmas… that’s right, Christmas is NOT over until January 6th, and if you’re the kind of sick, sad individual who rips your tree down on the night of the 25th or even the 26th, you should know that I don’t like your kind…

I like to keep the Christmas spirit and music going for as long as possible… I mean, we spend an entire month prepping for the holiday; why should it be over in 24 hours? I digress though – I am back in NYC after spending four lovely days with my family upstate. It was so nice to be home in the country, with snow falling, a fire burning in the wood stove, my mom’s cooking (that’s where I got my skillz yo’), and spending time with my family!

After four consecutive days of eating from sunup to sundown, however, I am now on a NYE diet so that I can look extra hot in my skin-tight, crotch-high dress. Therefore, I will be subsisting on a diet of wine and salad until Tuesday. And, so help me God, if I encounter one more food-pusher with a tray of Christmas cookies in-hand or one more invitation to a pizza party I am going to snap.

I made a vegan (well… ‘almost’ vegan, apart from the butter… ) green bean casserole from scratch for Christmas dinner, as well as a French fruit tarte! I’m obviously not a vegan, and sadly, not even a vegetarian, although I aspire to be a vegetarian in the new year (***apart from steak tartare, because it’s my favorite dish of all time). I just can’t quit steak tartare, especially from Quality Meats (my favorite dish ever!).

For the green bean casserole, I made the ‘cream of mushroom’ soup from scratch. I won’t provide the full recipe or instructions, because I am lazy and drinking wine, but I’ll give you premise:

Sautee onions, garlic, and fresh mushrooms (baby bella and white) in olive oil, or (if you can’t commit to being fully vegan, like myself) BUTTER… believe me, butter makes a big difference when the rest of the dish is vegan.
Make an EXTRA THICK mushroom soup from scratch; make a roux using flour and butter (or if you’re actually a vegan substitute the butter for olive oil)
Add CASHEW or ALMOND MILK (UNSWEETENED) in place of cow milk for the soup
Use vegetable stock instead of chicken stock

^^^ This is the fruit tarte I made for Christmas dessert! I was (and am) just so fucking sick of baked goods like cookies and cakes at this point, that when I was designated to make a dessert for Christmas dinner, I decided we needed something quasi-fresh. Enter the French fruit tarte. It was my first time making one, and I pulled from a few different recipes to make my own.

Again, I’m too lazy to provide a full recipe and break-down of the procedure. If I were to do it different, instead of making a puff pastry crust as I did, I would make a graham cracker crust used for a cheesecake.

So much for my diet… I just an entire pizza from Forcella….

I’ll leave you with some pictures of cheese plates I recently made… and am also trying to quit in the New Year, since I don’t want to eat abused animals or abused animal product: