What a Christmas!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!  Filled with family and friends and good food!  That is what we had!  Our baby girl brought her boyfriend and spent Christmas Eve, Eve with us.  They made us this fabulous dinner of Salmon in a Salt Crust with Curried vegetables.  OH MY GOSH!  It was fantastic!  I was a bit nervous about the whole "salt crust" thing.  I must admit, I tried to be fancy once and made a salt crust for a chicken dish and it was supposed to be all "fancy" in that you brought this large salt crusted chicken out to the table and you  opened the crust up and Voila, there was your lovely chicken all tender and juicy....  Well, I did everything I just wrote about except the "opened the crust up and voila" part.  I nearly broke my knife tip and couldn't even put a dent into the salt crust with impliments brought out of my kitchen!  I had to get the hammer out of the tool box to bust that chicken out of confinement!  So THAT was in my head when my baby girl said she wanted to do a salt crusted salmon dish.  I figured we'd have to bring out the "big guns" to break the salmon free.  I should have known better.  My baby girl is a MUCH better cook than I am!  She got it right the first try and boy was it EVER, so yummy!  I would have taken more photo's but the aroma was just too much, we basically sat down as soon as she plated it up and we devoured it in no time flat!!!   Then we had Christmas cookies for dessert.

Then on Christmas Eve, we cooked Prime Rib &

mashed potatoes, homemade rolls and to 

please my baby girl...I decided to make one of her favorite pies which is Cranapple/Apple pie, aka., Crapple Pie!  It's a very rustic looking pie but it sure did taste yummy!  Christmas Eve dinner was actually our Christmas.  Baby girl and her boyfriend were leaving on Christmas morning (the real Christmas) to spend it with his family.  Which turned out to be really a good deal for everyone since we were having friends over who also did the same Christmas celebration a day ahead, as we did and the four of us ended up enjoying fabulously, delicious French Dip sandwiches!  My honey made the Au jus sauce with the bone from the bone-in Prime Rib of the night before.  Oh my goodness it was out of this world!  But, no pictures of that because we were having too much fun laughing, talking and eating and I just flat out forgot to yank the camera out!  So sorry...   =-)

So, the 26th we spent in Manhattan, Ks.  Christmas Eve it was 14 degrees outside... but on the 26th, in Manhattan the high was 68 degrees!  Talk about a drastic change!  I was sweating buckets in Kansas!  Okay, so maybe I wasn't "sweating buckets" because it was still chilly, what with the wind blowing and all, but it was certainly warmer than it has been lately!   So anyhow, we went to Kansas to visit with my honey's family and I did a little shopping at the yarn shop in town, and picked up a few skeins of super yummy fibers!   (It was Christmas all over again!) Then we headed back home to and as always it was great to see the sign....  =-)