How's Salad Holiday Edition - Part Two

Well the Christmas coma is slowly wearing off.... oh chocolate. For inexplicable reasons, I had been insatiably hungry all the week leading up to Christmas (I suspect it was anticipation of the inevitable chocolate feasting  to come, but lord knows), so of course it was a very and rapidly filling holiday. That is to say, I was full on Trader Joe's chocolates by about 11:30 Christmas morning. It's kind of a sugar-crazed haze from there.

I seem to recall that we did in fact have our traditional Christmas meals at my Dad's house, with all the associated refinements. My Dad and I had met on Christmas eve to food process things (I am of course the master chopper) and to set the table. I know I have mentioned this previously, but one of the neatest parts of our holiday meal is that we eat from and with china/silver/crystal that was owned and used by my great-great(-great?) grandparents. There's an eerie sense of connection conjured through the continued use of these artifacts. Although the food wasn't too bad either. Christmas, proper, involved something of a multicultural world-tour, starting in South Africa:

Our traditional Christmas meal has been very modified version of bobouti - a South African hodgepodge of various ethnic influences. It can resemble a curry in sapor, but with something a little different. The recipe is adapted to suit tastes and vegetarianism. I have never made it myself, but vaguely speaking, it involves tofu and egg, raisins, almonds, and a vegetable paste that is ground and flavored with curry spices,  and chutney. The sauce is served over rice. Were I to make it, I suspect it would be much spicier, have a little less oil, and be a fair bit less sweet, but it tastes like a hundred Christmases before it and ooooh the smell! The cranberry sauce comes with ginger and pineapple in addition to the cranberries. We steamed broccoli (which I stole for my plate before the enormous glob of butter made its way through the pot) and added a spinach salad to make a first course. For dessert, my Dad's friends came over with homemade fudge, which we ate warm and drizzled over peppermint ice cream. Something of a sugar/fat overload for my sensitive stomach, but worth the hazy buzz.

In Andrew's honor and following the appropriate Jewish tradition, we had our Christmas dinner at a Chinese Restaurant .

I'm not really sure why I like Food Garden, which is fairly middling Chinese buffet food that is hardly vegetarian indulgent. But I tend to find myself able to feed conveniently from a bowl of hard boiled eggs and the fresh(ish) vegetables at the Mongolian Grill station. This and the deceptively addictive almond cookies adds to the friendly service and the pleasant rhythms of Mandarin and Spanish that predominates the dinner rush to create a just kind of pleasant doability for me.

For Christmas breakfast - perhaps the one breakfast a year that is actually eaten communally and my mom's dining room table - I took over the kitchen. I made my first french toast ever, to some entertainment and many full stomachs. I was particularly fond of my french toasted banana walnut bread.

This involved making a loaf of banana bread - the recipe of which I'm approximating, since I tend to make things fairly improvisationally:

1/2 cup splenda

1/4 cup apple sauce

2 mashed bananas

1/2 cup unsweetened soy milk

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

1 serving egg beaters

2 tbsps pumpkin pie spice

1 tbsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 cup walnuts and hazlenuts

Directions: 

Preheat Oven to 375

Mash the banana. Stir and add milk and egg beaters.

In a separate bowl, combine flour and other dry ingredients.

Combine ingredients and pour into a lightly greased square pan.

Bake at 375 for 30-45 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean

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I cooled this and stored it for Christmas morning when I mixed 1 1/3 cups milk, 4 eggs, vanilla, and spices to dip the bread in (I started with regular bread just in case the other bread didn't take) and then just put it on the griddle. It was so thick and sweet enough that I really didn't need syrup on it. The regular french toast worked pretty well too. For good measure (and some protein!) I made scrambled eggs with half eggs and half egg whites, and some morningstar veggie sausages.And for good measure, we broke out the Christmas dishes and cleaned off most of the table:
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The eating was good and far too filling. Oh and in the process, I managed to break a plate (that's good luck, right?): 

French-pocalypse now!!

Anyways, that was enough holiday eating for a week, but I certainly gave it a nice coda of more chocolate!