Sweet, sweet memories

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, ready to celebrate the coming of the New Year. I've been wanting to blog. Thought of it many times, but something always kept me from doing so. Laziness perhaps?

What I've been wanting to tell you is that the drastically untraditional Christmas I cooked, the one I was so worried about, though I kept telling myself I wasn't worried, had rave reviews. My daughter-in-law, a cook extraordinaire, award-winning food blogger and writer for the Food Network, even praised it up and down. How good I felt! How happily we feasted! And the wine, a BC Pinot Noir from Mission Hill was perfect.

Tonight we heated up and finished off the last of the sweet potatoes. That dish was so delicious I'd like to share the recipe with you. I based it on a recipe I found on epicurious.com but made so many changes to it I can honestly call it my recipe. The neat thing about it is all the spices: cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger, which I used liberally. Now the quantities are approximate, since I didn't measure carefully at all.

Marja's Sweet Potatoes

4 pounds red-skinned sweet potatoes (yams) peeled, cut into 1-inch pieces
ca 1/2 cup packed golden brown sugar
5 tbsp margarine
ca 3/4 cup orange juice
1 slightly rounded tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
ca 1/2 tsp nutmeg
ca 1/2 tsp ground ginger

Arrange potatoes in a 9 x 13 glass baking dish. Combine sugar, margarine, orange juice salt, and spices in a small heavy saucepan and bring to boil over medium heat. Boil, stirring until sugar dissolves. Pour over potatoes; toss to coat. Cover dish tightly with foil and bake for 50 minutes in a 375 degree oven. Uncover and bake until potatoes are tender and syrup has thickened slightly, basting occasionally - about another 15 or 20 minutes.

This is excellent with ham - for your Easter dinner perhaps?

The most important thing

You know, the older I get the less I worry about the foods I serve. The less I worry about everything turning out perfectly. I just do my best.

I wonder about how my meal is going to turn out tomorrow. How's all that sweet stuff going to go down? I wonder if my daughter-in-law, the gourmet cook and prize-winning food blogger, is going to laugh along with me if it doesn't all turn out as it should....if it's just far too much sweet stuff.

Actually, I do sound a bit worried, don't I? But not a nervous kind of worry. All will be fine.

The older I get, the more I look forward to the company and not the meal. The togetherness. The sharing. The enjoyment of time around the table, whatever the food.

Just some thoughts as I prepare all I can before tomorrow comes.

Have a happy Christmas day everyone.

A sweet christmas dinner

I'm doing something outrageously different this Christmas. I've decided to have spare ribs insteady of our traditional turkey dinner. Somehow cooking turkey, brussels sprouts, mashed potatoes, and all those things I've always done seemed awfully boring to me. Time for a change. Time for something more colourful.

I will make the spare ribs in the slowcooker. Have it going all day, making the house smell wonderful. Along with the meat I'm planning to serve rice, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, a broccoli salad, copper pennies (sweet sliced carrots) and pineapple. All sweet stuff, except for garlicky bread sticks made from a pane di casa baguette.
For dessert we're having cheese cake, cream puffs, Christmas cookies, and chocolates.

Good thing none of us is diabetic!

Neat thing about this menu is that much of it can be done ahead. I won't have too much cooking to do on the actual day. I can relax and enjoy.

What are you having this Christmas that's different than the traditional?