Christmas Cooking, Baking, Burning, and Scalding

That's right folks my Christmas cooking and baking adventures are full of failure and success. To say the least I'm EXHAUSTED. I planned pretty good this year but next year...must plan better. I realized I am awful at time management. AWFUL. I came home from work on Wed and fell asleep accidentally, woke up around midnight, and my poor baby head would not hit a pillow until around 5 that afternoon. You see I was ecstatic to be cooking/hosting Christmas Eve dinner for the first time. I have no pictures of this because well, I was lucky to come out with my sanity but the dinner was a definite success.

I made PW Roasted Beef Tenderloin, please make this at your earliest convenience. Expensive? Hell yes. Worth it? Oh my goodness, YES! I am still hearing about how wonderful it was. I also made my own version of PW Fancy Macaroni. I already knew leaving out goat cheese or Brie or some sort of creamy cheese was going to be a mistake, I was right, not that it wasn't good, because it was but it was missing that certain yummy creamy factor. I will try this again using her exact recipe. I made southern style green beans. There are few things better and more comforting in this world for me than southern green beans. Brown and Serve rolls, because I am still a baby rookie cook and I am terrified of making bread or cooking with yeast. I need a teacher to help me face my fears, send help. oh and of course PW Creamy Mashed Potatoes, I like to use evaporated milk instead of half and half but that's just me. I also don't recommend making them ahead of time and then warming them, they aren't bad but it's just not the same.

I made my very favorite cookies, which I will post a tutorial about later this week, toffee sandwich cookies, oh man, oh man. You have to eat these cookies, if I could I would come to your house and make them for you, they are that good. However, I made the ultimate sacrifice for these little babies. I foolishly thought I could remove the baking sheet from the oven with one hand. Oh how wrong I was. As I dropped the cookie sheet they were saved... by my bare arm.

I soldiered on not because I wanted to, which is usually why i torture myself by taking on too many tasks, but because I had to. I was making Broccoli Cheese Rice Casserole for my boyfriend's family Christmas this is with out a shadow of doubt my very favorite holiday side dish. I then learned that there would be no mashed potatoes at Christmas, there was only one thing to do make 10 lbs of mashed potatoes at midnight on Christmas eve. Luckily my fabulous mother-in-love and sweet boyfriend helped me peel them otherwise I am quite certain i would've completely lost it!

Now I have made side dishes but never a whole meal so i felt pretty damn proud. I will say my only true failure was Christmas breakfast. I tried to make monkey bread. Crashed and Burned, the outside got crispy the inside did not.  Probably should have let it go a little longer but I had an impatient 3 year old and 40 year old on my hands, neither of which is accustomed to waiting for anything, especially food. oh well you live and you learn.

Just writing this and thinking back on everything is making me exhausted. Actually after all of this all i did was lay around and sleep and be sick. Serves me right. I am not super woman aka Pioneer Woman. duh. Its an unhealthy obsession I have.

But on a brighter note. I got a food processor and a Kitchenaid mixer for Christmas and every cookbook I have had my eye on this year.

Southern Living Comfort Food

Taste of Home

I am so very blessed. It is just beyond words. My WONDERFUL boyfriend also got me this

Tiffany heart key necklace!