Theophany and our last Christmas dinner

Theophany was such a full and wonderful day!

We drove to our far-away church, 

enjoyed the beautiful liturgy, blessing of water and blessing of the Church...

One of the lovely moments in the blessing of water, 

was that there was a young boy nearby and he was watching 

from "up high" (being in his tall father's arms) and our 

far-away priest gave him the Cross to kiss all by himself,

he was really excited. :) 

(side note: in the Theophany season

one has one's house blessed...

 we are having our house blessed next week Sunday night!

I am so excited! It always feels like the house is new afterwards, 

as if all is forgiven, washed, soothed and restored... )

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To learn more about Theophany you can go here or here

to start! :) ). 

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We had lunch near church and then went home...

I fell asleep in the car for about 30 or so minutes!

Then we were home, I prepared the delicious! 

Turkey Encore Casserole, with the homemade 

cream sauce! It worked perfectly!

Mr Husband rested while I was doing the last 

preparations and then they were here!

Munchkin + Mom and we had a wonderful time!

***

The Munchkin was, as kids are, in a hurry for every thing he loved, 

doing the Christmas crackers, playing with Uncle/Mr Husband,

 having his piece of cheesecake. ... he enjoyed his presents and 

esp the "Diary of the Wimpy Kid Mad Libs" .... 

and then it was time for goodbyes and 

just as he was going through the front door, 

he looked at me and gave me a spontaneous hug. 

He has a long history of being sad when he leaves us so it was not a full surprise 

but yet it was so nice to see and receive. 

And just seeing him be a kid still, at 9.5 years old, 

saying he was king because of the crown...

***

It means so much to me that he feels loved here

and is growing up with some happy memories at our home...

It is for moments like this that I have collected my

Christmas dishes, bought English Christmas Crackers, and 

decorate our home for Christmas!

***

I've been so blessed with dear friends and also family 

sending gifts to us...

The Munchkin gave me his present for me

(I think his Mom was directly involved, since he's 9.5 years old ;) )

on Christmas itself but I promised him I would save it for

when he came as I had things to give him as well.

I did not peek though I was so curious, as it was fairly heavy.

They have us such sweet and useful gifts...

A jar of jam that can be used as a cup afterwards, 

a blueberry vinaigrette, and a lovely pad of paper!

We have a pad of paper similar in size to the gift we were given

and that pad is running low...

so often God reminds me that He has every detail of our life

in His mind and even knows when we need a new pad of paper...

***

I keep thinking of my Grandma and how she says

how thankful she is and how very blessed.

Me too....

***

And that was Theophany and our Theophany night 

Christmas dinner!

Second NYC GF Cheesecake

I made my second NYC Cheesecake.

This time I used the tart shell crust.

From the Gluten-Free Baking Classics that Ginny 

recommended on her blog.

I mixed up more of the GF brown rice flour mix.

It's really easy.

I shaped the tart crust in the 

9 inch spring form pan. 

I made this cheesecake last Friday

to eat for our Monday belated Christmas feast.

It takes 5 of the 8 oz cream cheese boxes!

I am thankful for my egg separator. 

I forgot to add the ingredients one at a time

so it was a bit of a hurried cheesecake.

It was not as uniformly creamy because of this...

 

This time the cheesecake did crack on top...

I am wondering if it was because of the difference in 

how I mixed it or if it was because I used the tart crust,

which did not go all the way up and was a much lighter

delicate crust,

so it would not of helped hold the cheesecake in a 

very firm way inside of the springform pan.

None the less,

it was a lovely cheesecake,

more summery and light because of the 

lighter tart crust.

An enjoyable finish to our belated Christmas dinner!

Our Lovely {Belated} Christmas Meal {cauliflower, yams, lemon and sage roast chicken}

Such beautiful snow these days.

I had a wonderful afternoon preparing for this 

dinner.

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I must say however that my good friend brought over

the best cheese ball I have yet to taste

and I failed to get a picture of it.

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Suffice to say that GF bagel chips and the cheese ball

were enjoyed by all before the actual meal began.

*

So about this meal...

I made my Ottawa Ukrainian Mother's 

breaded cauliflower for our Christmas meal.

*

Here's the recipe:

1. Boil cauliflower (whole), so it becomes softer, but not too soft.

2. Cut on smaller pieces

3. have eggs in one bowl (start with 3 and beat them) and 

breadcrumbs or cornmeal to its mix in other bowl

4. dip cauliflower in breadcrumbs first, in eggs after. Do it 2 times.

5. fry it. The best result will be if you fry it in butter or oil and butter.

*

The cauliflower was soft enough for me to easily cut

off the end of it and break them into smaller florets,

but not so soft that it was at all disintegrating. 

*

I used cornmeal so that it was GF and added one or two eggs

as I went along.

It is surprisingly thick egg with cornmeal but when it fries up

it looks like slightly burnt roasted cauliflower and 

the breading is just right.

*

I choose to fry it in ghee

as I knew it would not cause smoke issues while frying.

It worked really well; I did find that between

all the dishes I had in the oven (4 others)

and the two pans of frying cauliflower that

I opened the windows for a little bit to clear the air of

the added heat and food smells.

*

It worked wonderfully and was very much 

enjoyed by our guests.

We used my Grandma's dishes for the Christmas meal.

The fried cauliflower was great on our white platter.

It's a great dish as it's texture is more

firm and with a nice light crunch.

We used a very special Romanian wine for our Christmas meal,

one that I was given over a year ago by dear 

friends in Ottawa.

We had a Romanian at our meal who 

asked where I got it from and said that it was

indeed a very good wine.

It was greatly enjoyed!

I also served a green salad, 

baked carrots with an orange and ginger glaze,

GF stuffing,

and the cranberry and yam dish 

(I will blog about how I made this later this week DV).

I made a lemon and sage chicken

that was roasted, basting once with the juices.

Recipe inspired from this one.

*

Here is how I did it:

I cut up a large onion

and place the onion inside the chicken with much of the sage, 

and a little lemon.

Under the skin was lemon slices, sage and garlic.

I put butter on the skin...

Onion was around everywhere, spilling out and wedged in 

by the wings.

 After buttering the chicken, 

lemon juice was poured over the chicken,

before I put minced garlic and more salt and pepper on the top of 

the chicken before pouring around half a cup of chicken stock

in the pan after the chicken was already in the pan,

ready to be roasted. 

It was roasted at 450 F for about 30 or so minutes.

Then I turned the oven down to 375F and put back the 

already partially baked stuffing, carrots and yams,

all covered in tin foil

(other than the chicken).

These all stayed in the oven for perhaps a hour or less.

It was a lovely and very festive meal.

Cheesecake followed with a mint tea with rose petals

and coffee.

*

Much talking, discussing and laughter was present...

life with all of it's joys and hopes were there,

with friendships deepening and 

talk of church, priests and family interweaving in 

the conversation as the meal was enjoyed by all.