Post-Christmas muses and gripes

First off, the Peppermint Bark was a hit. Here is a picture of it broken up:

Christmas Eve was nice, we went over to my husband's Grandparents house for dinner, and my Grandmother-in-law made a Schwan's Spiral Ham, scalloped potatoes, rolls and we had salad as well. For dessert we enjoyed Schwan's Pecan Pie, which I have to say was the best Pecan Pie I have ever had, and I am not that big of a fan of Pecan Pie. The Spiral Ham was absolutely delicious as well. If I had more money, I would have Schwan's delivered to my house as well!

We ended up staying home yesterday for Christmas and just had Lasagna for dinner (thank you Stouffer's). Despite being over 500 miles away, there was drama with both sides of the family and was enough to drive me out of the house for a drive to get away from it and clear my head. The funniest part was that none of these family members were in our living room, but were on the phone, mind you. It was stressful and I did not want to deal with it.

Later on I made the Egg Nog Poundcake that Janelle of Talk of Tomatoes posted on her blog recently. I omitted the coconut extract and flakes and used the 1/2 tsp of Rum Extract instead. It was a very moist and delicious bread, but I could not really taste the Egg Nog. I tasted more of the Lemon Extract than anything. In any case, it's still good! Maybe I needed to use the coconut the recipe called for? Not sure. I did overbake them a bit too, which lead to the dreaded hard crust, and instead of golden brown or white sugar, I used dark brown sugar. Maybe that is what caused the taste to be different? It looked so good when I had it all nice and mixed up! Here are some pictures!




I think I'm done with baking for a while. If anything needs to be made, I think it will either come from the bakery at the grocery store or if I MUST bake, it will come from a box!

We've also made some plans with his grandparents to come over (they still have not seen our new place, we moved in here in late May of this year, right before I started this blog) for lunch on Saturday, so I am planning on serving ham and cheddar as well as turkey and swiss sandwiches cut up in fours as well as fresh veggies and this Egg Nog Poundcake for dessert (maybe I will buy some frozen berries and Cool Whip to top it off). On Sunday night we are having my sister-in-law and brother-in-law come over with the kids for a late Christmas get together, and we're going to have T-bone steaks, baked potatoes, salad, corn, garlic bread/rolls, and something for dessert. I'm looking forward to it, so long as they amp off of the drama.