I wondered about the bourbon!
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Yesterday afternoonâs âGrazing Christmas Eveâ Buffet Event for Ten:
⢠crudites (waffle cut carrots, snap peas, zuke slices, cuke logs, colorful bell pepper slices, baby radish halves,) with an assortment of plunge worthy sauces: onion/dill dip, Ranch dressing, red pepper hummus, guac, salsa). No celery; this time of year it is quite bitter.
⢠salami tortilla roll-ups
⢠smoked gouda cheese cubes
â˘assorted crackers, wavy potato chips, Fritos scoops, tortilla chips, mixed
unsalted nuts
â˘boiled 16/20 shrimp with âcocktailâ sauce
⢠hot artichoke dip
⢠chicken wings, plainly seasoned and spicy chipolte honey sauced
⢠beef taquitos
â˘Savory Mushroom Brie en croute
â˘Spinach vegetable dip in a bread bowl with bread cubes
â˘Swiss cheese toasties
â˘Mandarin oranges
â˘Martinelliâs Sparkling cider for all
We had a gingerbread person decorating station for the grandies (ages 4-14) and after all that we did the spilling of stockings and opening of presents and a few attempted to submit to the food coma. Then came out the cakeâŚbut only one was interested in the cake.
No pictures, only memories of another successful family gathering.
No arguements, put downs or political discussions. The love was spread amongst us. Lots of food was sent home for midnight snacking.
I slept in until 10:30 this morning. I have no memory of falling asleep last night. Today is a day of leftovers and reheats, maybe spag and meatballs, recovery and many hours of clean up!
Praying to the kitchen appliance gods for their watching over the microwave, stove and dishwasher today.
Christmas blessings to those who celebrate this partifular holiday and winter holiday blessings to all who have different celebrations. Good tidings to all for the new year! Be safe and sane out there, all of you HOâs!
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Just saw my mom off. We had a lovely visit and I am absolutely stuffed. Rib eyes, potatoes, broccolini (an unexpectedly welcome healthy bite in between rich things), and chocolate cupcakes with ganache icing accomplished! We finished the afternoon each with a mug of jasmine tea. In a few hours, I think I will have a night cap of some Japanese whisky and call it a day. Merry Christmas!
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My usual Christmas Day dinner of beef tenderloin with cognac cream sauce, roasted potatoes (which didnât come out as roasty-toasty as I wanted but were still good), and steamed green beans with frizzled shallots.
The wine was a French Bordeaux that was a bit too smoky and earthy for me after allowing it to breathe for 20 minutes, but letting it sit even more mellowed it down. Pretty good.
Dessert was Lemon Posset with a cranberry-ginger coulis and a crushed gingersnap topping.
I hope everyone had a happy, safe, and fun Christmas.
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Random comment - Iâve lived without a sense of smell for decades. Lost that in a car accident that resulted in severe head and brain trauma. I was a child then.
The scariest part is that I canât smell smoke. Unless I see the fire with my eyes or feel its heat (and then see it), I canât tell if something is burning.
Iâve had items burning on the stove, the kitchen fill with smoke, and not know. I would think - hm⌠itâs foggy all of a suddenâŚ, and turn around and see fire.
Nevermind lack of fire alarm working.
Suffice it to say, my house has many different alarms on all 3 floors and my friends check in regularly. 
So my heart swells to anyone losing any aspect of smell, and all of it.
The only thing I recall is that Chanel No. 5 and Polo in the green bottle both had nice scents. Thatâs it. 
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The Guardian article that I shared talked about safety measures as a high priority with the organization that was helping people who lost their sense of smell. My grandmother could not smell, I remember as a child her handing me a carton of milk or cream and asking me if it was sour. My mother, now 92, also has a very diminished sense of smell and twice when I have visited her she was unaware of a gas leak in her basement and separately one of the burners on her gas stovetop had not been turned off. I fear for her.
Cobalt - can you taste anything? And also, take good care of your hearing. Iâm retired from Audiology. There were many times when fitting hearing aids to (mostly) elderly people kept them safe living independently. Sometimes I would work with a person with acquired profound hearing loss/deafness. We placed specially-trained hearing dogs with them. Thinking about it, a specially trained sniffing/alert dog might be an option for you.
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I see mushroom love there.
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Wow!
Just⌠Wow! Come cook for us sometime? Sounds super fantastic.
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Christmas Ham, Cornbread Stuffing w/ Gravy, Corn, Sweet Potatoes, Cranberry Sauce and brows & serve rolls on the side (not pictured) It was a pretty standard Christmas dinner. Lots of leftover ham, I froze quite a bit for later meals.
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We did our traditional Christmas Eve dinner after church - what is reputed to be a knock-off Union Oyster House clam chowder and crusty bread. Except gluten free flour for thickening, and my daughter who eats gluten free just had Canyon brand GF bread toasted with butter.
This morning was also our traditional, sausage-egg-cheese casserole (with a smaller part GF and non-meat sausage for my daughter). And GF cinnamon buns using KAâs GF all purpose flour. These turned out really nicely, much better than we expected and no gritiness at all.
But dinner was different than usual (usual for 25+ years has been standing rib roast, taters etc.). Tonight instead we had borscht with added cannellini beans for protein (recipe is sans beans - add them! Also, 3 or so bay leaves during early simmering and also about 1 tsp thyme, and a lot more salt than you think youâll need) and a squizzle of sour cream on top.
I made a couple of regular baguettes according to Lagerstromâs more recent âgood-better-bestâ recipe (no one will ever accuse me of being the best shaper, and tonight my scoring really sucked, so they ended up almost round/cylindrical) but they were crispy and light and tasted great with the soup.
I also made a first-ever attempt for me at making a GF baguette using KAâs GF bread flour and it turned out a lot - LOT - better than I thought it would. Crispy crust and soft, elastic interior. Wish I could upload videos b/c my daughter just kept squeezing and releasing it, watching it compress and spring back. But the process is nothing like making regular bread. For the most part youâre dealing with a sticky mass (hydration ratio is over 115%!), and even after the 4 slappy-fold and quasi rising steps itâs still a sticky mass. But it worked!
Regular baguettes:
Borscht:
GF baguette:
Cinnamon buns, also GF (donât look like much but were tasty, soft, and no! grit!):
(Edited to add links to relevant recipes)
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Itâs evident from your posts that you love your kids a lot. Wonderful memories you are making for your family. I always enjoy reading about how you care for them.
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Hello,
Re: taste, I can taste most things (I think?âŚ). What I donât taste very well is garlic and sugar, the latter to some extent. I donât buy garlic since I canât really taste it, so Iâd put in like 60 cloves of garlic before I could taste anything, at which point my friends would tell me they can smell what I am cooking two counties away, 
. Sugar I donât think is as pronounced for me as it should be. And I donât know if the lack of smell impacts my taste of coffee. I frankly donât like it at all, in any form, from any brand or source. But I drink it black for its effect. My friends think itâs amazing that I have no sense of small but (according to them) my house smells perfectly fine and as if I barely have one cat (not the many I have). Some visitors think I donât have any cats since they often hide from visitors and it does not smell like whatever cats or cat litter smells like. 
âŚ. Little do they know that on the main floor, behind those Japanese curtains, is a litter bin room, converted from what was to be a dining room, 
.
Re: hearing - yes!!! I need that sense! Different friends have suggested dogs in the past, and one very close friend is constantly thinking of ways to make my house more safe in view of the missing sense of smell and other miscellaneous conditions. The car accident put me in a coma and significant parts of my brain are missing. Fascinating, to me and my neurological team. So much I could say about this, up to and including how the accident became a stark reminder of the shortness and unpredictability of this gift called life. 
A few years ago I was worried I was having auditory hallucinations, which thankfully only lasted a few weeks. I think one my my neurologists like framed my brain MRI since he looks at it, then at me, and back and forth - amazed Iâm even sitting there in front of him, let alone being able to finish school, etc,
I had a friend in law school who was passionately frustrated that this loss of sense (smell) isnât a recognized handicap, per se. Nevertheless, I regret nothing and I suppose a positive outcome is that I aggressively clean to no end since I canât smell otherwise, . I just ordered a butter based moisturizer from Etsy to help with my dry hands from cleaning. Need to be more diligent about wearing gloves. I think this had Shea butter, coconut oil and mango butter. Didnât even know mango butter was a thing!
Grateful to be here, and grateful to be alive 
. .
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I lost my sense of smell after a Covid bout. I think I was basically over the covid symptoms (mild cold symptoms for about 4 days), and then a few days later realized I couldnât smell anything. Iâm not positive of the timing because this was a while back, I think it was âDeltaâ strain timing.
But when it hit, I couldnât even smell freshly microplaned garlic or lemon zest, zip nada nothing. I could still taste salt and sweet (my wife lost her sense of most taste flavors in the same bout, but not her smell). Then for me after a (?) month or maybe it was two, my sense of smell slowly came back.
I think now that I can smell everything normally, but itâs really hard to know for certain. What I mean is, I can distinguish basil from thyme from tarragon etc., but I still wonder - is it as sharp as it was before? And if not, is there any way that I would be able to know? After having had no sense of smell for weeks, am I fooling myself that it is now as sharp as it used to be? I dunno.
FWIW, I had another bout of Covid this past September (âOmicronâ, I suppose, given its prevalence at the time) and had no loss of sense of smell with that one. It came and went like a common cold just as the other one did, and I was kind of worried around day 4 or so if the sense of smell would go like before when the cold-like symptoms faded, but this time nothing of the sort happened.
Weird.
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Sept. 16th I tested postitive in an urgent care center with the long uncomfortable probe up into my sinuses. Iâve noticed more ability to taste the past several days, so I am encouraged. Have not been concerned about my sense of smell, but after reading the article in the Guardian Iâve been sniffing everything. Peeling raw shrimp two nights ago, I could smell them. DH made a recipe over the weekend that had tons of chopped fresh garlic and I could smell that rooms away even before he cooked it.
The loss of smell affects the loss of taste, when you are congested with a cold for example things donât register the way they should. But loss of taste without concomitant anosmia is puzzling.
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I am still stuffed after 2 days of eating. Christmas Eve was Impossible burgers on Kaiser rolls, tater tots, and roasted Brussels sprouts. Intentionally easy because 2 of our 5 were working late. Christmas itself was 12 of us enjoying brisket, salmon with dill and lemon, latkes, cabbage slaw, and a last minute addition of Mac and cheese made by my son. Cheese plate and 4 different desserts
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Many thanks for the gift/guest link! The nice thing is that Iâve already got a batch of leftover epis from making goat stew, so I wonât have to make the green seasoning.
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Turns out we had âTurkish Style Mac and Cheeseâ on Christmas Eve! Some of us had the leftovers on Christmas day. Between you and I, it tastes a little more âsouthernâ each time DIL makes it!
batch of leftover epis âŚ
Iâm trying to figure out what to do with mine.
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