2012 Holiday Season Part 2: Christmas

Much like our Thanksgivings, our Christmases turned into a marathon. I'm pretty sure I was 80% Christmas cookies by the end of it. The other 20% was likely rum. And while we didn't match Vince Vaughn's "Four Christmases" in quantity, we far surpassed him in quality (dude needs an "off" switch).

Christmas The First:

We started in St. Helen's with Mary's immediate family. I led off with a very solid apple pie with a pecan crumble topping:

The pie came in handy when I needed to drown out my sorrows of having to watch the Niners get embarrassed on national TV by the Seahawks. (Guess it has turned out alright now though as the Niners are in the Super Bowl!)

Christmas The Second:

The festive tour continued the next day with Mary's extended family. The proteins were covered by the hosts, so I roasted some Traeger vegetables. I think one of everything from the produce section is represented below:

And an excellent Emma Torte made an appearance. So that was nice.

 

Christmas The Third:

Day three of three was an extended stay at my family, first with the immediate peeps, and then with the extended. The salmon I smoked and took to my parents on Thanksgiving got invited back for Christmas. But since we inhaled it in record time and it ceased to be many weeks prior, I couldn't invite it back and so had to get bring a new smoked salmon. A younger, hotter smoked salmon.

I'm pretty sure we plowed through it before the extended family arrived.

Another successful three month holiday marathon. Having a house the entire time helped, as did a stellar showing by the magical Traeger. Mostly the Traeger.

--Isaac.