Xmas Redux.

It's been a bit of a whirlwind holiday weekend, with baking and presents and last-minute shopping. I braved the grocery store on the 23rd to get all the necessities for our dinner, and for the cheesecake I was making for dessert on Christmas Eve. This was the first cheesecake I'd ever made, and I was really worried about how it would turn out...especially after it seemed rather custard-y after I pulled it out of the oven.



But it turned out great! It was an orange chocolate swirl cheesecake, and it was really, really yummy. I even made the crust (although I will admit I bought the graham cracker crumbs...I can never crush 'em as small as they need to be).

Christmas Eve was dinner and presents over at Mom and Dad's house....Mom made and awesome meal of lasagna, Caesar salad and garlic bread. Ella got completely spoiled by all the presents from Grandma and Pop, MawMaw (Ella's great-grandma) and great-aunt Carolyn and great-uncle Norman. She wasn't so much into opening the presents, but liked playing with stuff once it was unwrapped.

Speaking of spoiled, Jon and I got a gorgeous new KitchenAid mixer! We were not expecting it at all, and we were thrilled to get it. We'd been wanting one for so long, and just kept putting it off.



We actually came home and used it that same night -- or Jon did, anyway -- to make the Irish potato casserole for dinner the next day. It's bad-ass, I have to say. And gorgeous.

Santa was very good to Ella -- she got books, puzzles, alphabet blocks, stuffed animals, and her most favorite present:



Her comfy chair! She loves her chair. We've had a couple of tipping-over incidents from overenthusiastic sitting, but nothing more than a head bonk.

Dinner on Christmas Day was rib roast, the aforementioned Irish potato casserole, and Tuscan-style peas (Mario Batali's recipe). All deeeeelicious. Jon used Alton Brown's method of cooking the roast under a terra cotta pot (yes, we took the roast into Home Depot with us to make sure we bought a pot that it would fit in), and it came out SO tender and juicy. We bought way too much meat -- Jon looked like he had a Flintstones-size hunk of beef on his plate, bone and all. Needless to say, we had lots of leftovers for prime rib sammiches. Yum.

Originally, I was going to make a yule log for dessert -- it was a nightmare. Complete disaster. A couple of factors probably contributed to this: 1) I didn't really have a good recipe -- as I discovered once I started baking, 2) I was baking at around midnight, which probably isn't a good idea. This is what I wound up with:



Yeah. Not great. Luckily, we had leftover cheesecake.

All in all, a great holiday. I'll wrap up my epic most with a few more random pictures: