Listen, you know and I know that you are dying to know what I’ve been cooking up for the holidays. Well, wonder no more, my friends! Hot on the heels of my Thanksgiving success with The Bird, I’ve been cooking up a storm and today, I will treat you to an eye-stravaganza of tasty delights.

So these are the quiche I made for Allen Dean’s office “pot luck” yesterday. I have never made quiche before and I’ve never met anyone at his work. But did this stop me? Newp. I made one with fresh spinach and feta and the other with Grueyere, tomatoes and mushrooms.There was a bit left over last night and so I tested it. Not bad!

For some reason it was my mother’s tradition to make fish chowder for Christmas. Last week I made my first batch of the season (it’s already gone) and tomorrow I will make my second and final. Here are the various stages of chowder preparation.Not so appealing to look at, but tasty.

Cookies! I made a double batch of chocolate chip cookies using a recipe from The Joy of Cooking.
They are all gone. Why? Because Allen Dean and I oinked our way through them (actually, I gave some of them to some friends and some to my sister and her family–but we really did eat most of them).

This is not just any pie. It’s tortierre–a French Canadian meat pie. I cannot tell you the recipe because it was mother’s and top secret. I can tell you this, though, it has three different kinds of ground meat in it and I have spared you the photo I took of the meat boiling on the stove because it was gross and I feared you would think less of me and my pie. So I’m only offering the final product.

Okay, these final photos are of the orange rum cake with bittersweet chocolate glaze that I made last night. It is for Christmas dessert and I used more than the suggested amount of rum and so I figure that two days from now this stuff is going to be mighty potent.

Okay. So that’s it so far! I will be reporting back in on the rum cake and will have photos of Christmas dinner (Lamb!) and of Chef Bill‘s latkes from his Hanukkah party on Monday.