Thoughts of potential Christmas dishes dancing around my head

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advertising, catalogs, cooking, decadence, food, postaday2012

Over the past several days, I’ve been receiving e-mails from D’Artagnan, Petrossian, Food, Now and other websites advertising a wide range of goodies to put on your Christmas table. Petrossian is a purveyor of fine delicacies such as caviar, foie gras, smoked salmon and other expensive delectables. D’Artagnan offers different fare, more substantial such as free range guinea fowl, free range turkey, organic hams and whole lobes of fresh duck or goose liver. Food, Now brings dessert to the mind and if you cave in to the advertisement, also to your table.

So my mind is swirling with visions of potential ideas, but what to do with all these different choices? Thanksgiving is easy, you follow the basic formula; a turkey, stuffing, seasonal vegetables and pie. Christmas is the most special of holidays so the menu has more to live up to, therein lies the dilemma. I am lacking in inspiration but this may be due to the fact that I still have two weeks and four days. I need a ticking clock to sometimes fire up my inspirational and creative juices.

The visions I have are alternating between a filet of fish baked in flakey pastry with a herb infused sauce or crown roast of pork with a wild rice dressing, I go back to lobster, but I think that we have done that too often. I am searching for something new, something to get excited about cooking, something that will send me on a tear consulting all types of recipe sources in search of the one that is just right.

I haven’t mentioned the first course because we normally get a little bit of caviar and foie gras, toast points and sour cream and keep it simple so that the stars of the first course have their chance to shine.

Don’t think that I have forgotten dessert. I haven’t, I have to gauge the level of sweet decadence that everyone is willing to indulge in, we shall see, but I do see creme chantilly as a key player in the creation.

I’m not worried, I still have time. It’s funny, I get more stressed over planning the menu than the fact that I haven’t even thought of buying a single present.

What do you see?

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a room, books, chimney, cozy, description, desk, postaday2012

Explore the room you’re in, as if you’re seeing it for the first time. Pretend you know nothing. There’s no history there. So — what do you see?

I see a smallish room in comparison with the others in the house. It has four windows so it is very light and airy and one of the walls is dominated by a massive bookshelf filled with books so obviously wh ever uses this room reads a lot. The books are varied; books in French, science fiction, history, anthropology and political science. There are children’s book in French and gardening books as well; a very eclectic collection. Along the other wall there is a large stove with an exhaust running to the chimney so I imagine that in the winter it must be very cozy in this room with the books and the stove and right off the stove, I am sitting at a small desk in front of the computer and behind me is a futon couch very near the bookcase. This room seems to be designed for the bookworm at heart.