Christmas Dunch

Last night we didn't eat dinner. We ate Valdosta, Fruit Festives, Onion Strips, sourdough baguettes with Boursin and Bruschetta, Snickity Pizza Puffs, and 100% fruit snacks. These are our pseudo junk foods. Three Metro Mint waters topped off our evening grazing. Today we enjoyed a lovely little feast, pictured here only partially - it was magnificently diverse, including 20 or so chaffing dishes with eggs, potatoes, vegetables, french toast, bread pudding, rice pudding, pork loin, teriyaki chicken, salmon, brisket, and a slough of other items. On the chopping block was a honey ham unlike any other, prime rib (far from a personal favorite), and LAMB. I have a weakness for lamb, especially when it was prepared with rosemary and dijon, which it was!!!

This apple, fennel, and cabbage salad was rather nice, although the spinach salad above won my vote. I never waste time on pasta salads. I have yet to rave over a pasta/mayo entourage.











The brie was some of the best I have tasted, along with the gouda. Hiding on the back of the left platter is a sundried tomato and mozzarella salad that captured my fancy.

Fruit and breads filled this table, along with a herd of gingerbread moose:

The Seafood Sleigh: Crablegs, anyone? Unfortunately the shrimp was not shelled, so we spent our calories elsewhere.











The mussels were insanely delicious, and were ALMOST as good as the clams . . .

. . .But the real winner of the seafood table was the fresh salmon, smoked the night before Christmas!

The baked salmon was also pretty good, but fell short of its buttery smoked counterpart.

Shown here are a few of the items that jumped ship onto my plate.

Now, normally sweets are not my thing. They don't even appeal to me for the most part, but let me take you on a PARTIAL tour of the delightful sugarplum cinema so splendidly played out for the Christmas buffet.

I did not dare go near the chocolate dipping fountain, so that is missing, along with several other shots of hand-made danishes and other sweet treats.

What did I favor? This is a SMALL plate, I will have you know. Clockwise from 12:00 - Tiny Rice Crispies (did they put rose water in them?) I took 1/3 of one, but the cream puff between 12 and 1 didn't survive. The chocolate bon bons at 3 were shared with the hubby, and they were bon-bon-heaven. I took a tiny bite of that smattering of bread pudding at 4, and barely touched the French Yule Log between 5 and 6. I had a similar response to the lemon bar between 7 and 9 - I couldn't quite locate the lemon in there. The apple rice pudding at 11 stayed mostly on the plate, given its mushy consistency, and the best part of the chocolate pecan pastry at the center of the universe was the ganache with which it was topped.

Ironically, the gingerbread moose was quite nice, although during dinner, C reached over and said, "Okay, let me have the leg off your camel." I looked bewildered at him, and proceeded to correct this horrendous mistake. We both had a good laugh.