happy holidays

happy holidays folks.

hard to believe christmas is here & gone already.

i never got entirely in the spirit this year. but it certainly helps when people bring me treats to the market...

december was a bit of a whirlwind with orders right up until the 23rd. not gonna lie, i was pretty worn out. i did partake in a few christmas traditions and took almost two days off so that was nice ;)

last weekend i made two ginormous cakes, a carrot cake with toasted walnuts & pecans and a black forest cake with fresh cherries, whipped cream & kirsch. adding these to my market prep the weekend before christmas was a little ridiculous but i was pretty pleased with the results.

i guess the customers liked them too... they sent me photos of them eating the leftovers for breakfast the next day :)

last saturday night i was back in the kitchen making a special order key lime pie as a birthday surprise. i neglected to take photos but was assured that key west now has some pretty stiff competition.

monday was christmas eve day and though it was the first day of my 'vacation,' i made my way over to my neighbour's house to give him a hand making rappi pie. rappi pie is perhaps my most favourite thing to eat in the whole world (aside from chips & dip and chocolate frosting of course). it's also my most favourite christmas tradition. some folks think it's pretty gross, but they must not have tried mike leblanc's rappi pie.

when i arrived, things were already going full steam ahead.

 i didn't have to do too much work. he'd already picked the chickens, simmered the stock, cooked the onions, cubed the salt pork & stoked the fire. i was there to help with the grating & dehydrating of potatoes. the trick is to have a food processor equipped with an extra fine grater. mine is a little too coarse so the texture ends up being a bit more like a roesti than i would like. but guess what? santa left me a top-of-line one under the tree so now i can take my rappi pie to the next level!

we made two giant roasters full of it - 40lbs of potatoes, 3 large chickens, a pot of onions & about 15 litres of chicken stock. then to make it truly authentic is was baked in the wood stove.

here it is just as it went in:

and here it is 3 hours later, in all its glory:

to most, it's not much to look at. but to those who are privy to the delights within, this is a thing of pure beauty. geez louise i love rappi pie... sigh.

then it was christmas day. lucky for me, i don't lift a finger for christmas morning breakfast or christmas dinner. however, this year i was enlisted to make a couple of pies for a boxing day pig roast, which meant some work on christmas day. it wasn't too bad. i had a sous chef to boss around - my brother - and the results weren't too shabby.

so although i did do more work than i was planning, it was all worth it & i did manage to slack off more than usual. heck i didn't even turn my car on for three days and was able to enjoy a few epic backyard sunsets.

but now it's back to the grind.