Aaaaaand just like that I’m behind on blogging again! I didn’t even blog about my actual birthday. Maybe someday I’ll get around to blogging about it, but the summary is that it was awesome and that I ate goose which was delicious!
For now let me tell you about Saturday, when Chris and I had our very own Chrismahanukwanzika celebration! We’ll be spending the actual holiday at his parents, but we wanted to do something to celebrate with just the two of us and, since I don’t celebrate Christmas, we wanted to have an awesome holiday mash-up celebration; which we did.
Even though it was just the two of us, I wore a red dress and he wore a tie to add to the festive celebratory mood! We popped on some holiday music as I prepared dinner, exchanged gifts and then watched Elf.
So what did I serve?
Well, at my very not Jewish boyfriend’s request, we started with latkes.
Why yes, I did forget to take a picture and just recycle a photo from last year.
For the main course I served this amazing Libyan dish that I first tried several years ago, Tajin Sfinari bil Zaytun. It’s a spicy lamb and carrot dish that I absolutely love and it also happens to be the dish the banner photo of this blog. I promise you I’ll share the recipe with American conversions (the actual recipe linked to above uses metric and Celsius) soon.
Yum!!
Finally, for dessert I made gingerbread ice cream sandwiches. I made a batch of my tried and true gingerbread bars, cut them is squares, added vanilla ice cream sprinkled with some more brown sugar and cinnamon and then put another square of gingerbread over the top. I think this might have been Chris’s favorite part of the meal and now that I know how much he loves ice cream sandwiches I think there may be more in his future…
Perfect holiday treat!
The next morning I woke up earlier than Chris and I had nothing to do so I decided to surprise him with Chrismahanukwanzika morning breakfast too!
I scrambled some creme fraiche in to the eggs so the were extra creamy.
Have you eaten any great meals yet this holiday season?
26 Dishes 
Ummmm, that meal looks amazing! I have yet to actually make latkes, mostly because one of my aunt’s friends usually takes care of that for my annual craving! But, I do have my grandmother’s recipe and do plan to make them at some point (though, knowing my sense of tradition, it’ll be on some snowy day in February!).
Yum, all of the food looks delicious. Chris is a lucky guy to have such a talented chef for a girlfriend. I really want to try latkes some day. I know I would love them! I have been eating well since I got home. Lots of midwest comfort foods, like pot roast w/ mashed potatoes and wild rice soup. I need to detox after this trip home, I think! Plus my mom has made some special GF treats for me, which of course I HAVE to eat. 🙂
That’s so fun, I love that idea! We celebrate Christmas, but more the santa & Christmas tree version, so I’ve started a tradition of doing a Hanukkah meal too because latkes are delicious! And why not be more equal opportunity with the holidays that I’m taking on as my own? lol The holidays were too crazy this year so we did ours last night, and I tested a new recipe.. and it turned out to be the latke recipe to end all latke recipes! Now I can’t wait to have them again this winter instead of waiting all year 🙂
I just made latkes last night, and the recipe was crazy delicious. It’s fun to have equal opportunity holidays, I started doing that a few years ago too, and while the Hanukkah dinner usually happens before Christmas this year it was a New Years Day thing. Any time of year, these are astonishingly good. Glad you had a good holiday & birthday season! 🙂
Man, girl, you’ve been cooking up a storm, and I love that y’all had such an eclectic dinner and breakfast the next morning! I love holiday cooking, in general, and I feel like I ate ALL THE THINGS while visiting my family and my husband’s family during the last few weeks.
Happy New Year to you! Happy that you had a lovely birthday and can’t wait to hear more about it!