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Christmas with the Wardens

by on ‎01-12-2012 04:27 PM

I've just returned from Utah where I shared the most wonderful Christmas with my four sons, their wives, and my seven grandchildren. It was “most” wonderful because of the news that Abigail, my son Joe’s wife, is going to have twin girls in May, and Susan, my son Mike’s wife, is having their fourth child, another girl, also in May. Next year there will be three more young Warden ladies at our Christmas dinner. 

 

The holidays with the Wardens are always fun, because everyone loves to cook. We actually had to sign up for specific cooking duties this year so that we didn’t end up with too many cooks in the kitchen. For each meal, three Wardens were assigned to cooking, three to clean up during cooking, three to clean up after each meal, and three to set the table and mind the littlest Wardens. It really worked out well and I highly recommend this system to other large families at Christmas or at any family get-together. We voted Abby as the work assignment person. I got lucky and was assigned to prepare my Christmas roast leg of lamb, which was infused with garlic slivers and seasoned with my own special combination of lamb seasoning. It was then carved and served with raspberry, persimmon, and mint jellies. It was the hit of Christmas Eve dinner (and far eclipsed my son’s roast turkey in a bag!).

 

We also used the Cook’s Essentials pressure cooker to cook moist stuffing from scratch for the turkey and eggnog rice pudding. This was my first time cooking these recipes for the holidays as I just developed them this last year for my new Great Food Fast cookbook. I had 14 requests to add these two recipes to our holiday tradition on Christmas Day. Thanks to our reviewers for making Great Food Fast a customer top-rated cookbook, and thanks for your positive comments. It makes all the work of creating a new book worthwhile when I see how many of you use the recipes in your everyday cooking. I'm already at work on a Best of the Best Cook’s Essentials Cookbook for this fall. 

 

I will have some more new news for you next week. Stay tuned!

 

Happy New Year!

 

—Bob