Ringing in the New Year With Taste

It's been so busy with all of the New Year's festivities, coupled with work and doing work on the new house that I haven't had a chance to blog! So, after much ado, I will update you on all of my good eats for the past week or so, in chronological order of course.

As mentioned earlier, I spent Christmas with the stomach flu. All the wonderful food I had planned on eating was forgotten I spent four days eating nothing more than rice, crackers, and toast. Mistakenly, I thought I was feeling better on Christmas night so I ate a real meal, and the only food you can get on Christmas day: Chinese take-out. I went with a safe Chicken and Broccoli with rice meal, and it tasted great even though my stomach told me later it was not ready to handle real food yet.

When I was finally feeling better on Sunday and eating real food again I decided that a homemade soup with all sorts of healthy nutrients was in order. I made one of my all-time favorite vegetable soups with parsnips, potatoes, leeks, and tomatoes. We dipped some crusty bread in it and it was fabulous. My husband added a disgusting amount of parmesean cheese to his, much to my chagrin, but what can I say, the man has yet to beat his food addictions like I have. This isn't the best picture of the soup, so I will have to make it again to show you it in better detail. :)

New Year's Eve I made dinner for my mother-in-law, who came to stay the night. She had originally intended to come on Christmas Eve, but she was also sick so we postponed our holiday festivities until New Year's Eve. After four long years of waiting, I finally was able to break out my wedding china so the meal needed to be worthy of such an event. Although I had to work all day prior to dinner, I think I was able to put together a meal that was just fine for breaking in our china. Roasted pork loin with a mustard and maple sugar crust, roasted asparagus with EVOO, lemon, and parmesean, and crescent rolls. What can I say, I needed a starch that was quick and easy to make so I went for those. Everything was really good. I would have liked to use a drier rub for the meat, as I have in the past, but I didn't have enough of my spice mixture left to do that. Dessert was port wine poached pears with cinnamon and star anise. It's such a great light dessert, and very holiday appropriate, so I broke that recipe out again.

New Year's day we had friends over for finger food, but I completely forgot to take pictures of the spread! So here's a run down of what we ate: cheese and crackers with grapes, prosciutto wrapped asparagus, olive tapenade on crostini, chips and salsa and homemade guacamole, barbeque flavored little sausages (a New Year's day necessity), stuffed mushrooms, and peppers with a mustard and maple syrup dipping sauce. It was so good, and I discovered that day that I can eat cheese again with complaint from my gallbladder! So excited! Anyway, the food was amazing and I have been enjoying eating the leftovers the past few days.

Speaking of leftovers, the last picture I have for you is of the dinner I made tonight. I reheated some of the pork loin and served it with leftover peppers sauteed in the mustard and maple syrup dip, which also tasted great with the pork, and served it with crescent rolls. I think I am officially crescent rolled out and can go without having them again for another year, but they were good while they lasted.

I look forward to continuing to explore the healthier side of food and living in 2009 and can't wait to keep sharing new health stories with you! I anticipate I will do my gallstone flush soon, and I am working hard and getting in top physical shape now. These past six months have been life altering for me, and I want to keep moving forward in this direction forever. Now, to get my husband to eat healthier when I'm not supervising him....