Post Holiday Tasty

I believe that every family has their post holiday rituals of food and drink, and as far as I'm concerned its probably the most enjoyable parts of the holiday.  There is nothing the makes me more happy after a holiday feast than to create another awesome feast with the left overs.  In my opinion I think it takes a bit more skill to do an awesome left over meal.  What I mean is, you have already cooked stuff that already taste great but how do you make it taste different and make something that is completely a new meal.  For example, Turkey enchiladas make for a wonderful post holiday entree the next day or a couple days later.  You can prep them up and freeze them or cook them up that night.  I personally love the turkey enchiladas.  My grandfather Buzz used this awesome recipe for years and we always had a left over turkey enchiladas party after Thanksgiving and Christmas.  My dad always made turkey soup out of the left overs, he would spend all day cooking the bones and some other wonderful ingredients for the stock of the soup and it was just gallons of lovely soup.  They would always plan to make more food for the holidays just so we could get those left over meal delights.
As for Julia and I, it was a wonderful Christmas dinner this year with friends and their families.  Our friends Liz and Kristian invited us to have dinner with them and my job was to cook the awe-inspiring and heavenly turkey of the century.  Everyone else was to create the other highlights of the meal.  We were to have the occasion at the secret rustic location in the middle of the island that cannot be disclosed on the internet.  It was quite and very beautiful there and if anyone was to know about it it would get ruined and destroyed by hotel zombies.  Anyway, cocktail time supplied us with appetizers of calamari caprese, smoked salmon pate, and spicy artichoke dip.  There was copious amounts of wine and beer before the real eating began and I was having to much fun, artichoke dip, and conversations around the fire to remind myself I was in Hawaii.  The bell rang and it was time to put on the dinner jackets and sit down for the meal.  Everything seemed to come together as though we were all cooking in the same kitchen all day.  I could not have asked for anything better for a holiday meal.  Turkey was great, the potatoes and gravy were fluffy and tasty, the veggies were so good, and homemade cranberry sauce hit the spot.  The dessert time was nice as well, Mike(bouncer/master of the secret location) created some delightful cookies, and Kristian's mom made one of the most moist scrumptious cheese cakes of my life.  The party ended too soon and as we all went are own ways, I thought in my mind, the next week will be more fun cooking left overs than cooking for the Christmas dinner itself.  I quickly gathered some left over pieces and the carcass of the turkey to take home and begin the Dr. Victor Frankenstein "Turkey Leftover Experiment".  Of course I don't want to make the turkey live again but rather be recreated again in another awesome meal.  I awoke the next morning to begin the process of leftover holiday tastiness.  I roasted an onion, bell peppers, habinaro pepper, and some carrots. I took the carcass and all of those roasted items and put them in water and let that simmer for a day or so.  After it was ready I cleaned up the stock and put the rest of the turkey meat and potatoes, carrots, onion, celery and some awesome herbals.  I can't believe how good it made my house smell.  I was almost willing to go to the CEO of Febreeze and tell him to make a turkey soup smell.  Yah awesome right, who would spray that all over your home everyday? Hell, I would spray myself too!  After the initial taste I found out that for never making this before I am really good and it.  I had never made left over turkey soup in my life and I wanted to attempt to recreate what I watch my father do my whole life.  "I saw a guy do it once", I told myself, and now I am gonna make turkey soup like that every year. Im sure I will attempt something different in the years to come, but for the most part I loved it. I bottled up some, froze some more and I will be eating it for lunch for the next week. I wish that there was more turkey leftover for those Buzz enchiladas but maybe I'll just make a turkey so I can make leftover Buzz enchiladas anyway.
Well, I sure do hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday and some leftover bliss this last week.  I saw some pictures of my father's prime rib he did for the Christmas dinner in NJ, it looked very very good.  And for all of you who love leftovers too, keep up with the Jones and make sure to create instead of just reheat.


Notes for the day:

• Turkey sandwiches are really good with stuffing too
• Don't use chicken stock for gravy if you just cooked a turkey
• Green velvet dinner jackets work best for Christmas
• Have a good New Year

She loves it! Direct quote from the wife

Tasty Holiday

I just finished watching the Grizwald(Christmas Vacation) family sit down to a wonderful meal only to find out that the aunt is crazy, and the turkey just exploded into a magnificent turkey of hot air. After laughing for a bit with the wife, I figured I would have to write how I felt about Holiday FSBW. For me holiday FSBW means, my family gathers together to eat way to much food and consume way too much SBW. To my recollection I believe that of all the families that I had the wonderful pleasure to visit on the holidays, my family would get head honors for shear amounts of food and booze.  Not to say that other families don't dabble in excess, but cases of wine and enough food to have family left over parties has not been a part of these other peoples holiday homes. Even if there was only 3 people at the dinner table there would be enough food for the town and booze to fill a busy bar for the evening at my family gatherings. All of this though, makes me really happy and nostalgic about holiday meals.
The stock holiday meal always involved a turkey(grilled), a glazed ham that my pops always makes super good, the typical sides like mashed potatoes, stuffing, veggies, and gravy.  Makes me hungry just thinking about!  I always enjoy the proteins and gravy a lot more than any other part of the meal.  Drinks would consist of for grandmother vodka and a very little splash of tonic, copious bottles of red and white wine and of course the always present bottle of Jack Daniel's.  Aunti Patty would always have a Sierra Nevada in hand and Uncle Joe Gabone would always have a Molson or two on staff too,  The verity always made me happy cause I could choose to be happy any way I wanted.  The best of the night though by far was when the best family friend Jeff Moore would show in tow a box of goodies.  The box was never the same and always concealed the fate of how the evening would end.  Most of the time though the tasty goodies would be a couple of bottles of imported Belgium beer like Duvel and Chimay, or a nice clean aged scotch.  Plus I almost forgot, cigars from all over the world made the lot of us very pleased and happy.  Dessert was my mothers secret weapon for the holidays and she would on point make some of the best pies I've every had in my short life so far.  I don't really eat dessert but if it is really good I will devour a slice after a huge meal.  I still look forward to the parties than I do any other part of the holidays.  I am a big fan of the turkey and ham combination as a holiday meal, any kind of gravy will do and the sides must be the potatoes and veggies. What I don't really enjoy is the dang fruit that gets allowed into the party.  Somehow though fruit salad and cranberry sauce have been hanging with turkey and ham since the dawn of time.  Don't get me wrong, I know that they go well together but my taste buddies don't like cranberry too much. The happy fruit salad jello thing might be either one of those genius things or some how it could be just like the crazy aunt from earlier that loves to forget that people don't eat cat food(please take no offense aunts of the world I was referencing the movie).  Now that "THAT" is off my chest I can continue.  However, back to Holiday FSBW!  For now I'm ready to make some sort of chipotle glazed ham this Christmas and maybe something to go along with it.  Our friends have invited us to have a wonderful dinner with them and I know they enjoy all of the FSBW that make this time of year so special for me.  AND PLEASE DO I PRAY FOR DESSERT.  I hope someone a.k.a. me makes a good old cheesecake too.  I can't help but wonder if this will be one of the tastiest holiday meals.  So as I dream of Tasty Holiday Treats and listen to my favorite Christmas music of yule tides(whatever that means) I bid you a wonderful holiday of glazed, stuffed, braised, roasted, buttered, and frosted holiday tasty treats.

I know that sometimes my writing is a bit all over the place and my spelling/grammar is elementary but it adds to flare and oddness of it all.  Not like I will ever be writing for Food and Wine or Saveur, but I am pleased to say that I might be way better at cooking and drinking than I am at writing.

Merry Christmas to the two readers and until we meat again. HAHAHA

Parting Holiday Notes:

• Do not drink too much before dinner or you will not be able to taste the lovely meal
• Do have as much fun as possible
• Make sure that what ever you bring to the party it goes well with what ever you are eating
• Lastly, record funny moments with you camera and bring them the next year to laugh some more

The First Tasty

First and foremost I think I need to make sure you know what I am going to be writing about, and then maybe over the next few post you might know what the heck is going on in my mind. This blog will be expressing my hope and failures over understanding Food, Spirits, Beer, Wine(FSBW) and how those things culminate to make me happy. I must say that in order to write about these things I need to tell you that I will do my best to eat and drink as much as I can to represent this blog to the fullest. Not only will I be writing about FSBW, I'll be talking about the environment of the what is apart of FSBW. You know what I mean right, like the songs, pictures, people, and things that FSBW comes into mind when taking it all in. Inspiration of the moment would be that most important part maybe. Enough of this babble explaining and lets also note that I will be the worst blogger and writer that you have ever know, I only say this because I have a attention span of 58 year old man from north Philly watching Rocky. I'm drooling all over the place just thinking about cheesesteaks. Hopefully the one person I know who would read this(my mom) will get to see me learn how to write and spell correctly. Mother will be proud and rejoice.

I also think it will be important for me to write about my love of FSBW Ofcourse, I'll explain later of why I do love these things but for the most part Booze and Food make me who I am. If I was to not express myself like this I would be doing everyone a favor I'm sure of it. I might even put some recipes in this blog and maybe just maybe tell you where it is good to eat n' drink in this damn world.

So from now on in the world of too many blogs and awesome writers I create The Blog of Tasty to make me happy and tell you of all the things that are tasty. Three cheers for Tasty!

Parting notes with a glass of some red juice and Led blasting my ear drums.

• So far so good
• Menage a Trois is an awesome cheap wine
• Pork, Potatoes and Onions work well together
• Last and final, Enjoy Everything Tasty