Gingerbread House from Scratch + What We're Eating 12/6-12/12

This December I have several projects I want to undertake. Maybe they're not necessarily projects, but they are tasks I have never done before that I really want to. This past weekend, the first task was to make a homemade gingerbread house. For years we have made gingerbread houses, but we have always bought a gingerbread kit. After watching a million episodes of Bake Off I suddenly realized that we could absolutely make our own. Part of baking, I'm learning, is having a certain sense of fearlessness when it comes to new tasks. Thanks to Anja Dunk's beautiful book Advent, I wasn't too daunted. I read the recipe and it seemed to make sense. The only problem was that I was reading it before I had drunk enough coffee so I stupidly thought the recipe had ended when indeed it hadn't. Thankfully, my daughter is excellent at math and so is our friend who was staying with us. They busted out the pythagorean theorem bright and early to help us finish the walls. I couldn't have done it without them. Or I could have, but it would have been more like a lean-to. 

I don't know why I had never thought to make a gingerbread house from scratch before. Even though I feel super busy a lot of the time, it's not really that much of a time sucker and now I have a little sense of pride rise up when I walk by the tiny piece of architecture taking up space next to the Christmas tree. Up next? Citrus Peel so I can forge on ahead with homemade mincemeat!

The Best Laid Schemes for the Week.....

I am almost done with the semester. I can see the end in sight and all I really want to do is start baking and making merry all day every day. But I can't. Not yet anyway. This week is major business and Watts is out of town for at least part of it so I'm going to be doing some leftover eating and/or solo weirdo noshing for at least the first two days. 

On Monday and Tuesday I will either eat the leftover lasagna or the leftover spinach artichoke pasta in the fridge. We had a pasta heavy weekend. This time of year calls for it. 

On Wednesday Nuala will at least be back so I'll be cooking again. I think risotto will be in order because it's not pasta. Also because I have open white wine and broth that need to get out of my fridge. I'll make some butternut squash and roasted cabbage that are also going to be evicted from the places they currently occupy. 

Thursday....it sounds ridiculous, but if you can't be ridiculous in December when can you be? I have hot dogs/veggie dogs and macaroni and cheese that I'm tired of looking at. Can you sense a theme for this week? As I prep for the holidays, it demands the clearing out of food both in the fridge and in the pantry. It's time to make way for all the special food items I demand be present during this time of year. 

I hope Friday will be a date night. We haven't had one of those in a while. I should really be wrapped up with my grading by then so maybe I'll make steak or maybe  we'll go to a brewery and eat at a food truck. Or maybe I'll have a better idea by then. Or maybe I will be eating alone and watching all of the Christmas movies on Netflix. 

Saturday and Sunday are, as of right this moment on Monday afternoon, wild cards. I want to make something warm and hearty because it looks like it will be raining, but it also looks like it will be way too hot to enjoy such things. If it's soup maybe it's going to be baked potato soup or maybe I'll make a good chicken instead. It kind of depends on the crowd that will be in the house.  If I'm being honest with myself then Sunday will more than likely become a noshie bar which I'm totally fine with. We'll just have to watch the weather I think. 

How the week went gang aft agley....

On Monday night I ate leftover spinach artichoke pasta straight out of the Tupperware. Oh such joy! I thought I was going to alone again on Tuesday, but the lad surprised me by coming home early so I stopped by our local grocery and picked up a baguette and some sausage to cook up with simple red potatoes boiled then smashed with olive oil and salt and pepper. I also sautéed some leftover cabbage and roasted some broccoli. I was going to make risotto tonight for Wednesday's dinner, and that's what I made! Only I made it differently than I usually do. In the oven and with a wee jar of Thai red curry paste. It's a perfect dinner for a cold evening. I followed a recipe which said to roast butternut squash along with it, but that wasn't looked upon favorably by those I live with. The green beans, however, were plus the spinach I added into the mix. I think I was saving the baked potato soup for the weekend, but it's so easy to make that I made it for dinner on Thursday. That soup is so delicious and so quick to make it's kind of insane that I don't make it more often. Friday was a date night, but first I had dinner with Nuala which wound up being burritos. Funnily enough Watts had ordered a late afternoon burrito at the shop. After our respective burritos we decided that date night might just be better off spent on our couch drinking Paris Between the Wars which is exactly what we did. 

Campari, Blended Whisky, Simple Syrup, Lemon Juice, Sparkling Wine,
Garnish with lemon Peel

On Saturday I spent most of the day doing December projects... more on that in another post... but days like that make it easy to slip into dinner mode. There were steaks, sautéed green beans, mashed red potatoes and chimichurri sauce to go with it all. Plus the cheap red wine leftover from making mulled wine jam that I have to drink before it goes off. On Sunday there was more baking but there was also good chicken. All in all a week that was a good precursor to amping up the holiday festivities.