One holiday; five days of preparation

As I return from the grocery store with the makings of this year's holiday feast and find room for stuff in the 'fridge, I find myself pondering the amount of effort that goes into the food for these special holiday celebrations. On my side there's the menu planning, shopping and a couple of days of preparation. Then there's the grocers and the farmers and the transportation industry that traverses them. Most of my meal didn't travel cross country or even across the state... but it's a large menu, and it probably touched hundreds of hands -- and lives -- on it's journey... I hope all of *them* have a joyous holiday!

Enough with the deep thoughts. What are we having this year? Well Christmas Eve's going to be one big celebration of Magazine Monday; 90% of the menu hails from Eating Well:

Roasted Pear-Butternut Soup with Crumbled Stilton
Endive and Watercress Salad with Pomegranate Dressing
Parmesan Bread
Spinaci con Pignoli e Passerini
Bulgur with Ginger and Orange
Pork Tenderloin Rosa di Parma
and the super-surprise December Daring Baker challenge for dessert!

Check back in a couple of days to learn how it all turned out.

From the archives: a year ago today, I reminisced about restaurants visited in 2006.

Technorati Tags: Food | Recipe