Titled a lot of pictures of Christmas food:

A couple days before Christmas, I ate the following:

In the interest of taking better pictures, I tried to get closer. Still nothing terrific. But I don't care. That's spaghetti with olive oil, garlic, asparagus, and tomatoes. And more farmers market baby kale salad.

Next?:

That's meatloaf with some farmer's market sausage mixed in, steamed kale, baked beans from my previous post, and roasted japanese parsnips and golden beets. Also, a perfect ketchup mound. Everything was great, the beets were awesome.

Which brings us to Christmas. I didn't get pictures of everything, because by the end I just wanted to eat.

First the pecan pies I made the 23rd:

Those are made from a recipe from a friend, with an additional 2 tablespoons of this:

Uhhhh...they were awesome.

I also made an apple pie, with bourbon. Don't have a great picture. It's there in the left corner:

Then on Christmas Eve morning I made the chicken liver pate:

So that (livers, onions, garlic clove, 2 bay leaves, marsala wine, butter) got all food processed with more butter, and served with crumbled egg yolks and minced onions. Along with olives and cheeses. It was the beginning of the Christmas Eve food bonanza.

And then the time came to start eating. It was at this point my sister attempted to teach me how to take good food photos with my phone. Let's see how that turned out, shall we?

That's a good picture of the spread. Lot's of brown and yellow, San Diego padre-esque, even. Everyone thought the liver was to die for!!!!! Or something. It was damn good.

From there we moved on to baked stuffed cherry stone clams, prepared by my father.  Me and him devoured them.

 More good pics from my sister:

She's gonna ruin this blog's reputation.

Next for the Christmas Eve feast? Little neck clams. But before the pics, let's go to a video of Richard Jewel shucking clams for the Wakal family:

He's really in terrific shape! And what a great 'stache! Good job, buddy! I never believed them when they said you set off that bomb at the Atlanta Olympics!

So, how did they turn out?

Hot stuff.

But wait, there's more. Kielbasa. Obviously, I took the picture.

And then after everyone went to sleep, visions of sugar plums dancing, and Christmas Eve turned into Christmas Day, we awoke. To more food.

But first, some prep to get through the day.

Now, ready for the day, and the food.

Oysters? Yep.

 
Caesar salad? Sure.

And then, Prime Rib.

So, there was a plate of prime rib and horse radish sauce, and lobster tails. and garlic mashed potatoes, and kale and chard. But I didn't take a picture.

Enough already!

There was a lovely Christmas sunset:

Merry Christmas!