2011, a year of deliciousness?

So it's been a while. Maybe 2011 will be a year of better blogging? We'll see. Hopefully I won't have to resit the PE exam (i should find out in a few weeks... the anticipation is killing me!) And hopefully I won't have to spend all my internet time browsing real estate, because we finally bought a house! We moved in right before Christmas, and set up a tree before we'd even begun to unpack! 2 years in a row of Christmas moves taught me to get my priorities straight.

We even hosted my family Christmas dinner! We still did Christmas morning at Mom's, but we packed up the refrigerator and commenced the cooking at nuestra nueva casa.

Sister and mom practically kicked me out of my kitchen (which i dont even know my way around yet) and made a delicious dinner! I helped here and there, but they definitely deserve all the credit. We started out with some baked brie and shrimp cocktail, but graduated onto roast pork with stuffed apples (amaaaazing stuffed apples), cauliflower and fennil gratin, simple greens with a mustard vinagrette, carmelized onion mashed potatoes, and pan blackened (with butter?) brussel sprouts. Look, here we are:

To top it all off we dined on peanut butter brownies, everything oatmeal cookies, and a pineapple layered cheesecake that was to die for. mom gave me the recipe, i can't wait to experiment with other fillings! I lived on leftovers all week, expanding my belly in preparation for new years eve's banquet.

For new years, mom and dad returned to nuestra nueva casa for more snacks, cuban food, sangria, and chocolate fondue and games. I've oversimplified... let me try again. Cheese and crackers. Mom's shrimp dip (one of my favorite things in the world), chips and guacamole, veggies and dip, cuban lobster, ropa vieja, cuban black beans (the husband cooks!), rice, Toblerone fondue, scategories, and wii sports. Thank god husband's friend joined us or we would have died of overindulgence. As it was, we all went to bed with belly aches, though the sangria helped dull the pain of over expanded stomach's (until the heartburn kicked in of course!).

Hopefully all that delicious food means that there will plenty more where that came from in 2011 (though perhaps without the belly aches?)

Easy Recipe for Mom's Shrimp Dip

• 1 jar of cocktail sauce
• 1 small tub of cream cheese (light is ok, but fat free is gross)
• 1 can of tiny shrimp (same size as a normal tuna fish can)
• 1 box of Triscuits
• pie dish or other shallow serving dish

The combo of ingredients sound weird, but it's delicious!

1. Spread the cream cheese in an even layer covering the bottom of the serving dish. Aim for 1/4 inch, doesn't have to be perfect, you can use as much or as little as you want.
2. Pour half the jar of cocktail sauce over the cream cheese.
3. Rinse the can of tiny shrimp and dump into the center of the dish, on top of the cocktail sauce.
4. Pour remaining sauce over shrimp.
5. Gently, using the back of a spoon, distribute the saucy shrimp mess evenly over the cream cheese layer.
6. Serve with Triscuits! Mmm mmm!