I’m a little concerned it’s already December 18. This time of year goes the fastest and some people probably like that but I like to savor it all. But who’s to say I can’t keep celebrating past Christmas? Maybe it’s not readily available but I can buy peppermint candies all year round and make my own mochas.
I watched a bunch of Christmas movies while wrapping my presents over the weekend. I can honestly say it took me about 6 hours…not really complaining!
The past week involved tons of great food. I tried a bunch of new recipes and with a few tiny tweaks, I’d say they were mostly all keepers.
I broke out my Gwyneth cookbook. Cherry tomatoes and arugula were in my fridge and they needed to be used. It’s full of good, Whole food and love the variety of recipes.)
I could have ate the entire bowl of them. I’ve roasted tomatoes before but the ratio of EVOO was just perfect. I only used the below recipe for them, not the rest that’s mentioned.
Seriously. Look at them! Perfectly blistered and browned.
I had some smoked salmon so I really wanted to incorporate that as the protein. For a dressing I used this one just with balsamic vinegar instead of red wine, only because that’s what I had in the house. It made a lot so I’ve had extra dressing all week!
My favorite part might have been the sour cream corn bread. I used Ina’s recipe from Make it Ahead and fell I love with it. I substituted coconut palm sugar instead and gluten free flour!
Forget what you think about dry, crumbly cornbread. This is not that at all. It’s moist and soft and did not need any topping to be delicious. Ina recommends butter and strawberry jam! She also said you could could toast it but mine fell apart a little. However, warmed up was amazing.
It was a nice carb addition to the salad. We all need it. 
A few days later I still had sour cream leftover and needed a reason to use it. My brilliant idea was to use it in scones. It’s been awhile. I was on a huge scone kick awhile back and love the way sour cream or buttermilk change the texture. This was my one recipe semi-failure… let’s say #Pinterestfail.
I laid out all my ingredients but somehow forgot to add the brown sugar. Now, if you know scones, they’re not meant to be very sweet so these are still edible but I had planned on giving them as a thank you present. Yeah, that wasn’t happening. I have standards. I did eat one for breakfast with coffee anyway! I added chopped dates and pecans and will try these again one day. After Christmas!
After that debacle, I was out of butter so I found an interesting cookie using olive oil. Now, I really liked these. I’m not sure what everyone else thinks since they are definitely different. The fleur del sel and olive oil added a gourmet depth that most cookies don’t have. I think I’d leave about 1/4 cup of sugar out next time. They were pretty darn sweet. or maybe use bittersweet chocolate chips! f
My last little culinary experience involved a greattttt cappuccino and a gluten-free peanut butter chocolate free cake. As much as I love coffee, I’m a little boring sometimes and stick with black. This cappuccino was down right wonderful. The cake was good too, but I totally could have just eaten the peanut butter mousse layer in the middle and I would have been sold! (The capp was much prettier before I took a sip!)
7 Days until Christmas!
~Whitney Victoria
Some white sugar and brown sugar were creamed with butter. Mixing two types of sugar brings a depth to the sweet taste of the blondies. All brown sugar, and the molasses would overwhelm the other flavors. Just white sugar leaves it a little one-note. 
You really can’t skip the step of letting it cool completely if you want any chance at cutting the blondies into pretty bars.
Don’t judge my cutting skills. I know they’re all over the size map. Someday I’m taking a knife skills class to learn how to get beautifully uniform mirepoix. 
