Quick update

I will just write a few things...but I have a lot more coming. 

We try to take full advantage of yellow, orange, and 

red bell peppers when they are on sale and they

were recently. We decided in order to fully appreciate the pepper we would make stuffed

bell peppers. I thawed some of our free-range ground venison (we figure hunted is pretty much free range) and sauteed it with onions and mushrooms, parsley, salt, pepper, and garlic. We added parmesan cheese and bread crumbs and stuffed the filling inside our peppers (which had been lightly salted and peppered). We baked those in the oven until the peppers were "squeezable" with tongs. Served with a nice, light salad we had a really great dinner. It was an easy meal and a great meal to fully enjoy those beautiful peppers.

The Sunday before Christmas, one of our good friends (Crystal) came over and we made cookies, mint fudge, and Chex puppy chow. We had a great time decorating both plain sugar and frosted sugar cookies and we are thinking about having a cookie decorating party next year, complete with a cookie decorating competition. 

Additionally, we had several great Christmas meals with family. My dad made a rack of lamb that had a delicious mustard, spice, and bread crumb crust. I like that my dad always makes a bit of a formal Christmas dinner. It has almost always been our tradition growing up to have a relaxed and casual meal Christmas Eve and a big, formal (straight out of Charles Dickens) Christmas meal. On a more personal note, Mattie and I had our very first Christmas morning all alone this year after being together for 7 years and married for almost 4 1/2 years. We had belgian waffles made in our regular waffle iron (the Krustaez mix works really well). We had leftover pear and cranberry pie from the night before so I scooped out all of the filling and heated it in a non stick pan with some maple flavored syrup to put over our waffles. It was very good and I highly recommend trying it with any of your leftover pie filling. 

Like I said, much more to come...we have vacation food pictures from Quebec!