He’s been talking about it for years and years, but it finally happened. My uncle is retired! My aunt planned, and well schemed, a surprise retirement party. And it went off beautifully. Snowy weather and flight delays added a few wrinkles to the surprise, but otherwise, he was truly surprised! And of course, there was tons of good food! No one slaved for days on the food. Instead, it was catered! Shrimp cocktail. I love any party with shrimp cocktail!
Asian style mini meatballs. What makes the asian? Because they used sweet chili sauce in it. What an easy and brilliant idea.
Little mini spanakopita in the front. These weren’t that good. The mushroom cups in the back? Good! Actually, great. And this is coming from a girl who doesn’t really like mushrooms.

For a main dish, we had beef tenderloin with a mushroom gravy. This was the best entree of the evening.
Another entree was lemon chicken. I didn’t try this, but I heard this wasn’t that great. So I’m glad that I skipped it. The other entree was a veggie lasagna. A big vat of lasagna isn’t that photogenic. It was fairly tasty though. I would have preferred that the veggies weren’t so crunchy.
Rice pilaf. Not a favorite. Good, but there were chunks of crunchy bits in here.
Grilled veggies. I’m not sure what was in here, but there was definitely carrots, carrots, and carrots. There may have been a sweet potato, but I’m not that sure.
My favorite dish of the entire night was the salad. The mixed greens was nothing special, but it was what what was on top that blew everything out of the water. Candied walnuts, dried cherries, and an amazing balsamic syrup type of dressing. I could have just eaten a giant bowl of this and been stupid happy. This is my dream salad, because it’s like candy! I need to figure out how to make a dressing like that. Because well, I love candy! We also had mocha cake from the korean bakery. And everybody loved it! It was a fabulous party… happy retirement!

Christmas for my family is all about eating. Ok, any get together with my family is about eating. On this particular christmas, we pretty much ate from 2pm until we left. It’s non-stop grazing, from beginning until end. My aunt loves to make spinach dip.

Kimchi pajeon… regular pajeon is good, but kimchi pajeon is so much better! This particular batch was amazing.

We had regular non-spicy pajeon too. We’re a small peoples, but we eat lots!

My aunt always makes shrimp tempura, so we had more of these freakishly large shrimp from the costco.

She had proper tempura batter this time, instead of the chicken batter she used last time. Who doesn’t love deep fried shrimp? My mom eats the shrimp tails. So does my uncle. I do not! She says it’s full of calcium. I’d rather drink milk or take supplements!

I made a special request for these chinese dumplings. My aunt buys them at a local chinese restaurants, and she can buy them frozen. They are shrimp and chive dumplings. These were still super tasty, but they had transformed from shrimp and chive dumplings into chive and shrimp dumplings. Whereas they were mostly shrimp with a hint of chive before, these new ones were mostly chive with a couple of tiny miniscule shrimp in them. It was seriously disappointing, but still delicious. I guess it’s just a sign of the times!

Since I have an unhealthy like for ddukpokki, my mom had picked some up the day before and heated it up. It was pretty good for store bought stuff.

After all the grazing, we did have a proper “dinner” later on. We had some japchae, some random veggie banchan, kimchi, of course, and a whole crapload of meat.

These shortribs really should be grilled, so grilled they were! Snow was still all over the place, and definitely on the back deck, but my uncle had shoveled himself a little path to the grill. And with full snow garb on, he cooked these babies up. And they were particularly good!

My cousin brought a pie! Not just any pie folks, but a sweet potato pie that had a layer of pecan pie on top! Whoo! Super sweet as all get out, but I still enjoyed it.

Ahhh Thanksgiving.  A glorious holiday whose sole purpose is to make us eat good food. This holiday always gets a big thumbs up from me. This year I went with my moms to her friends’ residence in upper montgo. There was the requisite turkey, of course! This one was about 15-ish lbs? I’m a dark meat person, how about you? Although every bite was a bit nerve-racking as I had just watched this clip from the Today show talking about how terrible dark meat was for you. F em, I say! Corn. I love me some corn. Do you see the fancy plates and such? This was a proper meal!
We had a bevy of sides, of course, some traditionally thanksgiving, some not. This broccoli cheese casserole was a nice surprise. Instead of the green bean casserole, it was broccoli, and I ate it up. Mashed sweet potatoes. While I love plain old mashed potatoes, nothing beats mashed sweet potatoes. This is all in line with my preference for sweet potato fries over plain. Brussel sprouts and sliced carrots! Ok, I’m being honest.  I didn’t touch this plate. Ha!
Stuffing. Good ‘ol stuffing. For me though, I’ve never been much of a stuffing girl.
And to round out the sides we had cole slaw, green beans, and mashed potatoes. Some cranberry sauce for you? Why yes! And of course, the thing that makes thanksgiving what it is – GRAVY. I admit it, I would put gravy on just about anything. I am a gravy girl.
We had three desserts with this meal. And even though we were all stuffed, we forced everyone to try all three. The first was the standard pumpkin pie. It’s one of my favorite things about fall. That and sweet potato pie! We also had this pumpkin cheesecake from an argentinian bakery in northern jersey. It was so damn cute it was nearly a shame to hack in to it. But hack into it we did.
And to round out the thanksgiving dessert trifecta, we had this berry tart. All in all, my stomach was beyond satisfied. Oh, and I also drank some homemade cactus flower hooch. It was so odd tasting, yet fascinating. It was the color of beet juice, yet thick. And it was super sweet touching the lips but then had a bizarre savory aftertaste. It’s one of the strangest things I’ve ever tasted! This was an especially memorable thanksgiving spent with great people over some great dishes!