Also, Shaya(pictured above) would be extremely disappointed in me if I didn’t share our traditional Chinese dinner.  This dinner consisted of Moo Shu Pork, the “Chinese Trio”, Crab Rangoon, and egg nog(made with a whooooole lot of Bourbon).

I had never had Moo Shu Pork.  Why didn’t anyone tell me that they give you little pancakes that function as little tortillas?  Seriously, it was fantastic.

My food was, of course, covered in Sriracha.  I believe Shaya used glitter as her go to condiment.  She likes glitter.  A lot.

Every Christmas at the Moors household, we drink, converse, and eat.  Let me place an emphasis on the eating part, because we actually do a lot more than just eat.  We do some serious feasting.  We don’t mess around.  This is the only time when the family comes together every year, and we tend to celebrate it with excess amounts of champagne, wine, and food.  Classic family recipes are made, and if anyone leaves the table feeling anything but full.. Well.. They must have developed some sort of crazy eating disorder over the past twelve months since we last saw each other.  This was the second year I took an active role in the prep for our special Christmas dinner, and my father actually allowed me to document the process.  I will start with our appetizers, and the main course will come tomorrow.  I wanted to combine the two into one big post, but the studio was concerned that the audience would find it too long,  so this will be the “Kill Bill” of blog posts.

This wasn’t planned, but at the last minute I decided that a party just isn’t a party without deviled eggs.  These things are like the twice baked potatoes of the egg family(Egg family?  Seriously, John?).  I like mine to start to start with a little creamy mayo flavor, and progress to a Dijon mustard aftertaste with a little bite.  I always like to throw in a little Tabasco as well.  Am I the first person to mention taste profiles and progressions when describing deviled eggs?  If so, I’m perfectly fine with that.  These things are delicious.

I’m just going to throw this out there real quick, because I know very little about wine and champagne, but I do know that we drink reeeeal good every Christmas.  These two were among the nine bottles of champagne we tried.

The highlight of every Christmas is my Nana’s clam dip.  She brought this recipe back from Japan with her, where my Grandpa was stationed in World War II, and it has been been a family tradition ever since.  It’s a cream cheese based dip with heavy garlic and clam, but I just can’t bring myself to post the recipe.  Gotta keep this one in the family. I will say that this is the most incredible dip I have ever had, and if you love garlic this is heaven in a bowl.

Moving on, bacon wrapped sirloin and scallops.  All I have to say about this is bacon wrapped sirloin and scallops.

We ate the biggest log of goat cheese that I have ever seen in my life.  Seriously, have you ever seen this much goat cheese?  This lasted for about 5 minutes.

And for the final course, Costco chicken pot pie.  Nothing too glamorous about this, unless you’ve had Costco chicken pot pie before.  It would be hard for me to point you to a better pot pie than this one.  Homemade is as close as you’ll get, and it’s still difficult to get this good.

Tomorrow I will bring to you our actual Christmas dinner which will be an Epic Portions classic.  Trust me on that one.

So the Jewish half of Epic Portions has family in town to Celebrate the Pagan tradition of tree lighting, American tradition of materialistic splurges on gifts, and the very Jewish tradition of good-old-fashioned holiday drinkin’!

Oh yeah – and my girlfriend decided to cook her face off – seared sea scallops and a truffled shrimp risotto with balsamic-pear-gorgonzola mixed greens salad.

So, to you loyal EP readers, I wish you a very merry Christmas!

I love this woman.

After a recent holiday party, we have WAY too much egg nog left over.  And way too much cheap brandy.  I mean, seriously.  What were we thinking.  What do I do with a handle of brandy?  And a gallon of eggnog.

The answer came to me during my nightly stare into the refrigerator.  Egg….Nog….Ice…Cream!  I mean, I don’t even have to make the nog…just make the nog really, really cold.  The problem is most recipes for eggnog ice cream assume you don’t already have a vat of nog in your fridge.

One of the 3 half gallon egg nog containers in the fridge. Why do I always get so overzealous with the nog during this time of year?

I was perplexed until I stumbled upon Natalie’s Killer Egg Nog Ice Cream Recipe, which is blatantly plagiarized below:

1 qt Eggnog
1/2 cup Sugar
1/2 tsp Vanilla Bean Paste (or extract)
pinch Salt
Gingersnaps, crumbled (optional)

1. In a bowl whisk together the sugar, vanilla bean paste and salt. Pour in enough egg nog to be able to stir everything together until smooth.
2. Pour the eggnog/sugar mixture along with the rest of the eggnog in your electric ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturers instructions. [In Todd's case, this meant for like 2 hours using a crappy Krups ice cream maker and then freezing overnight]

Boo - this ice cream maker sucks!

So good. That is all I can say. So good. Ideas for improvement: cover with a layer of brandy. Or Rum. Or Godiva Chocolate Liqueur. And add some ginger snaps.

Oh. Snap.

Hope everyone has a great Christmas.  The Moors family has already gone through 10 bottles of champagne, bacon wrapped sirloin skewers, an entire Costco chicken pot pie, and a whole lot of cheese.  Tonight we feast on twice baked potatoes and pepper steak.

In celebration of the greatest holiday ever, I give to you the greatest Christmas song ever.