The Four Slaws of Christmas, a food post

Happy New Year!!! I'm sitting in the window chairs looking out over the ravine and the hills beyond, drinking Costa Rican coffee with Strauss cream (my favorite!!!), surrounded by the Beloved Husband and cats. Later, a friend is joining us for a hike and dinner; I did all the prep yesterday so there's very little to do today other than update this blog! Few of my posts lately have been about food, so it's due...

I've been doing a fair amount of cooking over the holidays, really more than most years; we did some entertaining on non holiday occasions so I wasn't bound by traditional menus. Working from the premise that vegetables are healthy and that everybody loves a good slaw, I tried some new recipes, all with slaw pairings:

Salmon Pie with cabbage, mushrooms, and caraway

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  On Christmas eve, I cooked a salmon pie, and served it with a fennel and red pepper slaw. I knew exactly why there's a layer of rice on the bottom crust; thank you British Baking Show! Next time I'd used one of those tasty Lundberg rices for a little more flavor.
• We joined friends for Christmas dinner, and I brought a cabbage and apple slaw with pomegranate to go with their big roast beast.
• G&C joined us a few days ago, and I made Green Chile Stew from Hatch chiles that I mail ordered to delight my Darling Husband, and made a southwestern slaw to go with it; I also found my new favorite cornbread recipe. 
• Tonight, B is coming for dinner and we're making jerk seasoned chicken, black beans, cornbread, a Jamaican inspired pickled cabbage salad, then my first ever key lime pie for dessert.

The Four Slaws of Christmas recipes are here. A small word of advice: with 4 slaws in 8 days, we're definitely over-slawed. Be careful you don't suffer from the same problem!

• Fennel and Red Pepper Slaw 
• Red Cabbage Slaw with Apples and Pomegranate
• A Southwestern Slaw from the Santa Fe Cooking School Cookbook
• Pickled Cabbage Salad

Marshmallows getting dipped into Tcho Chocolate

I can cross Make Marshmallows off my bucket list, If you've never had a homemade marshmallow, they're nothing like the Kraft ones in the bag. I made vanilla ones, and dipped some of them in Tcho dark chocolate.  I prefer them plain, DH liked them better with chocolate. There will definitely be more marshmallow in my future.