French Christmas Dinner

A few weekends ago, Bert's side of the family had their annual Christmas get together. It was hosted by his brother and his wife who live up in Aliso Viejo in Orange County. Their house is always beautifully decorated and my SIL is the ultimate hostess.

Their living room and dining room overlook a park. They don't even have window coverings here. In the daytime, it's really pretty too.

MY SIL had a drinks stations - Pellegrino, Sparkling Apple Cider and Chardonnay nestled among her Lladro figurines.

Here's the dinner set up...The kids' table was in the kitchen.

First course was lobster bisque. She told me she bought it from Costco but tweaked it a little by adding more cream and adding dill as a garnish.

There was also nice crusty multigrain bread to go with the soup...

The dinner theme was French food. One of the sides was roasted potatoes.

The other two sides were steamed cararots and haricots verts (green beans)...

The main course was Beef Bourguignon...this was absolutely delicious!

Here's a complete plate...

In the corner of her kitchen were the desserts - sorry I have no closeups but I made four of them. Those desserts include Russian Tea Cakes, Nutella Chocolate Chip Cookies, Mini Nutella Cakes and Blueberry strudel turnovers. Yes, I did a marathon baking posts a few days ago of all of these. There was also a platter of chocolate truffles as well as two store bought offerings I brought - Candy Cane Jo Jo's and Dark Chocolate Star cookies (both from Trader Joe's). Bert's sister came later and brought in a cranberry orange loaf.

The food was really good. I made sure not to eat too much so I could sample the desserts later.

Click here to see the holiday food pix from 2008 (this is an epic food post so the pix from my SIL's are in the middle somewhere).

One week of vacation down. Two more to go!