Is it Christmas yet?

Been in the kitchen all day.

The day started with mini bagel dogs. Awhile back I made some kick asss bagel dogs, and for the holidays I decided to do a version with mini sausages. I was also inpired by a recent article in the Chicago Tribune that as an "update" of the mini sausages in the grape jelly/chili sauce that is often a staple. Their recipe was just sausages with some fancy dipping sauces. Stole two of the dipping sauces, a citrus mustard and a horseradish cream sauce.

Just did a basic egg bagel dough. Action shot!!!

After the dough was made, I just cut it down to size, and I was going for about 32 "strips" of dough. Just rolled each out in to a snake....

Each snake got cut in two, and I wrapped each piece around a mini sausage.

Boiled/baked per the bagel recipe instructions, and these little gems were my prize....

Very happy with those.

Also attempted to make some cinnamon palmiers from a recent Gourmet recipe.

Those pans were put in at the same time, and came out at the same time. I was not happy. I did them on the convection setting on the oven, on pan was fine and the other got burned. I decided I'd try again, since I still had cinnamon sugar left, and I was half-assing the recipe anyway and using store bought puff pastry rather than the "Easy" puff pastry-like dought the recipe had you make. I had the puff pastry anyway, it just needed to defrost.

Easy enough recipe to make, and doing them one pan at a time, they all came out the way they were supposed to.

Also prepped the Creme Brulee French toast for tomorrow's brunch. No biggie. I made it for the first time last year, and since then I've made it a half dozen more times, and it's always good. And easy.

For dinner tomorrow, I'm bringing a kind of "modified" green beans almondine ala the trout recipe in the Bouchon cookbook. Browned butter and almonds, and tomorrow I'll just nuke the beans at the in-laws, and toss them with the butter and almonds.

Also made some tomato confit, to use in a quiche. I was finally going to give the quiche from the Bouchon cookbook a try, using an 8 1/2 inch springform pan.

Disaster.

Dough was easy enough to make, and I chilled it, and then put it in the pan, and chillled it some more, and put it in to the oven. Right now, it's sitting on top of the stove, and it will probably soon be in the trash. It shrunk terribly on me, and right now it's just not worth continuing. I'd be surprised if I could get an inch of egg filling in there. I had spinach prepped for a florentine filling, I might give it a try again on Tuesday. Or I might just use the spinach for some creamed spinach this week (which is sounding more likely at this point in time). The recipe was one I wasn't counting on coming out, so it's no biggie if I drop it.

Still have to prep some veggies, make meatballs and pita chips, but that might just wait until Tuesday. I'm about out of energy, and I still have to clean up the kitchen. I also wanted to slice up some red onion and tomato for tomorrow's brunch (for serving with bagels, cream cheese and salmon) but that might just wait until tomorrow, since I don't want to cut up the tomato until tomorrow anyway.

But, the failure of the quiche at least gives me a start on meals for later in the week... I'll use up the cream and the tomato confit to make some pasta sauce, and the spinach can become creamed spinach. I'm almost ahead of the game??