Christmas Prep

The big day approaches, and Big Man still has not found a way to keep it from coming, so we are in final preparation stage here at The Acre.  Country hams are soaking in water, chocolate cake and boiled custard are made, and requests for fruit cakes have been made. Let's get it on.
First things first. Oysters. Big Man and Pops always have a batch of fried oysters for Christmas, this year we are keeping the tradition alive. There is high hopes for Cupcake to join in this year, but we wont hold our breath.

Oysters from Wade's.

Country ham, date with the smoker

 Every year, Cupcake makes boiled custard, this year was no exception. This is only the first batch, we're pretty sure we will need another batch before Thursday.

Big Man has brisket on the soak as Cupcake makes custard

And you have to have chocolate cake to put your boiled custard over. We do anyway. Cupcake's great grandmother started this tradition for her, and it is her recipe we follow each year for the custard. This year we went "from scratch" on the chocolate cake. Big Man has never liked chocolate cake, but this one has changed his mind, kind of like the sausage balls.

No cake mix for us

2.5 quarts of custard for our cake

Cupcake was finishing up the custard, while the cake was ready to go in the oven. We are a well oiled machine around The Acre.
Did someone mention sausage balls? This batch with minced onions. They rock.

We also had to eat, so we share a few meals that we found interesting from the past week.

Smoked chicken roaster. Plenty of leftover meat for future pot pies or noodle soup, but with the holidays coming, probably be a while before we get around to it.
The next item is a blast from the past. Lawman Candy. We still have several jars on hand, not a real fast mover on the request circuit. And the last jar we did gift was given to a UPS driver after we gave it to them. So we hang on to it now. This week, Taco Thor's Day with a little zip.

Brats boiled in dark beer, served up with sauteed onions, and home made brown mustard.

Home made pizza pie, ham and pineapple. Cupcake doing the honors of Italian spice and butter on the crust.

And our third shipment of "Green Arrow" wine club membership arrived this week. We got a bag of whole bean coffee in the shipment.

Plus a comic book and water bottle. We may just have to break down and open up a couple of these bottles of wine. Perhaps with New Year's brisket, which Big Man has soaking in buttermilk. It's our ring in the new year tradition, smoked brisket and black eye peas. We guess a bottle of red wine would go splendid with that?
We put the coffee to use with the coffee grinder, and mixed it with our Deathwish aged in whiskey barrel coffee beans we picked up during an internet sale a few weeks back.

Fresh ground, fresh brewed coffee sure does go down smooth with chocolate cake and fruit cake. We ended with chicken wing Sunday.
K&K