Christmas Dinner | The Whole bag of Chips

Tag Archives: Christmas Dinner

What’s for Dinner Wednesday: Cranberry Apple Chutney

This was delicious and will be on our table for Christmas Dinner next week!

We are food and cooking TV junkies. We watch all kinds of cooking shows at our house from Diners, Drive-ins and Dives to Restaurant Impossible, and more.

The bad thing about that is I’m constantly hungry because we’re always looking at food and it always looks delicious.

The good thing about that is we get some great inspiration from the things we see made on TV.

A few weeks back, Don saw a Cranberry Chutney cooked on television. It looked so good that he decided that he too, wanted to make a Cranberry Chutney the next time we had pork for dinner. He bought all the ingredients, throwing in some apples as well, and we planned the meal for the night of our kids’ Winter Recital for Dance. We’d be gone all day and coming back in time for supper.

Before we left, Don pre-cooked the chutney and we took a sneak peek at it. It looked delicious and smelled delicious! We took a taste. DELICIOUS! When we came home later that evening, all we’d have to do is reheat it. The pork went into the crock pot and off we went.

Sure enough, we came home starving and we couldn’t wait to dig in to that night’s dinner.

The chutney Don had made was amazing along side (or on top of) the pork roast. We had sauteed green beans, baked potatoes and homemade applesauce as well. The meal got all thumbs up all around and we’ve decided to have it again for our Christmas Dinner. I can’t wait!
I am sharing Don’s recipe with you today, inspired by the many TV shows we watch about food. If you’re looking for something new and different to do for your Christmas Dinner, I encourage you to give this recipe a try!

DON’S CRANBERRY APPLE CHUTNEY

I love how the fresh fruit looks in the pan all together. The colors are so wintry and fresh!

INGREDIENTS

One bag of fresh cranberries (12 oz.)

3 medium sized Macintosh apples, diced

1/4 cup raisins

1/3 cup orange juice

1/4 cup honey

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tsp. cinnamon

salt and pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS

Combine all ingredients in pan.

Cook on top of the stove until cranberries begin to pop and apples have softened.
Orange juice should reduce down.

Tags: Christmas Dinner, Cranberry Apple Chutney

Comments Leave a Comment
Categories Christmas, cranberries, Dinner

Sooo…what was for Christmas dinner? Part 1

27 Dec

Roasted pork chops, sauteed green beans, butternut squash, twice baked potatoes, applesauce

Here's my plate, just before I dug in!

Yesterday’s post showed our pretty ordinary Christmas breakfast, which despite the simplicity of it, we love it. I noted however, that our dinner is more elaborate since we do host Christmas.

We tend to be creatures of habit, so we make the same thing more or less, every single year: Pork roast with homemade applesauce, twice baked potatoes, sauteed green beans and this year my cousin Val made butternut squash with apples as well (one of my favorite vegetables ever, by the way.)

This meal is actually relatively easy to prepare because you can do a lot of it ahead of time. You can use this meal for any occasion, not just Christmas, but it’s definitely our go-to meal for Christmas Day.

Six pounds of apples is a lot to peel, and I'm always amazed at how much this reduces once it's done. It looks like less than it is, once the apples are cooked.

The day before, I make the homemade applesauce using six pounds of apples.

You can find the recipe for the applesauce on my Hanukkah post here.

Here's how it looks all cooked.

Once the applesauce is cooked, I put it into the serving bowl for the next day, and put it into the fridge, cinnamon stick and all. Just needs to be reheated in the microwave before dinner.

Ready to serve on Christmas Day.

Another big part of the dinner which can be prepped ahead of time, is the twice baked potatoes. Don does those.

Tomorrow, I will share that recipe and show the steps to get you from a bag of potatoes to the yummy side dish that we love so much. And, as an added bonus, the recipe for Twice Baked Potatoes gives you a ready-made appetizer as well: Potato Skins. You’ll see how that happens when you read tomorrow’s post.