12 Weeks of Christmas 2024: Week Two

12 Weeks of Christmas 2024: Week Two

Today's meal was a full Christmas dinner. I tried three recipes that all turned out amazing! All three are online recipes, so I can't write them out here, but I will tell you the changes I made.

First up was Apple Dijon Pork Roast. This recipe needed very little adjustments for it to be ok for me to eat. I misread the apple juice as applesauce, and it turns out that unsweetened applesauce was much better for me to use than apple juice, anyway, so I just used that instead. The only thing you have to make sure to do is to strain the sauce after before thickening it cuz the applesauce will mess up the texture.

Here are all the assembled ingredients. This is a slow cooker entree, which is lovely.

The sauce ingredients, pre-stirring.

And post-stirring and over the roast. This makes a lot of sauce. You can probably cut this in half, for the 2lb. roast I used, and still be just fine.

I loved being able to just turn this on and walk away from it. It doesn't use the oven, which is also really nice if you're planning a meal with lots of oven components. You do need a sauce pan to thicken the sauce on the stove, so plan on that.

Next up was the Cranberry Applesauce. This recipe had the most adjustments made to it. I didn't have 6 apples, I had 4, and I used the entire bag of cranberries. I used honeycrisp apples and thought they were wonderful with this. Instead of 2/3 cup of white sugar, I cut it all the way down to 1Tbsp. of brown sugar. I used water instead of the cider. This turned out to be delicious and perfectly sweet. I possibly would have gotten away without even adding the brown sugar. A serving is 1/2 cup but can't imagine eating that much in one sitting. It's so good, though! I'm going to use it for my overnight oats and see how that works for breakfast this week.

I was thinking originally of grating some of the apple to replace the cider, but decided not to since I have to cook it all down anyway. I figured it doesn't matter what shape it was in.

Here's the whole thing on the stove, just getting started.

5 minutes into cooking.

10 minutes in.

15 minutes.

And 25 minutes in. Make sure to stir this well because it will burn on the bottom if you're not careful.

After letting it cool down a bit, I pureed this in two batches, but tried to keep it from being too pureed. Keep it a bit rustic.

The color is so pretty and striking! At first taste, when it's just finished, you might think it's too tart and be tempted to add more sugar. Resist this urge and let it chill properly for several hours. It will be perfect by then. This was really delicious!

The last recipe was a simple mashed sweet potato recipe. This is from a member-only site, so you might not be able to see it unless you open an account. But the general idea is to make mashed potatoes the same way you normally do, but use peeled and chopped sweet potatoes and no salt in the water. When the potatoes are soft, you mash them with melted butter, soy sauce, and put chopped green onions on top. I really liked how these turned out. I don't like it when people take sweet potatoes and make them even sweeter. I like more savory applications, and this was a great one. I used the yellow sweet potatoes instead of orange, cuz rumor has it that they are better on the glycemic index.

I just used one sweet potato and adjusted the rest of the ingredients to work for a smaller amount of potatoes. 

I mean, does this look like a proper Christmas dinner, or what?! Before I changed my way of eating, I would have had rolls or biscuits with this, but found that this was plenty of food and I didn't need that.

The potatoes were good on their own, and also with the sauce mixed in. I was worried that the sauce might be too Dijon-y with the amount used, but it all blended well with the chicken stock and applesauce. I also wasn't sure about having zero spices, but decided to try that element as is, and think it's fine. If anything, I might have added some sage and/or poultry seasoning. If I make this again, I'll probably try that.

This is a really festive meal. It felt fancy and used basically all the pots and pans, so that made it feel like holiday cooking. I will be eating leftovers for a couple days, so that feels like Christmas, too!

I recommend all three of these recipes and hope you enjoy them!