Christmas holidays continued

preparing for making Boozy eggnog with a dozen of our backyard eggs

12km with Lawrence to help run off the eggnog

Lawrence and I decided to finally sign up for a trail race.  We have been wanting to explore the Meerdaalwoud - a forest preserve that lies between our two houses - for quite some time, and I thought a trail race would be a easy way to do that.  We ended up running through a very wet and muddy landscape, but as that is the kind of terrain that we both train on, it was not a problem.  We both made good times and despite the rainy weather it was nice to get out and run.

Over the next couple of days we decided to take in the Christmas Market here in Wavre, and enjoyed skating on the rink, and then warmed up with some Glühwein afterwards, in our collected mugs from previous Weihnachtsmarkts.

We've also had some quite luxurious meals over the holidays...

butter-browned scallops with shallots and

a white wine reduction as a Christmas eve appetiser

Christmas Eve tourtière, made with veal, ardennes porc,

and hand-chopped venison, thickened with a grated potato,

some oats, and an egg, with lots of spices

My parents sent us some presents with Maggie and Malcolm when they visited Canada during the Toussaint holiday: they turned out to be on a Hudson's Bay Company theme... even Yoshi received something that was HBC colours...

I enjoyed using the HBC apron while preparing the Christmas turkey with Haggis stuffing

Christmas around 112 Chaussée de Louvain itself was pretty low-key; we didn't go anywhere but just sort of hung around on the 24th and 25th.  On the 26th we did go out for a trailer trip to go get firewood and drop off an old refrigerator to the dump, and then Bryan and Kiana and I ran about 12km in Bousval with the two dogs, and Armani accompanied us on his bike.

One nice cold weather recipe that I want to share with you was a new one for me... it came about because I found pork cheeks on last day of sale at the Delhaize, and so I did some research and finally settled on this recipe.  You first marinate the pork cheeks in a paste of garlic, honey, thyme and parsley; then you dredge the meat in flour and brown it, and then fry up onions, carrots, shallots, peppers, etc. in the same oil.  Then the meat goes back in, and you pour in a few cups or ruby port and a few cups of homemade stock (in our case it was made from the Christmas turkey bones).  An hour and a half of simmering later, a few potatoes in chunks and a chopped green apple or two go in for another half hour, and then that's dinner.

If you like it, here's the recipe:

https://spanishsabores.com/2012/06/12/recipe-carrillada-braised-iberian-pork-cheek-with-port-wine-and-honey/