It's all about the food.

 

Have you had dinner yet? Or at least a snack? Because trust me when I tell you that you do NOT want to be reading this if you're hungry. Seriously.

 

This post really is all about food. You literally should scroll past if you're dieting. You have been given fair warning. I won't tell you again. Also, please understand:  I know that we are so blessed to live where we are surrounded by abundance, and I am grateful for that. I don't take anything for granted. And nothing here was wasted, either.

 

So, having said that ....

 

One of the Huffaker holiday traditions that has grown up over the years is the "Adult Dinner Out". It started simply with all the adults going out to dinner together, usually sometime in that week between Christmas and New Year's, at some nice sit-down restaurant. We would leave the teenage kids to watch the younger kids, and it was an adults-only night. We have varied the restaurants over the course of the years.

 

Another tradition that started only recently is the Men's Cookout -- which is separate from the Adult Dinner Out. So, this year the Men's Cookout and Adult Dinner kind of combined and phased into a different event. (Actually, the Men still had their cookout. It usually involves lobster tails and steaks which they cook for themselves. Don't worry about us women. We retaliate with the Ladies' Shopping Spree -- it's all fair!)

 

So, this year, we had a large family dinner, which was separate from Christmas Dinner, but it was cooked out on the smoker/grills, and primarily prepared by the guys. We had all the family come, including the kids -- which was a good thing, because there was a lot of food that needed to be eaten.

 

And ohhhhhh, it was SOOOO good!!

My mouth is watering, just recalling that meal.

 

I'll give you the menu in just a moment.

 

It was also an all-day affair in regards to the cooking. Literally. This is Todd -- who was out in the cold at the crack of dawn -- to fire up the "Big Green Egg" smoker:

 

 

Yes, that's the sun peeking over the eastern horizon.

More in just a minute about what food went on the smoker first. We do sell the Big Green Egg smokers at our store, and have one ourselves at home. For this cookout, we used our Egg, the demonstration Egg from the store, and also our Traeger pellet grill. We have found that it helps to sell the smokers when we have them ourselves and use them regularly. (For this same reason, at home I also have a shelf full of spices and rubs and a refrigerator stocked with partially used sauces and marinades!! Sad but true!)

 

We smoked a turkey that day -- this picture is a bit out of order; I apologize for not having any "before" photos of it, -- but really, who wants to look at raw turkey? This is the "done" photo:

 

Oh, yes. It was pretty darn good! This one was injected with marinade, seasoned with a rub under the skin, and cooked on the "turkey cannon" infusion rack on the Green Egg smoker/grill.

 

However, he actually started cooking the first step of Beef Wellington first. Have you ever had this dish? None of us had even eaten it, let alone prepared it, so it was uncharted territory. (Our typical menus aren't that formal, or that expensive, either.)  Our preparation is a bit of a variation from the classic dish. Our Beef Wellington was a tenderloin of beef, which was seasoned and went on the grill first. Because it was a rather large cut, we divided it into two pieces so it would fit on the grill.

 

After the first cooking of the tenderloin was done, it was wrapped and chilled. Then we chopped and cooked mushrooms and shallots in butter. (3 kinds of mushrooms.) We rolled out a piece of puff pastry, and spread the mushroom mixture on it:

 

 

Then the partly-cooked beef is spread with Dijon mustard. The puff pastry is wrapped all the way around it, and sealed with an egg wash.

 

These are our two Wellingtons, ready to go on the grill, after the turkey came off:

 

In fact, we had more ready to go on the grill at that point.....

 

 

... because these are the sea scallops, ready to hit the pan as well.

 

When the Beef Wellingtons were cooked to temperature, they looked like this:

 

(They're probably a bit darker than they would have been if cooked in an oven - but the crust also took on some smoke flavor because of cooking it outdoors. Next up for the grills were the bacon-wrapped shrimp:

 

 

... and the totally-from-scratch green bean casserole with seasoned, fried onion topping, and cooked in the Dutch oven, out on the grill....

 

Are you keeping count of the dishes? Because I haven't even started to tell you about the stuffed pork loin:

 

Bacon wrapped. That yumminess could have been its own meal by itself!! When it was done and sliced, it looked like this:

 

 

That is pork (loin), stuffed with pork (sausage), and wrapped in pork (bacon).

Oh. My. Goodness!!!! That was one of Jason's (our brother-in-law) contributions to the meal.

 

So let me back up now, and give you the menu for the evening. I hate to even give these foods a ranking, because ...... oh my, YUM!! And I've barely started on the side dishes.

 

 

Family Holiday Cookout Feast 2013:

 

Beef Wellington

Bacon-Wrapped Stuffed Pork Loin

Smoked Turkey

Seared Sea Scallops

Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp

Smokey Green Bean Casserole with French-Fried Onions

Smokey-Baked Potatoes, with all the fixin's

Dressing (ok, "Stuffing" -- though nothing was stuffed with it)

Tossed Green Salad

Creamed Peas and New Potatoes

Homemade Rolls with Cinnamon Honey-Butter

 

And for dessert,

Cheesecake Bites and Dessert Assortment

(ok --we bought that one. After all the homemade stuff, we deserved a break, I think!)

 

 

 

Do those kids look hungry, or what!

Todd and Jason, our two chefs du jour:

 

 

There was literally so much food, that we were eating it off our plates before we finished going through the buffet line, just to make room on the plates for more food. It's no surprise that they were in the kitchen, sampling right off the serving dishes! 

 

So, Beef Wellington should be cooked medium-rare, to be done correctly. While some of our family likes their meat at that temperature, others of us prefer it to be more done. (I like mine to be medium-well) So for me, my piece came from the end of the tenderloin, where it was done to my liking. Some of our guys ate the center cut, which was cooked "perfectly" to temperature:

 

 

And some of our ladies actually passed on the Beef Wellington, because it wasn't done enough for them. To each his own -- you can see that there was more than enough food.  Mmmm.... you can see the mustard and the mushroom layer under the crust! The next time we make this, we decided we'll cook way more mushrooms and not roll the dough thinly. We could have used our entire mushroom mixture on just one of the tenderloins.

 

It was a rather time-consuming day of food preparations, but it was oh-so worth it. I guarantee that we wouldn't have eaten as well if we'd gone out to dinner that night. It was a mountain of dirty dishes and a fair amount of leftovers as well -- but we ate well for the next few days!!

 

It isn't always all about the food. But for that one day, it was!