10 Reasons I Gained 10 Pounds This Christmas

I don’t think I’ll even bother climbing on the scale when I get back home tomorrow. I already know what it’ll say. Even though I still have a rotten cough and this cold medicine has a nice appetite suppressant side effect, I have not been deterred from the good eats spread before me at each family gathering.

I won’t bore you with the details of each meal…but I will note some highlights, partly to remind myself that I need to get the recipes or apprentice with one of the cooks for some of them.

Here goes…VFG’s Top 10 Holiday Good Eats:

10. Carolina Pulled Pork (Thanks to myself for tossing this in the crock pot before driving down to The Farm)

9. Enormous Steak for two (and plenty extra) at Janko’s Little Zagreb in Bloomington (Thanks to the IU kids [Go Hoosiers!] for posting the photos on Facebook to lure us there)

8. Bean Soup. This is a Hoosier Outsider original. I’ll have to watch him make it before attempting it on my own.

7. Spiral Ham from Dave’s Meat Market in Greenfield. You have not tasted ham until you’ve had a cut from this place. I hear they make a fantastic lunch sandwich too. Probably not a good idea to bring your vegetarian friends here.

6. Bacon from Mariah Foods in Columbus. I love their ham too. But I didn’t have any to compare to what I had from Dave’s this season.

5. French Toast Casserole with Praline Topping. No surprise that this is a Paula Dean recipe. Our hosts made it without the pecans. But it was still excellent and a great way to feed a brunch crowd after church.

4. Sweet Potato & Praline Casserole. Can you tell I like brown sugar and pecans? I don’t know who brought this to The Farm…but please identify yourself.

3. Cherry Chip Cake with Butter Cream Icing. This looked very hard to make, but I’m told I should be able to manage it. I’m very exciting to try the butter cream icing on my own.

2. Uncle Sap’s Doughnuts. (Thanks to my brother-in-law for keeping that tradition and the recipe alive.) This was a close contender for the No. 1 slot. It may have won if I’d had the doughnuts hot off the stove. But my No. 1 holiday food experience this year was the…

1. Handmade Caramels at a cousin’s house. These little drops of heaven were hiding in the basement where the kids retreated during a graduation open house (Go Boilermakers!) we attended today. I thought briefly about stuffing as many as I could into my pockets. But since these are melt-in-your-mouth delicacies, that would have ended up pretty messy.

Oh well…I will definitely need to get the recipe for those…after I work on my New Year’s resolutions and trim down a bit.