Christmas at last

To start St Andre triple cream cheese, crackers, pear, and fig jam.

For dinner, two New York strip steaks and frites.
Potatoes ready for the oil:

 

Dessert, double chocolate cookies (Martha Stewart) and a pecan cookie from the All American Cookie Book.  The pecan cookies use an interesting method.  You boil the chopped pecans and butter together to brown the butter and the pecans.  Then drain the butter from the nuts, chill it until it resolidifies, then use it in the dough.  The flour, confectioners sugar and baking soda are combined with the butter in the food processor.  Then part of the pecans are blended with egg, vanilla and a bit of water in the food processor.  This liquidly mixture is combined with the flour mixture and the other half of the pecans.  The soft dough is rolled out between parchment and chilled, then cut out, topped with a  pecan half and baked.

 

And some Canady chocolates that were one of my gifts.