…is during the holidays.

Want to try something new?  Major holidays are totally the time to do it.

Wait wait!

Before you stop reading, hear me out on this departure from the more serious food stuff we’ve been hashing:

1.  You probably have a captive audience.

Family and friends are visiting, and the only thing they’re really expecting is for Great Aunt Matilda’s roast to taste exactly like it should.  Other than that, you’ve got a group of people for at least a week or two (in most cases) and they need to eat something right?

This is the time for the things you’ve been wanting to try that perhaps involved larger cuts of meat, or produce 20-30 little items.  Also an awesome time to try out new appetizers cause frankly, who makes appies at home normally??

2.  That captive audience may be a little more plowed than usual.  

This sign hangs in our kitchen, is our go-to motto, and was awesomely made by Meggen.

Holidays are times for celebrating, and most people take their relaxing very seriously in that regard.

Which means those same people will be more willing to try new things and go along with your kitchen adventure.

Plus I’m pretty sure Chinese is still open on Christmas Day.

3.  That captive audience probably brought edible gifts with them.

Hardly anyone shows up at someone’s house without things to munch on, and you probably made a few things in advance so you wouldn’t end up at Denny’s if your Christmas turkey belongs in a burn unit.

Read: You most likely have plenty of things in the house for sustenance if you’re culinary adventure completely bombs, so don’t worry about it.

4.  It’s great entertainment, and usually makes for some spectacular fun.

At the very least, pour everyone a glass of wine (or a shot of tequila) and just have a lot of fun.  As long as you’re not stressed out about everything being perfect, pretty much only tastiness and hilarity can result from this process.

It’s almost better than drunk boardgames 😉

Almost.

We tried a few new things over the holidays, and some old favorites:

Potato gnocchi on our new board! Awesome present, very cool and versatile piece. You can also roll textured pasta on it.

Our first spit-roasted goose. Frankly this is the only way to cook ’em in my opinion, they just release too much fat otherwise.

Jas’s first Yorkshire puddings made with the goose fat. Huge success, pretty sure we devoured all of them.

Ok not the first time scaling a fish, but I just thought this pic was hilarious. Insert “ready for Korea” joke here.

Jas’s fried chicken. A new venture a few months ago that has quickly turned into a staple he was able to successfully reproduce enough times now for the recipe to be solid. And so damn tasty.

Lamb tamales, a very new venture for us. Tasty as shit and fun as hell to make.

Yeah they weren’t the prettiest ever, but the flavor was spot-on. Flavor comes first, pretty later. You can always make things look nicer, you can’t always make them taste better.

Why not?