Listmas 2019: 10 Fun Recipes

With Christmas almost upon us, there are two major things everyone thinks about…gifts and food!  For that reason, I thought I’d cover the latter by discussing some of the Duck family’s favorite recipes.  These aren’t going to be in-depth recipes, by any means, but I’ll at least attempt to summarize each one.  And since all food is delicious, I’m not going to write this list in any particular order.

Flegasa: Let’s start with a family recipe, which I think was originally intended to be called focaccia, only to end up mispronounced as flegasa at some point in its history.  We always start off with a box of hot roll mix, and after a lot of kneading and letting the dough rise several times, we end up with a pan of dough that we season and into which we poke holes and brush with oil.  Once baked, we end up with some really delicious, well-seasoned bread.  I’ve always been particularly fond of the pieces with the indents in them because the oil pools inside them….  It’s absolutely delicious, especially when paired with chicken noodle soup!

Cockaleekee: Another recipe Mother Duck has been making for as long as I can remember.  This is almost like a soup, except it’s packed with rice, chicken, onions, and leeks, with the resulting broth kept to a minimum.  It’s even more delicious if you add a good helping of salt on top.  Yum!

Plaza Inn Fried Chicken and Cream Cheese Mashed Potatoes: This recipe comes from the Plaza Inn at Disneyland.  Basically, you soak some chicken in buttermilk overnight, and then you batter it like you would any other fried chicken recipe.  But in this case, you only fry it long enough to make it crispy, then, you finish cooking it in the oven.  It gets even better when you add the best mashed potatoes I’ve ever eaten.  For this, you need two pounds of potatoes, one stick of butter, and one stick of cream cheese.  Plus some milk to make it less thick.

Blue Bayou Gumbo: Another Disneyland recipe, this gumbo is so delicious!  We just add the andouille sausage because the other meats seem like overkill.  If you want to try it, the recipe can be found here.

Tortilla Soup: Another delicious soup, this recipe coming from the Pioneer Woman.  Not only is this soup soup-er delicious (that was a bad one…), but it’s really fun to add all sorts of toppings, like shredded cheese, diced onion, cilantro, etc.

Tamale Casserole: My mom has a whole bunch of old recipe cards which came from decades past.  We decided to go through them one day and see if any of the recipes looked any good.  One particular recipe that caught our fancy was tamale casserole.  Basically, using cornmeal, butter, and water (I think), you make this crust, and then you add in all kinds of goodies, like ground beef, onions, bell peppers, tomatoes, lots of seasonings, with some shredded cheese making up the top.

Stuffed Bell Peppers: Bell peppers stuffed with ground beef, rice, tomatoes, onions, and lots of spices.  It’s surprisingly tasty, despite the presence of veggies, and what makes it even more delicious is the fact that the top of the mound of goodness filling each bell pepper gets all crispy and crunchy in the oven.

Tourtiere: This is a super delicious French-Canadian meat pie (we use beef instead of pork, though).  What makes it really special are all the unique spices.  You can find various recipes online, but I usually pick whichever has the most spices listed in the ingredients.

Tea Sandwiches: These are not the traditional tea sandwiches, but rather, a little recipe we made up ourselves.  We use canned chicken, mayo, shredded cheese, and lots of chili powder.  They’re quite a tasty treat indeed!

Butterscotch Marble Cake: It’s only fitting that we end this list with some dessert.  Mother Duck has had this red plaid-adorned Better Homes & Gardens cookbook for as long as I can remember.  And for the longest time, the most intriguing recipe was this butterscotch cake with chocolate frosting.  After many, many years of admiring the photo of that wonderful cake, we finally made it for the first time…and it’s become a birthday tradition ever since.  And this recipe might be the same one from the book, though we used to use German chocolate for the icing until it became harder to find in stores….