Holiday Almanac December 12: Frankly Fancy Dinner

For more information on the Holiday Almanac, go here. Or to see what I've been up to on past Holiday Almanac days, check out this page.

Tonight's instructions are to plan a family night in and cook something from Betty Crocker's Frankly Fancy pamphlet. I have a sneaking suspicion that the title Frankly Fancy is actually a pun and everything in it involves hot dogs, but I haven't done much research and truthfully I don't actually want to know.

Mussels, Arugula, Sparkling wine and bananagrams? Sounds like a perfect saturday night in to me!

Since I obviously don't have a copy of Frankly Fancy, we planned a night in with my favourite easy-but-still-seems-fancy dinner: Smitten Kitchen's vermouth mussels, a recipe from her cookbook that has been tantalising me since I bought the book years ago. The Holiday Almanac's directions encouraged me to include 'games, watching TV, and a songfest,' but I think Judson's version of 'All I Want For Christmas (Is a Bacon Roll)' sung to the tune of Mariah Carey's 'All I Want for Christmas (Is You)' this morning was probably enough singing in the Cowan house for one night.

We enjoyed our mussels with a baguette and a green salad, all finished off with leftover gingerbread cupcakes, and I must say that frankly, we felt quite fancy indeed.

The verdict:

5 spoons out of five. Any night I have an excuse to cook from Smitten Kitchen is a good night to me, and taking a break from all the hectic Christmas festivities to regroup with a delicious (and in-season!) meal was the best idea I've had all weekend.