Here's to the French

The Christmas dinner theme this year was French! It was amazing and I'd do the theme it again. So many recipes to choose from. Good ones.

Dinner included a pork loin roast. Dad made a marinade from Herbs de Provence from Fork Lift, which was AMAZING. Normally I don't like lavender as a flavor, but it worked in this particular mix. 

Hayden made French Onion Soup with little toasts and melted Gruyere cheese. Again, very tasty. Recipe here.

I made a French Style Green Bean and Potato Salad (tender potatoes and crisp green beans tossed in a zippy French-style vinaigrette.) This too was excellent. I was told this is a keeper recipe. Image and recipe found here.

For dessert we served a French Apple Rum Cake using this recipe which I'll be keeping. (Use rum extract. It has more flavor than its authentic counterpart.) We poured the custard sauce from this recipe over the cake.

The first go-round making the sauce was a disaster...I let it boil and so it broke. The second try was perfect. But then I had A LOT of egg whites on my hands. The sauce was good, but the cake didn't need it, and it tasted incredibly quite similar to eggnog. So why not just use eggnog?

What did we do with all those egg whites? Later in the week I made an angel food cake! (Except the whites wouldn't stiffen...so in the end, I had to start all over with new eggs/whites. Which meant Mom had to make ANOTHER cake—Sunbeam cake—to use the egg yolks. Oh dear.)