Christmas eve we have angel hair pasta with parsley and parm. Cookie assortments go in bags and we drive home after services eating the cookies and looking at lights,
Christmas Day we always have quiche or a Spanish tortilla, from the days when I was not going to wrangle children and cook something amazing. For dinner this year we are having salmon with a chorizo-tomato sauce and Lamington cake for dessert (apparently it is British)
Day after Christmas my DiL will make us pork dumplings and teach us how to fold them up, should be fun!
We have egg rolls on Christmas morning. This became a tradition a few years back when my brothers and nephew were out looking for a liquor store and couldn’t find one (the Colorado liquor law changed when they started selling liquor on Sundays, and the trade off was that sales stopped on holidays). No liquor, so went with egg rolls.
OK, you win @gosmom. If we didn’t live in the desert, crab and/or lobster would kick beef to the curb. Your Christmas Eve dinner sounds amazing.
Those of you having goose/duck run a close second. I love goose, but many in my family don’t, so we opt for beef.
I also love venison which my hunter brother sends to us in some form almost every year. When he sends steaks, we have them for NYE, but not this year as he bagged the limit and donated the excess processed meat to a charity. I guess that was OK…
Doing Christmas at our place, so this is the spread I have in mind:
Turkey breast
Ham
Mashed potatoes & homemade turkey gravy
Green bean casserole (with cheese on top, of course…)
Scalloped corn casserole
Rolls & butter
Her mom is bringing fruit salad, so there will be that also.
I am mulling whether to also make dressing… or if that would be overkill.
Thank you for creating this thread – I love talking about food.
There will just be four of us on Christmas Day. DIL is bringing a pork tenderloin Wellington. I think she said there are apples and onions inside the pastry. I’m going retro with twice baked potatoes, green salad and a frozen chocolate Mint mousse for dessert. The recipe is in my SIL’s 14 year old handwriting, and titled Frozen Frangos. (If you are from Seattle you understand, and no, the Macy’s version is not as good). She made it for the first Christmas my husband and I were married, 45 years ago.
For Christmas Eve we will have tamales. The ones in the refrigerator case at Costco here in the DFW area are locally made and very good.
It’s hard to find a meal everyone loves equally; I am lucky in that we all love goose. We will need two to feed the clan so it’s pricey but we only ever have it on Christmas, similar to our lobersterfest in the summer and fried chicken for Kentucky Derby. I love the tradition and special occasion feeling of once a year meals.
Our kids are MIA (due to travel and Omicron concerns), and our good friends lucked out and scored a last minute cabin in the snowy woods, so it will be just the two of us. Makes meal planning easier because we are omnivores! With the others, we would have been stuck with planked salmon because it is the only food everyone would eat.
I think I will go for simplicity: grill some lamb ribs and make green beans and scalloped potatoes for the sides. We have plenty of wine to choose from: assorted Treveri bubbles, some great Zins amd Chards by Rombauer, Patz and Hall pinots, Bookwalter Syrah and white blends, and plenty of local Rieslings. I will just send Mr. to the cellar, and we will drink whatever he will drag out. For dessert, we will try the Napoleons we bought at the Euro deli. If those turn out yucky, we can always cut some cheese up.
I first tried frangos as a kid visiting my cousins—we would go see the Christmas decorations in downtown Chicago and then to
Marshall Field’s for lunch (iFields is now Macy’s.) I loved frango mint pie!!
I love reading about everyone’s different traditions!
I host both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We are a seven fishes family so lots of seafood apps (fried calamari, shrimp cocktail, scallops in bacon, stuffed clams, smoked salmon spread, seared tuna), and pasta in lobster sauce with ceasar salad and garlic bread for the main course. Chocolate pie and Christmas cookies for dessert.
On Christmas Day its beef tenderloin with choice of sauce (gorgonzola mushroom or port), twice baked potatoes and roasted rainbow carrots. Dessert is a white chocolate, cranberry cake.
This thread is making my mouth water. We host Christmas Day with extended family of around 20 and enjoy the following menu with very little variation.
Appetizers: Brie, Spinach dip, marinated mushrooms, and cheese/crackers
Prime Rib with au jus and horseradish cream
Creamed Spinach
Mashed potatoes with roasted garlic
Cesar Salad
Tarte Tatin (Julia Child’s recipe)
This year I am also going to make Sangria. Can’t wait to enjoy!
Anyone have an easy cheesy scalloped/au gratin potatoes recipe that’s awesome/easy and they are willing to share? I won’t likely make it on Christmas, but sometime soon after.
Thanks
Years ago we’d sometimes do turkey for Thanksgiving and Christmas… but I’ve decided it is just too close for repeat.
This year we will try Prime Rib for the first time ever. The lady in front of me at grocery store was very pleased with the sale price, so I went back the next day with my husband to pick one. We were thinking about doing baked potatoes as a side, along with veggies and/or salad. I may try doing popovers too… it’s a fun memory from middle school home ec class, and it will only be two or three of us so not a big deal if it’s a flop (literally).
