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23 December 2010
Whatcha cooking Saturday? Looks like I'm making braised brisket and cabbage with roast potatoes.
Fondue! Emmenthaler, Gruyere, and mascarpone, and lots of goodies for dipping: roasted sweet potatoes, potatoes, carrots, and butternut squash; blanched broccoli and green beans; chunked apples and grapes; cubes of homemade bread.
I'm going out for dinner with my parents. But during the day my old mother will stuff me with home baked cookies and stollen. Her stollen is the best. (made with german quark cheese, succade etc and aged for weeks) She's been making cookies and stollen for christmas since I was a little kid. Aww. And they'll have candles in the tree. Just like it's supposed to be. :-)
On the second day of kerstmis (yes, we have two. We in europe are so lazy) I'll be having dinner with my 2 yr old daughter, her mother and her grandfather. It's great to be
Usually I extend the spirit of xmass to the days up to new year. So I'll be staying in an old country hotel in the forests with a couple of friends.
The main course will be roasted chicken. There will also be stuffing and mashed taters. I'm sure there will be more edibles, but don't know what they are at this point.
My mom's in charge! Most likely, breakfast will be traditional "Christmas bread" which is a yeast-raised cinnamon bread with icing, with bacon and eggs, and dinner will either be a ham, a crown roast of pork, or similar, probably with mashed potatoes, coleslaw, and some other green stuff. It is a pleasure to be cooked for and I'm happy to have the chance to be with family.
Our big deal is Christmas Eve, when we do the Feast of the Seven Fishes. It's an Italian thing. There are usually about 30 or so family members, it's really great. So we'll have shrimp scampi, fish cakes, crab imperial, smelts, stuffed flounder, bakala (or however you spell it), calamari, mussels and pasta, seafood salad, and some other things I can't remember right now. It usually ends up being about 12 fishes.
Christmas morning is just us (me, husband, 2 grown kids) ane we always have quiches of some sort, and scotch eggs, the hard-boiled egg covered with sausage. And pancakes and pastries.
For Christmas dinner this year we're hosting a make your own pizza party. We do brick oven bbq pizzas. Everyone seems to like that.
Oh, Saturday. Duh. We are going here and yonder visiting. I doubt we will catch a full meal anywhere. We do have an annual night of grilling steaks and veggies in honor of my late FIL. A steak cooked on the grill on Christmas Eve and exchanging gifts with his grandkids was his favorite night of the season. I guess I'd better go shopping for t-bones.
Our tradition has been to make tamales, with varying success. For this year I got some frozen ones from a Salvadoran place and will steam them, along with rice, beans, avos, etc.
I'll be visiting my friend M., who will be making Ye Olde Roast Beef, accompanied by Ye Olde Yorkshire Pudding, among other things. For dessert, I shall be making Ye Olde Figgy Pudding, a la Dorie Greenspan, which I make every year and which is fabulous, in no form or fashion resembling your typical blah fruitcake. So it's going to be a pretty Ye Olde traditional meal all around.
Spaghetti with red sauce with Italian sausage and garlic bread. That's it. I have salad stuff but I am saving it tomorrow. I have been eating loads of candy and Christmas cookies. I need some real food.
Lasagna! I only make it once a year, since there are only two of us and it's impossible to make just a little bit of lasagna. (Big extended family meal will be Sunday.)
Salad on the side and some chocolate lava cakes from Trader Joe's for dessert.
Crown roast of pork (I've never made one before and am a bit trepidatious) potatoes anna, I think roasted broccoli with peanut sauce and something else I haven't decided yet. And I haven't decided on dessert yet either. Auntie has put in a request for apple pie, so probably that. Lasagna tomorrow night, yum.
Mom's cooking, but it's going to be a beef tenderloin roast (basted in sherry with mushrooms, scallions and rosemary), noodles romanoff, a green salad and sauteed spinach. I may surprise them with a pecan pie, if I get off my ass and make one.
Well, I already did the turducken (which turned out to be delicious!)for the family last weekend so just light nibblies for the two of us - smoked salmon and wasabi creme fraiche on rye rounds, pastizzi and salad, and a small mango trifle for dessert.
Everyones dinner sound so good! I love hearing about y'alls' different traditional or iconoclastic holiday meals.
This thread inspired me to get off my ass sofa and make the pies for Christmas night: a half-dozen tiny little pies, some apple, some mixed berry, all wrapped up tight and frozen so I can bake some fresh on Christmas Day.
ninazer0, I'm so glad the turducken turned out so well! Did you end up following directions or just wing* it?
We started the pork for our tamales today. Also made pickled veggies (tamale relish) and a chocolate-espresso cheesecake. Hamburgers for dinner.
Tomorrow morning we'll assemble the tamales and start the stuffing, the pie crusts, the cranberry relishes (two of them), and will start pizza dough for dinner. (Christmas Eve is make-your-own pizza night. With prizes for prettiest.) All this food is for 5 people.
Christmas morning we're doing turkey, ham, all the sides (corn casserole, stuffing, potatoes, brussels sprouts, two kinds of rolls my dad makes, other stuff I'm forgetting, and two pies). Plus my cousin is bringing brisket.
All this food is for 8 people (one of whom is a pregnant teenager).
I tried to start a tamale tradition one year. They turned out awesome, but I haven't been able to sustain it. Maybe I can get that going again next year. Then last summer I read this great book about Italian-American Christmas ravioli and got all excited about making homemade ravioli. In the end we're getting in late Christmas Eve so no major multiday cooking projects... it'll probably be Christmas Eve cold cuts. So many options...
Elsa: I made it up as I went along and it worked just fine. I thought it was going to be a complete turkey, but I didn't chicken out and stuck with it - only ducking out of the kitchen for a quick drink.
Also, your fondue has me severely tempted, but I'd have to go shopping for cheese, so perhaps for New Years...mmm...
My folks are visiting tomorrow. We're having ham, scalloped potatoes, purple hull peas, cornbread, and steamed broccoli with cheese sauce. I'm sure Mom is bringing other deserts and baked goodies. We collaborated on the menu a couple weeks ago.
I'm all about the semi-traditional. At Thanksgiving, my husband and daughter had already made a 23-lb turkey a couple weeks earlier, as it was on sale. So, for Thanksgiving proper, when the kids were gone and we were taking in a few strays, I made turkey enchiladas. Ended up getting 12 meals total out of that bird.
Since my husband made a pot roast today (his birthday) with all the fixins, I'm sure Saturday will be all about leftovers. Delicious, lazy leftovers.
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