Merry Christmas

 It's the day after Christmas and while things were certainly different this year, they were also very good and I feel so blessed.

I'm truly honored to be able to go through this life with my people.  My husband  and three boys make my life so much more than I ever thought it could be.  

Christmas Eve was different, but also a lot of the same.  We did not go to church.  Instead, we watched it on TV.  This was NOT my preferred way to attend mass, but Christmas Eve mass is usually packed with people and due to Covid, our pastor had to put a limit on those attending to 125.  We just felt that it was better and safer to stay at home and watch it on TV.  Right about the time mass started, so did a snow storm so I'm going to take that as a nod from God that we did the right thing.  We got about 15-18 inches in total.  Talk about a white Christmas!

We had our usual menu of fried calamari, smelts, and baccala, along with shrimp cocktail, stuffed shells, and various cheeses.  We watched a few Christmas movies on TV and then it was time for the eight year old to put out the milk and cookies for Santa and carrots and reindeer chow for the reindeer.

Christmas morning started around 7 am.  The 8 year old gets up VERY early every day, but we told him that he could not come out of his room until 7 am.  It worked.  Then it was chaos and craziness!  The wrapping paper was flying and months and months of buying and preparation was over in 20 minutes.  

Dinner is usually ham, but this year we had a standing rib roast.  I have never cooked a standing rib roast before and the boys, who are big meat eaters, were almost as excited for the roast beef as they were for the presents.  That's a lot of pressure for mom!  But luckily the recipe I used was fantastic and the roast came out perfect.  The boys were in heaven.  We also had au gratin potatoes, green beans, and I made a red wine au jus for the beef.  We were sufficiently stuffed, also known as fat and happy.

We did not get to see our extended family, but we did call or face time everyone.  We hope to have a social distance get together with the grand parents this week.  But family was truly missed on Christmas day.  

But I don't want to dwell on what we didn't have, because we really had so much and were so blessed. 

The Christmas Eve table

Mass on TV

Yummy cheese tray

Smelts and baccala

Calamari

Stuffed shells for mom who doesn't like fish

Putting out the reindeer chow.  You can see the snow blowing in the background

Christmas morning

It really snowed!

We even got snow on the front porch and that's rare.

Standing Rib Roast

Standing Rib Roast covered in garlic herb butter.

Finished Product

Green Beans and Au Gratin Potatoes

Red Wine Au Jus

A giant tent in my family room the day after Christmas

Four Days Until Christmas

 It's December 21 and things are hopping around here.  Cards are out, most of the presents are wrapped (but not all... I'm still working on that), I hope to start cookies today, all the food is purchased for Christmas Eve and Christmas day, and all recipes are ready and accounted for.  I'd say I feel organized, but that would be a lie. Does anyone ever feel organized this close to Christmas?  If you do, God Bless You.

I've been stock piling food for Christmas for a few weeks now.  I bought anything that is frozen (fish) a few weeks ago.  I ordered the large gluten free pasta shells from Amazon around Thanksgiving (for stuffed shells Christmas Eve), I picked up most of the fresh items this past week.  Except for fruit, I think I'm all set.

The hardest thing to find this year was the baccala.  Our grocery stores didn't have it.  By chance, I happened to see on Instagram that a local Italian grocery store had some in stock.  I called on Thursday to order some, and I planned to pick it up on Friday in between some doctor appointments that we had.  I picked it up at 11:30 on Friday, along with some cheese, chocolate, and a bottle of wine for Christmas.  The place was PACKED.  Apparently they do a phenomenal take out business at lunch.  It smelled heavenly in there.  I will be back after the holidays to try some take out.  I got home and started unloading my groceries and there was no fish.  WHERE WAS THE FISH??  Apparently my items went in two bags, not one and the place was so chaotic that I didn't notice.  I called and they still had my fish.  So back I drove 20 minutes to the store get the fish for a second time.  A little old Italian lady rang up my groceries and she remembered me when I came in.  She shook her head at me, so I said "And here I thought I was being organized".  Her response was "You need to slow down, honey".  She's probably right.  (Aren't old Italian ladies always right?)


Menu:

Christmas Eve

Fish on Christmas Eve is my husbands tradition, and I don't really eat fish so I buy it and he fries it.  There's only 4 people eating fish so we do a scaled down version of the "Feast of the Seven Fishes". We have smelts, calamari, and baccala in the fryer. We also have shrimp for shrimp cocktail.  Since I don't eat fish, I usually make a pasta dish too.  The last few years it's been lasagna, but this year I thought I'd make cheese stuffed shells.  Then we usually have several different cheeses to go with it. Christmas Eve is one of my favorite celebrations of the year.  I enjoy it even more the Christmas Day.  There's just something so magical about Christmas Eve.

Christmas Day

1.  Breakfast - The last several years I've done lox and bagels for Christmas morning breakfast.  The boys love their smoked salmon.  I stick with the bagels only.  This year I've decided to add in a this slow cooker copy cat Cracker Barrel hash brown recipe .  I'm doing au gratin potatoes with dinner, so this may be too many cheesy potatoes for one day so I'm still rolling it around in my mind.  I would love to do an egg casserole, but J is allergic to eggs (wheat, rye, barley, oat, eggs, peanuts, and tree nuts) so that is out.  

Speaking of allergies, I have a hard time finding bagels for him so I tried this bagel recipe from Skinny Taste yesterday and it came out great!  He really liked them.  My technique could use some work, but I'm just glad to be able to make bagels for him. Instead of the egg whites, I substituted Ener-G egg replacer and I used King Arthur Gluten Free Measure for Measure Flour. 

2. Dinner - Usually we have ham for Christmas, but due to Covid, my husbands company didn't have a Christmas party this year, so they are giving everyone a standing rib roast.  I have never made a standing rib roast before, so this should be interesting.  My plan is to have the rib roast, au gratin potatoes, green beans, left over fish/shells from the night before.  I'm not a big beef eater, but I'm willing to try it.  Fingers crossed that I can cook it without over cooking it.  
recipes to use:

Standing Rib Roast from Recipe Tin Eats

I've made au gratin potatoes for so many years that I don't really use a recipe, but this recipe from Tastes Better From Scratch is close to what I do.

Southern Style Green Beans from Spicy Southern Kitchen

So this is it.  These are the plans but I know that plans don't always come off without a hitch so I'm prepared to be flexible.  

I hope you are all coming along with your holiday plans and that they come off without a hitch!

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

 Here we are!  Post Thanksgiving, Pre Christmas, in the midst of Advent.  It's kind of a blur.

The oldest came home from college a few weeks ago, and just finished finals yesterday.  It's such a joy to have him home, but I forgot how much he eats.  There is NO food in the house!  I think he's making up for lost time.  The cafeterias on campus were scaled back due to Covid and the food offered was not what it should have been.  

Thanksgiving was spent with just the five of us.  It was nice and it was quiet.  We enjoyed the day even though we missed the grandparents.

I turned 51 last weekend.  But we are not going to talk about that.

And Christmas is coming!  I'm pretty much done with shopping.  I have a few gift cards to get but that is it.  I haven't wrapped a thing yet.  But I'm not worried about that.  It will get done.  I have all the fixings to make cookies and treats so I'm thinking that I'll start that around December 20.  If I make them too early, they will eat them all and we'll have none on Christmas.

I'm not sure how we will be handling extended family this year.  I do not want to miss a Christmas with the grandparents but I don't want to pass them Covid either.  I pray we can find a way.  Life is too short and while we are being very careful, I don't want to miss such a major holiday with extended family.  Next year isn't guaranteed.  

The house is decorated.  It has been since the day after Thanksgiving.  I keep tweaking it, but it's all done.  I love the decorations.  Part of me wants to keep them up all year.  But then they wouldn't be special, would they?  And the youngest was able to see Santa!  A local church had a drive up, Covid friendly Santa.  Thank goodness we didn't have to miss Santa this year too.

School for the younger two boys ends next week.  One is actually going to school, while the other is virtual for now.  The high school just had too many children quarantined to keep classes in person.  

I don't want to lament about Covid.  We are all in the same boat.  But I'd like to get out of this boat please (and take all of you with me).  I know it's not done, but I am done with it.  

Did I mention that we got 2 feet of snow in a day last week? Yes we did.  The boys were off of school for 4-5 days and people were out of power from Sunday night until Thursday.  We were blessed and were only out from 5 am until 4 pm on Monday.  Nothing like getting ALL THE SNOW in one day.

And luckily the roads were clear and the zoo had power that Wednesday for our drive through the "zoo lights" night.  The lights were beautiful and it was nice to get out and do a family friendly activity together.