Merry Christmas to all who celebrate!
This is the first year that we’ll have Christmas just the three of us. I am rather enjoying the quiet coziness of it all. We are all still in pajamas. There is lots of lounging going on. I tried to win Carla over to the joys of Home Alone, but it turns out it’s a bit old for her yet. Elf is on the agenda for later. My only job today – aside from copious cuddling, and perhaps finishing my book – is to make some rolls for dinner Friday; I will freeze them after I make them.
Family arrives on the 26th. We are not doing a special dinner because we will all have already had a big Christmas supper the night before. Thursday we go out to celebrate a birthday. And Saturday half of the family leaves, so the rest of us will either get take out or munch on leftovers. Sunday, the rest of the family leaves, which means that I will probably head to the store or scrape together some sort of Franken-meal from what we have on hand.
Still! There are meals to plan and make, so the post will go up!
Dinners (and Assorted Other Meals) for the Week of December 24-December 29
Christmas Eve: Avgolemono from America’s Test Kitchen (paywall)
Note: We have never eaten this before, much less tried to make it. I admit that I am deeply suspicious of a soup with egg in it, as I am no fan of eggs. But neither of us much wanted to make Mulligatawny soup, which was my Christmas Eve tradition growing up, and it would be fun to have our own soup tradition. We’ll see. It may end up that my husband eats it and Carla and I eat bagels or chicken nuggets. I mean, Carla has never once eaten soup as it is, so I’m not holding out much hope that tonight will be the night.
Follow up: This was NOT good. I can’t pinpoint why; maybe because it tasted heavily of chicken? Maybe because the lemony egg mixture you add to the soup gave the whole thing an unpleasant lemon-curd-with-chicken taste? In any case, I am not a fan. Even my husband, who eats pretty much anything, could not give this a thumbs up. I made a few of the rolls I prepared and ended up turning one into an impromptu pepperoni sandwich for my Christmas Eve meal.
Christmas Day:
- Brunch: Frittata from The Kitchn
Note: Neither of us has ever made a frittata. And, let’s be honest, it’s really for my breakfast-loving husband’s benefit. I don’t really like breakfast food, so I tend to defer to him. Usually for Christmas Day breakfast we make the Pioneer Woman’s overnight French toast. Last year we also made a savory strata. But that’s when there are more people at the breakfast table than the three of us. Carla will eat the sweet stuff, but nothing savory. So probably we’ll end up making her pancakes as per usual and my husband will end up eating most of the frittata and we’ll come up with something else for next year.
Follow up: This was delicious! I don’t normally like eggs, but this was very egg-light, with plenty of other tasty things. Our only complaint was that it seemed very salty. My husband and I agreed that next time we make it, we’ll add an extra potato, reduce the salt by at least 2/3s, and decrease the amount of bacon.
- Dinner: Beef Tenderloin with Red Wine Mushroom Sauce from The EveryGirl+ Roasted Green Beans and Shallots + Mom’s Garlic and Goat Cheese Mashed Potatoes+ Leftover Thanksgiving Gravy
Note: Carla sometimes eats steak, so we are hoping that she’ll at least have a few bites of this Christmas dinner. When I grew up, our family tradition for Christmas dinner was a porterhouse spice roast, homemade Caesar salad, and lemony steamed broccoli. I LOVE that dinner. But a porterhouse roast seems overly ambitious for a group of three. Also, no one makes Caesar dressing like my dad, so I don’t really even want to try. Instead, we got a baby tenderloin and some mushrooms and we’ll be trying a new recipe. Who knows? Maybe it will become a family favorite!
Follow up: The beef tenderloin was wonderful — and super easy! You just smear it with some mustard and herbs and throw it in the oven. It cooks low and slow for a long time and then it is perfectly cooked and butter tender. We will definitely do this again. My mom’s mashed potatoes were, of course, amazing. And we ended up skipping anything green because we couldn’t agree on how to cook the beans.
Note: My husband loves dessert, and he is always super interested in the desserts featured on the Great British Baking Show. So we are trying a British-style dessert this year, just for fun.
Follow up: THIS WAS SO GOOD.
Wednesday:
- Brunch: Bagels & Lox
Note: With cream cheese, capers, lemons, and onions. And fruit for the kiddos.
- Snacks: Cranberry Salsa from Taste of Home, Assorted Veggies, Cheese & Crackers
Note: Someone at my husband’s office has brought in this cranberry salsa a few times, and my husband is in love with it. I am deeply suspicious but I’m willing to try it.
Follow up: This was actually quite delicious! It’s super weird — a combo of flavors that don’t seem like they would work. But they DO and I found myself unable to stop. We ate this with Stacy’s pita chips, which are delicious in and of themselves.
- Dinner: Tacos
Note: Easy and delicious. So what if it’s not typical Christmas fare? (For us. I don’t know your magical taco-eating life.) If my mother-in-law and husband hadn’t insisted on simplicity over fanciness, I would have made this pork roast from Food & Wine and possibly Ina Garten’s chocolate creme brûlée. Well, there’s always next time.
Thursday:
- Breakfast: Pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, leftover frittata – whatever we can scrape together.
- Lunch: Cold cuts and leftover smoked salmon
- Dinner: Out
Friday:
- Breakfast: Whatever we can scrape together.
- Lunch: Samesies. Or maybe we’ll brave the crowds and go out to eat.
- Dinner: Crockpot BBQ Pork Tenderloin, Dinner Rolls from Recipe Tin Eats, and Coleslaw from Bon Appetit
Note: The BBQ pork is one of my all-time favorite SUPER EASY recipes. I throw a pork tenderloin, a roughly chopped white onion, and a minced garlic clove or two in the crockpot, then douse with my favorite BBQ sauce and a few healthy squeezes of Sriracha. Cook for 4 hours, shred, and eat. I eat my pork with a potato (which I liberally drench in sauce), but my husband prefers making little sandwiches, hence the rolls and coleslaw.
Follow up: The dinner rolls were easy to make and froze nicely. But they are NOT Parker House rolls, which is kind of what I was expecting. They are denser and… squishier than I anticipated. Still good though. Would definitely make these again.
Saturday:
- This is where I completely give up on the pretense of cooking, not that I’ve been doing much of it. I can promise I’ll have been doing a lot of dishes anyway.
Follow up: Three loads of dishes EVERY DAY our guests were here. How is that even possible…?
Sunday:
- Takeout????
If you’re bored this Christmas week, let me know what your traditional Holiday Meals include.
It’s beginning to snow – hooray! Happiest Christmas, Internet!
I love that you are deeply suspicious of the cranberry salsa – it doesn’t sound appealing to me either. On Christmas Eve, as we do every year, we had seafood (this year The Husband made salmon with a maple/bourbon glaze – yum! – shrimp scampi, vegetables, and dirty rice). Christmas usually varies from year to year. This year our friends our hosting and have decided on Mexican for some reason. Merry Christmas to you and your family!
We took the kids out a few years ago on Christmas Eve as we had no family gatherings that we needed to attend. The kids are huge fans of eating out, so we have done that a few times over the past few Christmas Eves. We went to Giordanos – a popular pizza place in Chicago. The waitress couldn’t figure out how to order me a gluten free salad. First it came in a itty bitty baby bowl. I was confused, so she said ‘oh sorry – just keep that, I will get you another one’. I had ordered the chopped salad minus the noodles and the blue cheese, but this salad only had bacon and green onions. She finally brought back the dinner sized salad – this time it had no chicken on it. I was like WHAT? I had given the itty bitty salad to my kids who were starving. I yanked it back from them and grabbed the chicken off of it. Of course she bought me my salad an hour before the deep dish pizza arrived – not comprehending that this was my dinner. So I ate my pathetic salad and then had to sit thru their awesome pizza chow fest. NEVER. AGAIN. Christmas dinner at my parents’ house was beef tenderloin and it was awesome. Merry Christmas! Anxious to hear how the cranberry salsa turned out.
Sounds perfect! We did a lot of scraping together for lunches, too. And some dinners. 😉