I’m making Polpettone with Spinach and Provelone.
Yep, in other words, I’m making fancy meatloaf for Christmas dinner.
I’m sick of roasts and turkeys and hams. I wanted something different yet still in the slightly-fancy comfort-food realm. So fancy meatloaf it is.
Plus, I can make the whole thing the day before and just throw it in the oven on the day. Perfect!
My son is hosting this year. He is having me come over and smoke a prime rib roast over charcoal.
That’s on Christmas Eve. I’ll do a ham on the smoker on Christmas Day.
My sister-in-law is cooking and she has fallen fowl of vile colonial marketing. 
There is a Christmas ham to follow.
I am making mole with beans and rice in the early afternoon for my niece and her boyfriend and later in the evening its going to be rib eye roast, creamed spinach and mashed potatoes with maybe Yorkshire pudding…dessert will be cheesecake and ice cream
I’m popping in to Costco tomorrow and picking up a rack of lamb. I like to shmear it with a paste made up of Dijon mustard, crushed garlic, minced rosemary, olive oil, and black pepper, then roast it. If I feel energetic, I’ll even press some fine bread crumbs onto the shmear so that it’ll come out with a browned crumb coating.
Sides: tater and parmesan casserole and steamed string beans.
Everybody’s menus sound awesome. Me, I’ll probably eat Chinese, as is the way of my people. Fa Ra Ra Ra RA!
I like to fuss for Christmas dinner
salmon rillettes and brandade de Rouergue on little toasts
double celery soup
chicken with cider vinegar, mushrooms and apples, pommes Anna
winter salad of endive, fennel, apple and cream
cheese and fruit
No, what you need to do is make a pernil. It is the best thing ever to do with a whole picnic shoulder! Your house will smell like garlic for days. It’s awesome. (Most recipes I’ve seen call for half orange and half lime juice, if you can’t find bitter orange juice. It’s worth squeezing fresh fruit. Tons of garlic are also key.)
Christmas is so old…
Oh wait, it isn’t that kind of roast.
Hmm you have piqued my interest. I have never done one of those and at first glance that appears to be a tremendous oversight . It seems somewhat similar to a mojo criollo marinade but more flavors involved it looks like.
Not yet for sale?
It’s truly awesome. I first tasted it some years back while serving at a Christmas Eve soup kitchen that a friend of my mom’s bankrolls every year at a Puerto Rican church. (As a Jewish agnostic, I figured I might as well do something useful at Christmas.) It’s apparently sort of the standard Puerto Rican dish to serve a crowd on Christmas. Leftovers are awesome, too.
we switched it up this year and did ham for Thanksgiving and turkey (and kielbasa, gg Eastern Europeans) for Christmas. I figure I’ll take either New Year’s Day or the subsequent weekend to have Gołąbki and pierogi.
We’re having a rib roast, rolls, mashed potatoes and gravy, and green beans and a veggie plate. And apple and pecan pies.
Ham is cured pork. It can be sold cooked or uncooked. Properly cured ham doesn’t need to be cooked but most benefit from cooking. Some hams are dried also and need to be cooked with liquid to soften up. Pre-cooked hams are very popular now because they are ready to eat cold, or just need to be warmed up.
After I get the Cub into bed tonight, I will be making the toutière, a traditional French-Canadian dish for Christmas Eve. (Yes, I’m aware that no-one in the Piper household is French-Canadian. Toutière is our tradition. Just work with me, okay?)
That’s for tomorrow, after we get home from the theatre. Then Christmas, we’re driving to Mrs Piper’s sister’s place, where she will make traditional roast turkey for 20.
We call them Meat Pies around here. Same dish brought in by French Canadian immigrants a century ago. Thanks for bringing this up, gotta make me some of those soon.
Not to be too pedantic, but you can also find fresh hams at some places (they’re about a buck-ish a pound here, but it’s a commitment, with a whole ham being something around 10-15 pounds, if not a bit more). The hams are the rear legs of the pig, above the joint. Picnic hams are the (smaller) front legs, above the joint, below the Boston butt. But, yes, when most people refer to “ham,” they refer to the cured product. That said, some folks do buy their own hams and cure and smoke them. (I haven’t done it yet, but I have a couple friends who do it for Easter.)
I’m not cooking anything this year. Cousin in BFE beyond the suburbs is hosting this year and there will be ham and turkey roasted plus all the accouterments. I’ll be assembling an appetizer to take. Many others will be bringing appetizers and desserts (like 15 of each will likely arrive). Younger people and newbies to the family have been known to puke on the way home due to over-consumption at our larger family gatherings (about three of them a year). 'Tis the season!
My mom usually makes Christmas breakfast casserole. My brother told her he doesn’t like that and asked her to make a roast, which I don’t really care for. Then again I don’t know exactly what she plans to roast or how, so maybe it will be good.
I was sort of turned off “roast” from when I was a kid and grew up eating meat the way dad likes it - like shoe leather. But now that dad is weird and old and doesn’t eat much food, mom is making more food that tastes good to the rest of the family and meat is getting less bad.
Here’s hopin’.