Our family meal is the traditional English roast— a rib roast with potatoes cooking in a pan with melted beef fat. So, though we call them roast potatoes, they’re really fried in the beef fat. Then Yorkshire puddings, which for those who don’t know, are like popovers cooked in muffin pans, but with a small amount of beef fat added to each cup before pouring in the batter. Than a delicious gravy also made from beef drippings.
For a ‘healthy’ side we serve Swedes, which is mashed rutabaga with plenty of butter.
It’s a million calorie meal, but once a year is so good.
Steaks with a friend yesterday. All the ‘fixins’ was very good.
Today my cousin is coming over and we will order Chinese food. She’s a vegetarian, so that works out real well. This place has great vegi egg-foo-young. My Wife and I are looking forward to it.
x-mas day, we will be driving home. We will make an enchilada casserole that will feed us for a few days.
Our family is split up this year- the majority will be in Colorado where the only grandchild in our family lives (my niece) so it will just be a handful of us that opted out of Christmas travel. We are having ham, these potatoes (best recipe left over from my Pioneer Woman phase) and creamed corn for the main course. Going to also make a lot of snacks- trying out some sage & cranberry pork sausage rolls, smoked trout dip, cheese/smoked sausage and dessert is cream cheese squares. Drink options are malbec, white russians and/or manhattans.
XMas dinner for 5 adults & 7 little kids will be a ham and a pre-cooked turkey breast. Neither stuffing nor dressing will be part of the meal. Neener neener!!
My sausage (made from Kentucky swine rooting at will) and seafood (shrimp, crab claw meat and scallops) gumbo with bell and poblano peppers, onions, celery and okra for Xmas eve turned out great, based on a successful roux along with secret herbs and spices. Plenty left over in the fridge and freezer.
Next time out I’ll make a more serious attempt at sourcing crawfish locally.
We’re doing a chicken; we had a big turkey at Thanksgiving and a lot went to waste. The chicken will have a white bread & onion mixture of indeterminate nomenclature in its innards, with Scarborough Fair herbs.
Roasted broccoli and bacon bits.
Plus potatoes.
Boughten Christmas puddings, but I will fire them up with some brandy or bourbon or rum.
Dressing, from a package with added accoutrements because I may be bougie but I’m not that bougie, plus, my in-laws wouldn’t know a good meal if Gordon Ramsay himself made it so I’m not going out of my way any more than is strictly necessary.
I’ll also do a turkey tomorrow morning, brined of course. I made cranberry sauce today that utterly failed to gel so I’ll use one of my backup cans of Ocean Spray – it really does pay to be prepared. My wife is making apple pies and I’ll make a gravy with the pan drippings before we feast.
Tuesday I’ll make a stock from the turkey carcass and freeze the resulting deliciousness in small-ish portions for making risotto later in winter.
There are those who swear a box of Stove top stuffing is the makings of cornbread dressing.
I sometimes add a can of some creamed soup. Mushroom or celery. Never the cream of chicken. I feel it complicates the flavor profile of my special dish. Tut-tut.
Ours is made from half a recipe (“pone”) of our cornbread (a no-flour, no-sugar southern cornbread) and half a loaf of ordinary white wheat bread, torn/shredded/crumbled, mixed with 6 beaten eggs, about a quart of last year’s (or last Thanksgiving’s) turkey broth saved and frozen, and an onion. Baked at 325° until it congeals.
