Bone Appetite

Christmas Dinner

Just a little more retro-blogging to catch-up...

Christmas dinner menu! Ah! For many years my sister has been sending us tritips, the Central California beef cut that's oh so fun to barbecue, which was fun. But it's not a tradition we were wed to, and this year we decided to cook up something our youngest would eat...so drum roll please, we cooked a very traditional Turkey. We went pretty tame since there were only four of us at the table: mashed potatoes, roasted brussels sprouts, steamed carrots, cranberry sauce (which we forgot), and a little bread and cheese. Almost all of it was make-ahead and we split the cooking down the middle (spouse got the turkey, I did the sides). The hardest part was finding a small enough turkey, and we ended up settling on a 9-pounder.

We were surprised to count on our fingers and realize this is the first turkey we've cooked ourselves in three seasons. I'm happy to report it came out great...just like falling off the old bicycle or riding a log, following the directions on the turkey package tends to have happy results.

Christmas Eve Pizza!

Catching up after the fact on neglected holiday postings...

We don't have a particular Christmas Eve tradition in the house, so each year we just pick something different to do. If there's company, of course, a fancy meal is in order of some sort, but otherwise anything that's celebratory sounds like a good idea. This year, I asked the eldest what he wanted, and he answered "Pizza!" which was pretty predictable even if he doesn't actually eat much pizza when we do have pizza. We try to make a vegetarian pizza for the younger and Mrs. Claus, so I frequently make two small to medium pizzas on pizza nights. This time, however, I decided the seasonal design would lend itself well to a half-veggie, half-pepperoni! (That's artichoke, pepper, red bell pepper and cherry tomato on the upper half.)  

Neighborhood Nog and Nosh

I am not a big fan of the Splendid Table on NPR, for reasons I won't get into here, but I do listen to it when I happen to be riding in the car when it's on, Saturday afternoons. Sometime in December there was a guest on (didn't catch her name) who was somewhat glibly offering advice to those having holiday parties about what to serve and so forth. The one piece of advice she gave that I decided to take to heart was: when you're entertaining, make sure you entertain yourself, make yourself available to the guests, and don't commit yourself to a complicated menu that requires you be out of action and in the kitchen most of the time. I confess to having had this problem on occasion, and with all the other craziness around the hollerdays, I thought it would be nice to just have a relaxing get-together with some of the neighbor kids and their parents and a few selected other friends, if for no other reason, then to get some of the kids' wiggles out before Christmas. But it's nice to enjoy a little adult company when you can, too.

So I stuck to make-aheads, finger-foods, and a couple of store-bought, make-in-the-oven-for-12-minutes appetizers. Dips, bread and cheese, fruit and nuts. We featured the gingerbread house (so much the better to get it all eaten) and our second batch of Christmas cookies for the baked stuff, had some sparkling apple juices for the kids, and of course, egg nog.

Oh, egg nog, where did I go wrong. I thought I was really keeping myself in check, by not making even one kind of egg nog by myself (we did one party a number of years ago where we did three -- the New York Times cookbook, one from a family friend, and Elvis' Eggnog from the Elvis Cookbook). Yes, I had store-bought eggnog. 

Which nobody drank, save me. I was left with a lot of leftover eggnog. Not that I object, but even with a steady every day diet of a glass we had enough left over to have to throw it out a week later when it started getting aged. 

It may be that in these strange warm climes of California there isn't a big eggnog -drinking tradition. Or maybe the drink is out of fashion. Yes, it's incredibly rich and calorific, even without booze in it, but...it's the definition of a seasonal drink! (I don't think mulled wine or glüg ever came close in the US). Well, live and learn. Next year I'll make eggnog to please myself and save some spoiled 'nog in the end.

That said, I was glad I didn't overdo it with the food this time. Good advice to break with the usual discipline of the regular year as far as cooking-slow-unprocessed food per se, but more to just relax about the whole enterprise. Ho ho ho!