So what is Christmas dinner?

I am kind of all sad and lonely down here in florida, where it just doesn't seem like Christmas....and our usual beef wellington doesn't seem like appropriate fare for 82 degrees...I am leaning towards not cooking at all...

So let me live vicariously, and maybe let me (hopefully) be inspired by your menus...What are all of you cooking?

b

[Robin Garr]

I am kind of all sad and lonely down here in florida, where it just doesn't seem like Christmas....and our usual beef wellington doesn't seem like appropriate fare for 82 degrees...I am leaning towards not cooking at all...

Aw, Barb! That's so sad. (sniffle) You guys come on up here, and we'll invite you over! M and I will share a nice local grass-fed all-natural prime two-bone rib roast from Southern Indiana on Christmas Eve. On Christmas, we'll probably join a bunch of other foodie pagans for lunch at Vietnam Kitchen.

Thankfully, the weather here in Albuquerque abruptly changed a couple of weeks ago from t-shirt temperatures to a more appropriate Christmasy 20 degrees and a couple of inches of snow.

We're going to eat whatever my friend has prepared, which I think is lamb and ham and all the rest. He won't mind another couple of people, so come on by.

I know what it's like to be lonely on the holidays. Been there, done that. But one of the most memorable T-Days we ever had was some years ago when I called the University of New Mexico and asked for some names of foreign students who were alone and would like to share our dinner.

The doorbell rang, I opened the door, and didn't see anyone. That is, until I looked down. Several very short students from India had shown up. One was a vegetarian, so I just made some more veggies. And we all had a grand time.

Sorry to hear that Barb. I'll be doing a Christmas Eve dinner at my house. Trout stuffed with crab meat as an appetizer, followed by 2 lasagnas, one with sausage and ground beef, the other with veggies, salad and dessert of Eggnog-Panettone Bread Pudding. I think we may open a bottle or two of wine also. Christmas Day will be visiting relatives.

[Jenise]

Barb, our traditional Christmas dinner is prime rib/yorkshire pudd/creamed spinach, but this year I feel the need to do something more challenging so I'm doing a southern baked ham dinner. Our traditional Christmas brunch of corned beef hash is being shelved in honor of a tamale pie.

Years ago when I was doing Christmas dinners, they were always something grand. Prime Ribs, Roasted fillet butts, Crown Roast of Pork, etc. Since we now go to our children's, we never know. It could be a dinner from David Berkeley (a upscale grocery, deli, catering) or it could be home made. One of my daughter-in-laws asked me this year if I wanted to help her put together a dinner at our eldest son's home and I said yes. No one wanted anything too fussy or complicated, laid back and fun was the theme. So here is our menu:

French Bread Round with Spinach Leek Dip
Baked Oysters in the Half Shell
Chinese Foil Wrapped Chicken

Frenched Lamb Chops, seasoned and grilled
Shrimp and Pasta dish
Whole Salmon Fillet, grilled and served with fresh lemon
Marinated Cold Asparagus
Aphrodisiac Salad (I'm told it has baby greens, blue cheese, roasted pecans and figs)

Dessert is unknown to me

Sounds good Jenise. I love Tamalie Pie and my mother made the best ever. I can still see her bending down in front of the oven, and pulling out one of those huge blue and white speckled roasters to check on her tamalie pie. The smell was incredible and she always had huge whole pitted olives in it. I must see if I have that recipe.

[Jenise]

I forgot to mention another Christmas dinner we're going to, wherein I'm providing an appetizer course. I got some great dry scallops, so it looks like I'm going to be be doing some form of scallop tartare, though I haven't zeroed in on the final version of it--I'll probably just wing it.

Karen, if you have your mom's recipe, I'd love to hear more about it. I've actually never had tamale pie except for a dish my mother made and called by that name that bears no resemblance to tamales whatsoever. I think it was ground beef browned with big chunks of onions, celery, green pepper and pitted olives stewed with canned tomatoes and then thickened with corn meal. Would be too simple and rustic for me now, but as a kid I loved it. What I make is not similar in any way, and is just my own creation: it's essentially a chili-post#2-compliant version of what Californians call chili con carne finished with chunks of cut-up tamales floating about.

When my kids were small, we usually went to my mother's for a large Christmas dinner with extended family.

As a consequence, we developed the tradition of doing a really nice breakfast at home... tablecloth, crystal, candles, foods we didn't usually prepare, sparkling cider for the kids and mimosas for the adults. You get the picture.

This year I'll be home alone as family is scattered and friends have decamped to be their relatives. I thought about not bothering to do anything, but realized I need to.

So breakfast mid-morning will be asparagus and roasted red pepper omelet, fruit salad, cinnamon roll(s!), Cowboy Fruit Cake, and some sparkler or other.

Then I'll make a lasagna florentine, and spinach salad with a not-too-sweet poppyseed dressing for dinner. And some kind of cherry dessert, maybe just a pie with good vanilla ice cream.

We're going with our traditional dinner:

Eight different cheeses to nibble,
various crackers and raw vegetables.

Roast duck
Fruit stuffing ala James Beard from 1964.
Candied yams.
Roasted Brussels sprouts
Cranberry orange relish
A sweet corn flan

Wide range of cookies and other sweets to follow.

A Burgundy with some age on it.

Still working on the menu. Only thing I know of for sure is the dry aged prime rib. I picked up a fresh winter truffle, so I need to do something with that. The farmer's market is tomorrow morning, so some of the menu will probably be decided then.

My oven's broken, so I can't do anything that's baked or roasted.

So I decided on Cajun chicken and andouille gumbo as a main dish, accompanied by white rice and a mixed greens salad. I will also be making fried wontons, because I adore them but they're too much trouble to make except on special occasions. And an aged Gouda and some Stilton. I'll probably yield to the temptation to crack open a mature vintage Port to go with the cheeses.

Feliz navidad,

-Paul W.

Nothing special here: probably a filet of beef and a bottle of good red. The typical Finnish Christmas dinner is ham with potato and carrot casseroles. Finnish Christmas celebrations tend to be very within-family ones, and since all my family is abroad (and since I'm single, won't be adopted by the gf's family either), I guess I'll be spending this Christmas alone.

But perhaps I shouldn't complain, since I spend too much time socialising anyway (and therefore writing up TNs here at 3am)...

-O

Karen, if you have your mom's recipe, I'd love to hear more about it. I've actually never had tamale pie except for a dish my mother made and called by that name that bears no resemblance to tamales whatsoever. I think it was ground beef browned with big chunks of onions, celery, green pepper and pitted olives stewed with canned tomatoes and then thickened with corn meal. Would be too simple and rustic for me now, but as a kid I loved it. What I make is not similar in any way, and is just my own creation: it's essentially a chili-post#2-compliant version of what Californians call chili con carne finished with chunks of cut-up tamales floating about.

Jenise, I did have my mom's recipe written in her own hand. It has yellow corn meal, canned toms, can corn, chili powder, onion, black olives, ground pork and ground beef, Evoo, garlic, green pepper. the corn meal is mixed into the dish. I think I will make this and see if it tastes as good as I remember. I bet it is!

Our oven was dead for Thanksgiving, so we didn't have turkey. So we'll have turkey Monday evening.

Roast turkey with stuffing inside it the way it was meant to be
Mashed potatoes with giblet gravy
Green beans with onion and garlic

Pumpkin pie

I'm just an old traditionalist.

But we'll have a standing rib roast on Friday before New Year's - family visiting.

Just two of us for Xmas now, first time ever - before we had children we went to our parents.......

Starter

Champagne

Main

Roast chicken
roast potatoes
roasts Parsnips
steamed cauliflour florets
steamed brussel sprouts
gravy & Branston pickle

Decent red - not even though about which yet

Dessert

Christmas pudding (homemade)
Brown Bros Orange Muscat & Flora

Awww Barb...you can come over here too!

Our menu looks like this:

Brunch:
-Bagels with cream cheese and Scotch smoked salmon
-Mimosas

Afternoon Tea and Crumpets

Dinner:
-Lobster Bisque
-Prime Rib Roast
-Mashed Potatoes
-Brussel Sprout Hash
-Dill baby carrots
-Yorkshire Pudding
-To Drink: Grand Cru Burgundy and St. Julien Bordeaux

Dessert:
-Assortment of Cheese, with Grapes and Balsamic braised Figs
-English Chocolate Pudding (cake)
-To Drink: Port

This will be the first year I have had Christmas with my In-Laws and The first time in 10 yrs that my husband will have Christmas with them...so I am very excited to have people to cook for. The last 2 yrs has just been my husband and I (and the kiddos of course!).

We go to my parents for Christmas Eve, where they have the "Seven Fishes".

Everyone's menu sounds delicious...Jenise, it's funny how similar ours are! I thought I was the only American that made Yorkshire pudding! My Father-in-law is from Yorkshire, so he really enjoys it. Do you make individual ones or one big one?

Christmas eve, lamb chops, roast potatoes with garlic and evoo, cabbage/apple/bacon sautee, pinot noir, 15 y.o Talisker or 30 y.o. cask strength Highland Park. Christmas day, turkey breast, stuffing, small sausages, gravy, cranberry sauce, something green, semi-dry Vignoles. Only two of us, and we don't eat as heavily as we once did.
Candles/crystal/pewter/fire-in-the-fireplace on Christmas eve, maybe Christmas day as well. A few strings of colored lights to add to the festive atmosphere, but not the horrible blinking kind. Peace and quiet for a few days.

Dinner:
-Lobster Bisque
-Prime Rib Roast
-Mashed Potatoes
-Brussel Sprout Hash
-Dill baby carrots
-Yorkshire Pudding
-To Drink: Grand Cru Burgundy and St. Julien Bordeaux

Dessert:
-Assortment of Cheese, with Grapes and Balsamic braised Figs
-English Chocolate Pudding (cake)
-To Drink: Port

Got room for two more?

What's with all of these oven breaking down on these important cooking holidays? Darn that. Mine are working thank goodness and they are even clean thanks to the self-cleaning mechanism. Paul, I admire your improvisational skills. John, I'm glad you're finally getting your turkey.

Does anyone think it's odd that many people have turkey for Thanksgiving AND turkey for Christmas? I mentioned to my husband last night that I think Christmas just calls for a Prime Rib Roast. Didn't he agree? "Well, if we can't have turkey, then yes." I was shocked. All these years I never knew he'd want turkey for both holidays. It ain't gonna happen though. Growing up, it was always roast leg of lamb, then my sister married a guy who doesn't eat lamb, so we switched to Prime Rib.

Everyone's menus sound fantastic. It's really interesting to read how some of you are going with the flow and some are sticking with traditions (both the family kind and the cultural kind).

Here's our menu. I'm keeping it simple this year.

-Warm artichoke spread with pita toasts
-Boston lettuce salad with pears (someone sent from H&Ds), walnuts and champagne vinaigrette
-Roast Prime Rib au jus
-Horseradish mashed potatoes
-Roasted root vegetables
-Flourless chocolate cake with vanilla Hagen Das

Jenise and Maria, you are making me think of attempting Yorkshire puddings. Do I need the special little pans?

No idea at all. We'll head down to the game butchers tomorrow morning & see what takes our fancy. It's just the two of us, so no pressure whatsoever, hence the laid back approach - ditto for the wine.

That sounds like some nice beef, Robin. It's the WARMTH I can't get used to. I know it sounds churlish of me! And no family nearby...not enough "orphan" friends to have over, which is something I always used to do.

I did buy a tenderloin today...I'll break it down and we'll have some version of beef wellington over the holidays...creamed spinach would be great...I think I've settled on doing something spectacular for a Christmas brunch instead...a formal Christmas meal doesn't seem right without a ton of my shouting Italian relatives present!

I'll treat us to a bottle of really good red, too. What should I splurge on, guys?

Jenise, the tamales you bake into your pie: do you make them?

On a different note, and one thing I LOVE about S. Florida, I got to eat some tradition December food from Venezuela: "ayaca", a tamale-like item. A friend just spent yesterday cooking that up...They were delicious: pork, chicken AND beef, olives, capers..wrapped in masa and cooked in tied up banana leaves...the one I had looked very much like this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/darice/2124991372/

So there might not be hot chocolate and snow, but there's something new to eat and the beach. I know life could be worse!

Thanks, you guys, for letting me read all about your traditions. Time to start some new ones for me.

b

[Jenise]

Karen, that's so close to what my mom used to make, they had to have had the same recipe! If you make it, would love to hear how you think it stands up over time and to your own great cooking.

[Jenise]

Carrie, no special little pans. Muffin tins (large or small) are perfect for individual pudds, and you can make one large one, too. In fact, the origins of yorkshire pudding are that the roast would cook on a rack above the pan with the pudding batter, and the drippings would flavor it as it baked.

Barb, no, I didn't make these, but they're locally made. Re the tamale you mention, there's a cool article/recipe in this month's Saveur about same. I want to make them, too!