Adventures in cooking Christmas dinner

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If I was with my family it would be roast beef and yorkshire pudding, but I haven’t cooked that for 15 years too much for 2 of us, and DH won’t eat it in any case.

I’ll do the ham, since it was a gift and giver is coming to dinner, and will have enough leftovers in the freezer to last months. plus a good bone for bean or split pea soup. it’s going to get cold again, so I will definitely make soup next week. have not done any special shopping so will have to do a freezer-pantry search for sides. no yams. oh well. Sunday’s parish dinner will be brisket so that will be enough beef for a while. I can’t look at turkey yet.
 
It all turned out pretty good–smoked turkey, mashed garlic and sour cream potatoes, fresh green bean and mushroom casserole, grape whip salad, fresh homemade wheat bread, homemade pumpkin and pecan pie.

The only flop was the pecan pie–I’d never made one before, and it was a mess! The edges got plenty done, but the middle was totally runny. I don’t know what happened–I followed the recipe! 🤷 Oh well, plenty of pumpkin to go around, and plenty of leftovers for today! 👍
 
Well yesterday I prepared chicken and fixings for tacos at home then took it over to my Dad’s house where two of my brothers and my nephew were visiting. My sister and her husband brought a Honey-baked Ham and a salad. My brother fixed a couple kinds of potatoes. My other brother and his older son came over with a cake for dessert.

It was a bit chaotic since we were having to tear the house apart looking for the dining table leaves and the pads to go on top. (This is the first Christmas since Mom died. She knew were everything was. We now know a lot more about where things are than we did before.)

But we all enjoyed a pleasant dinner. It was pretty simple food and more or less pot-luck. We all took turns cleaning up. (Well, some of us did.) Afterwords we opened gifts. (When we were little my family followed the old world tradition of opeining family gifts on Christmas Eve. The only gifts for Christmas morning were from Santa. Now we tend to open extended family gifts on whichever day we are getting together.)

My husband and I left around 9:30pm so I could get to the church by 11:00 for Midnight Mass warm-up and caroling. I was in bed around 2:00am. We got up the next morning, my husband fixed breakfast for us and we ate at around 9:00am. Then we opened immediate family gifts.

My husband and my son then grabbed their things and got into the car in order to head off to Arizona for a couple of days to visit my MIL. (I wanted to stick around so I can help my Dad out when necessary.) Then I headed to the Church for the 11:00am Mass.

My older daughter is off visiting her boyfriend’s family and my younger one is enjoying her presents. I’m steaming some tamales for an early dinner. I figure I’m going to crash pretty early this evening.
 
Teakafrog said:
The only flop was the pecan pie–I’d never made one before, and it was a mess! The edges got plenty done, but the middle was totally runny. I don’t know what happened–I followed the recipe! 🤷 Oh well, plenty of pumpkin to go around, and plenty of leftovers for today! 👍
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Did you cover the edges with foil to prevent getting done before the middle? It helps prevent overbrowning and such. 🤷
 
Uggg… I am a good cook, so I am SO EMBARRASSED by what happened with my Christmas dinner! I cooked a pork loin roast, following the instructions on the package, and the thing was RAW in the middle when my husband cut it open! I had to heat up my cast iron skillet and sear slices of it to get it cooked all the way!

I know after all these years that the instructions that come on the package are almost never right. Seriously, I don’t know who runs the test kitchens for most products, but they must be morons. And I KNOW this, so why did I trust the package, instead of checking my trusty Betty Crocker book which has never steered me wrong? :banghead:

Oh well, at least it didn’t take very long to cook the slices. And everything tasted really good once it was done. I guess every cook has to have a total screw up, in front of family, every now and then just to keep them humble. 😊

P.S. I had never made sweet potato pie before, and I had never liked one when I ate it. But the one I made this year is OUTSTANDING. Oh my, so yummy. Here is the recipe: allrecipes.com/Recipe/Sweet-Potato-Pie-I/Detail.aspx
 
Christmas dinner worked out well. We took a ham (in the cooler) to my ILs, also the broccoli, apples, and potatoes, and had a lovely glazed ham, Cracker Barrel-type apples, steamed broccoli and baked potatoes. I kept it simple, because I wasn’t in my own kitchen. We took decorated cut out cookies for dessert.

My mother in law was very happy, because if they’d been alone, FIL would have had a frozen dinner. She was four days out of a round of chemo, and food just doesn’t sit well with her, so she wouldn’t have cooked. But she enjoyed seeing us cook and share in a meal.
 
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