Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Holiday Meals

We don't have too many "traditions" connected with the Christmas holiday, in fact I think if it was up to John, and perhaps the children, we'd just sit in our chairs and read and let the day go by unmarked, but once upon a time, a long time ago, for Christmas Eve we adopted the menu John's mom would serve then: Spaghetti. It's easy, fast, can be made to feed lots of folks or few, and everyone likes it.

So Christmas Eve: Invite old friends, the families we raised our kids together with, the kids home from college mostly and so good to see them growing into such wonderful adults, one just passed her CPA exams! and invite Uncle Thad and Aunt Lynn who always fly away on Christmas Day. John made the spaghetti, someone brought garlic bread, there was a yummy baby Romaine salad with dried cranberries or cherries and nuts, a melty bread pudding studded with raisins and dressed with rum sauce, and a cheesecake. J sparkling wine, Belgium and Alaskan beers, some red wines, and the conversations about 'how are you liking school' and so nice to see this group we've known since the Fiddlehead days and before, and been through barenaked kids on the beach picnics, carpools, and school plays, and and don't often get altogether with anymore, but the folks it is just OK to be ourselves with without apology.

Christmas Day was a low key event, we invited some friends who often invite us to their home for holidays, their children also home for the break. John took over the kitchen again, preparing a beautiful prime rib roast (perfectly carved: one of these days he'll live down the odd carving project he turned a Christmas Roast into one year) cauliflower au gratin, tossed green salad, kasha, fruit, and for dessert a wonderful chocolate torte. Los Cardos Malbec. We talked into the evening about traveling in Ecuador, living abroad, life in the Coast Guard, books, and more.

Merry Christmas to you all.

1 comment:

Ali and Shaz said...

We made a rib roast for Christmas Eve dinner - is that the same as roast prime rib? It was a bit of a fluke. At the last minute, we decided to have dinner at my grandparent's house instead of my parent's house. Everyone was busy so I volunteered to make dinner for 20. I went to the store and asked what they would recommend for meat and they suggested it. So off I went home with 12lbs of meat, marinated it and straight into the oven for 3.5 hours. We ran out of time so had to slice it into thirds and finish it off that way.
I also roasted a bunch of vegetables to pair with it - everything but anything green. My grandfather's meds preclude him from eating green things.
Um, I guess I should have made this long story into a post instead of a comment. Oh well.