Tonight’s dinner was grilled cheese on sourdough, using leftover smoked gouda and cheddar, with sliced tomato and avocado. Oh, yum.

Forgot to take pictures, though.

Our traditional Christmas Eve dinner is a roast beef, with potatoes, onions and carrots, and yummy horseradish sour cream sauce.

For tomorrow, we serve a finger food buffet for Christmas dinner, so I’m out playing with the kids instead of in the kitchen. We’ll have smoked salmon (with cream cheese, capers, chopped boiled egg, and chopped red onion and triscuits to put it all on), cheeses (gouda, dill havarti, and a cheddar), crackers, shrimp and crab (with cocktail sauce and lemons), and I’ll make some tortilla rollups (we call them pinwheels) with the leftover roast beef from tonight, basil, and cream cheese.

For breakfast, we usually either have Eggs Benedict or a blueberry cream cheese strata (note to self: post recipes for these), but this year, I bought bakery cinnamon rolls with cream cheese icing, just to keep things simple. My mom and my grown daughter will be sad about the lack of Eggs Benedict, but my kids are excited.

Click for bigger.

Wow, you can totally tell the littler kids set the table. I hadn’t even noticed before.

Our menu:

Turkey (duh)
Stuffing (cooked outside the bird)
Mashed potatoes
Gravy
Cranberries (fresh and the canned jelly)
Squash (at my mother’s request – she and I will be the only ones to eat it)
Cheesy broccoli rice casserole (my daughter is bringing this)
Sweet potatoes (no marshmallows here – yuck)
Rolls
Pumpkin pie (my mom will be bringing this)
Blueberry cheesecake (really blueberry cream cheese pie – this is our family tradition)

And we’ll have my spiced pecans for munching while we wait for dinner.

I’ll be making what I can ahead of time, to leave lots of time on Thanksgiving Day to play board games, which is also our family tradition. I’m going to make the mashed potatoes ahead and heat them in the oven (I’ve never tried this, but I’ve read about it all over the ‘net, so here’s hoping it’s good – mashed potatoes with gravy are THE thing on Thanksgiving for most of my family). I’m going to buy a couple turkey legs and make some gravy ahead of time, because there’s never enough. I’ll make up the sweet potatoes ahead of time, too, and the cranberry sauce. And I’ll get the rolls done early and ready to just thaw and throw in the oven.

The plan:

Monday: Make dough for rolls and freeze.
Tuesday: Make sweet potatoes, spiced nuts, and cranberries.
Wednesday: Make mashed potatoes and gravy. Oh, and cheesecake!
Thursday: Everything else.

Family will arrive around noon and we’ll eat around 3pm. That’s the plan, anyway.

What are your family traditions? What’s your menu?

Some highlights:

Ted prefers mashed sweet potatoes, although I like them whole. NONE of us like marshmallows on them. I mashed them in deference to Ted, and added just about 1/2 cup brown sugar to the large can of Bruce’s (drained). I also added some butter and milk and cinnamon. They were delicious.

The spiced pecans (both kinds) went over very well. Also, inexplicably, my children went nuts over the canned baby corn, just drained and put on the relish tray.

I used the foil tent method of cooking the turkey, and as usual, it made a wonderful turkey. Our turkey was 26 pounds. I wanted to try the cooking bag, but they are only for turkeys for up to 24 pounds. I slightly overcooked it, because when we tried to lift it to the platter, the legs stayed behind! LOL! But everything was still moist and we’ve been enjoying lots of turkey sandwiches since.

I made blueberry cheesecake and frozen pumpkin pie. I used the Mrs. Smith’s Custard-Style Pumpkin Pie, and it was FABULOUS, but I should have read the directions the day before – it cooks for 75 minutes and has to cool for 2 hours.

Here’s my blueberry cheesecake recipe (it’s really a blueberry cheese pie):

8 oz. cream cheese (room temperature)
1/3 cup lemon juice
2 tsp. vanilla
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 can blueberry pie filling

Graham cracker crust (either store bought or preferably homemade)

Beat the cream cheese then add the sweetened condensed milk. Beat till smooth. Add the vanilla and then the lemon juice, beating the whole while. Beat a bit more for good measure and then pour it into the crust. Let it set in the fridge for at least a few hours, then pour the pie filling over the top. Let it set some more till it’s time to eat it.

My mom got that out of a magazine when I was a kid, I think, only it was cherry. We much prefer blueberry, but cherry is very good too.

Spiced Pecans

These are spicy, but not HOT. Very, very yummy.

1 stick (1/2 cup) butter
2 teaspoons ground cumin
3/4 teaspoon ground red pepper
2 (12-ounce) packages,
(8 cups) pecan halves
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt

Directions:

Melt butter in a large saucepan; stir in cumin and red pepper, and cook 1 minute. Remove from heat; add pecans, sugar, and salt, stirring to coat. Spread pecans in a single layer in 2 (15 x 10-inch) jellyroll pans. Bake at 300° for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Cool and store in an airtight container. Makes 8 cups.

Microwave Spiced Pecans

These are the sweet ones. Mmmm…

1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons water
3 cups pecan halves

Directions:

Melt butter in a 4 quart glass casserole dish in the microwave. Stir in the brown sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon and water. Microwave on high for 1 minute. Stir in the nuts so they are well coated. Microwave for 4 to 5 additional minutes on high, stirring every minute. Spread cooked nuts out onto parchment or waxed paper to cool. Makes 3 cups.

I also made pinwheel thingies for the buffet. I made the cream cheese and green chile kind, and some with roast beef and a mixture of cream cheese and horseradish. Yum.

On Christmas, family comes over and I make a “finger food buffet” – smoked salmon, shrimp, crab, smoked sausage, cheeses, crackers, etc. That way I’m not in the kitchen cooking all day, cranky because I’m not out playing with the kids and all the new toys