One of the best things about our non-traditional Christmas dinner is the leftovers.
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. 
We’re having our Christmas tomorrow, since my kids go to their dad’s for Christmas this year.
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.
The other day, I posted about Jell-o Poke Cake. Last night, we made the spice cake with orange Jell-o version.
You really can’t see the Jell-o like you can with a regular poke cake, but it’s there.
It was moist, but kind of bland. I prefer regular poke cakes. But my kids loved it.
For those nights when I am really busy and forgot to plan anything, I’ll make french dips a lot of the time. The whole family just loves them, so they feel like it’s a treat when I’m pretty much taking the night off. There’s no real recipe, since it’s all made with pre-made ingredients.
Tonight’s dinner was chicken parmigiana. Super quick and very tasty!
(Yes, I need to clean off my lens. Whoops.)
Click for bigger.
Wow, you can totally tell the littler kids set the table. I hadn’t even noticed before.
Have you ever made a Jell-o Poke Cake? Oh, so much yummier than it ought to be. It’s also really easy and simple, and the kids can help.
1 box of yellow cake mix (and the eggs and oil, etc. that it requires)
1 small box of whatever flavor Jell-o you want
1 cup of boiling water
About 4 ice cubes and enough cold water to make that into 1/2 cup
1 tub of Cool WhipBake the cake according to package directions in a 9×13 pan and let cool. Leave it in the pan. Poke a bunch of holes all over the top of the cake, using a fork.
Boil 1 cup of water and mix it with the Jell-o. When the Jell-o is all dissolved, add the ice cube/cold water mix and stir until the ice cubes are all melted. Pour over the top of the cake, making sure to get Jell-o into all the holes. Refrigerate the cake for a few hours and then frost it with the Cool Whip and devour. Refrigerate the leftovers.
Strawberry Jell-o is divine. Peach is amazing – peaches and cream! Chocolate cake with cherry is yummy. I’ve heard spice cake with orange Jell-o is good, but I haven’t tried it yet.
We loooove poke cake around here!
So, it’s a week and a day until Thanksgiving. I’m deep into the planning here. This year, we’ll have me, my three kids that still live at home, my grown daughter and her boyfriend, my mother, my brother, and his girlfriend.
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?
Lately, the kids and I have been obsessed with our new side dish – buttered noodles with basil and garlic.
Start some noodles boiling (we have used egg noodles and spaghetti). While they boil, sauté a clove or two of minced garlic in a tablespoon of butter. When the noodles are done, drain them and return them to the pot. Cut some butter into small cubes (I use 1/4 cup per 1/2 pound of pasta) and add that to the hot noodles and stir around until it melts. Add the garlic, a good amount of basil (fresh or freeze-dried*), and salt and pepper.
Okay, super simple, but it’s amazingly “tastiful” (as my teenage daughter says).
* I am falling madly in love with the Litehouse Freeze-dried basil. Even though I have two basil plants in my window, I tend to reach for this because it’s just easy and my plants are kind of bug-eaten. It really, really tastes just like fresh. I want to try their other herbs.
Tonight, I’m making black bean burritos for dinner, because it’s quick, cheap, easy, and I want to be done with the whole dinner thing in time to watch the Vice Presidential debates.
And my kids love them.