Christmas Menu 2020
Well, 2021 is nearly over and as many of us were in lockdowns or restaurants were closed or limited Christmas 2020, many people were urged not to get together over Christmas, some celebrations and traditions had to change during this time of COVID-19. This is not going to be a discussion about politics or anything like that. (Haven’t we all had enough?) Instead, this is going to be a discussion about the change in the traditional Christmas festivities during the lockdowns of 2020 and what my family did to deal with that change.
To understand what I did, it will be necessary to take a trip back in time. I am going to take you back to the early days of cooking after my divorce. You see, I hated cooking then (and still do), however, my first husband was good at cooking. So for years, I was lucky I didn’t have to cook at all. Life brings some curveballs and eventually I found myself divorced and then remarried. My second husband is fantastic in the kitchen. He can make some meals that are to die for. If there is one downside, it is that he tends to have more sophisticated tastes and I like simple flavors. All in all the meals he creates are great, but there was a time I decided that I would make the Christmas dinner. Yes, me. The person who once thought that the way you cooked a turkey was to saw off the wings and drumsticks and sit the bird in a giant boiling pot.
I decided it was time that I cook Christmas dinner.
In the beginning, all was actually going fairly well. I had gotten everything necessary for the menu. I had planned everything.
Well… almost everything.
I hadn’t planned for the sudden, self-destructive end of the oven. Yes, I finally had everything going nicely but managed to destroy the oven. What’s worse, It stopped working in the middle of dinner and I was left with a very cold bird.
On the upside, by this time it was too far into our marriage for my husband to change his mind.
Remember the movie “A Christmas Story?” I imagine that most of you know that scene where the dogs ran in and ate the turkey and the father introduced the family to Chinese food for Christmas. Well, that is exactly what my husband did. He piled us all into our vehicle and drove us to our favorite Chinese restaurant where we ate an endless feast at the buffet.
A new tradition was born!
Since that time, we always set aside a little extra money for dinner and make our way to the Asian Buffet for Christmas dinner. We even had my parents join us for a couple of years so mom didn’t have to cook a thing and dad felt better eating what he liked as well. It’s always been a lot of fun and has become something we look forward to year after year.
Enter 2020...
While we could have ordered take-out, a family this size would get confusing so we (or rather I) decided I would once again give my hand a go at another Christmas dinner. Now I could have combed the Peg Bracken cookbooks for a meal that I could do with a family of 8 and be different this go around, but something interesting happened a while back. By coincidence, inside one of my old 1970’s cookbooks, I found a pamphlet.
It was titled, “Christmas Recipes 1972” and had quite a few interesting possibilities I wanted to try for Christmas dinner. The great thing is that Consumers Power Co. created this pamphlet in our area in 1972. In the back of the pamphlet, it read “Our home Service Advisors are available for program presentations on efficient use of appliances, food preparation, kitchen planning, lighting, selection of appliances and many other related subjects.” This meant that you could call them in the past and they would help you create an energy-efficient kitchen. I thought that was interesting. Anyway, I called my mom and she said “That sounds like something my mother used to get and use for meals.”
That sealed it!
This is the Consumer’s Powers Holiday Cookbook Pamphlet.
I decided that I must try some of these recipes. After losing, finding, losing, and finding the cookbook, I was ready to plan the meal. I will be listing the recipes for Christmas dinner here. Stay tuned for a few other recipes I intend to try at a later date, just for your entertainment. (see note)
The menu as planned:
Breakfast:
Eggs: Any type of eggs you enjoy. No particular recipe for eggs. This is my favorite though:
Make-Ahead Eggs
Lunch :
Christmas Sandwich (very interesting bologna spread)
Schnippled Beans (I know isn’t the name the funniest thing to say?)
Appetizers:
Chili Cheese Log
Curried Eggs (I added this from another source)
Assorted olives, pickles, and crackers
Dinner:
Entree:
Glazed Pork Roast with a Cherry Glaze
Pineapple and Shrimp Chinese Style
Vegetable:
Cheesy Broccoli Casserole
Salad:
Seafoam Salad
Spicy Aspic Salad with Almond mayonnaise (warning this is a molded salad)
Desserts: (Lots and Lots of them!):
Frozen Pumpkin Ice Cream Pie
Strawberry Fluff Frosting on an Angel Food Cake
Christmas cookies: for Christmas Eve are for that weird guy that breaks into people’s homes to leave stuff for the kids and takes cookies and milk on his way out:
Orange Buttermilk Cookies
Mincemeat Drop Cookies
In the interest of time and the fear of making this post too long to be read in a single evening, I will break the individual recipes and reviews out into separate posts and link them here. Stay tuned!
You will no doubt be very curious about what Schnippled beans are and how Swiss onion pie is received by a table full of teenagers.
On that note, my 14-year-old has been complaining that I find these weird pie recipes and they aren’t actual real pies. By that, he means that they aren’t fruity and full of sugar or berries. They are instead full of meat and cheese and (most diabolically) vegetables. Pies, he insists, are fruit-filled or frozen and creamy. They are sweet and dessert-like in all their blissful, child-pleasing glory. He is convinced at this point that I am on a mission to torture him and leave him scarred for life because he will forever question the insides of pies as they are presented to him.
Note: As I upload the different images and recipes that we tried, I will update the links to the menu, so please be patient. I was going to do this at the beginning of 2021...but the PC and I had a rather heated (it nearly overheated) argument. Things are relatively normal now.
