Hello from your resident grinch. I cannot tell you how soothing it was to have so many lovely people assure me that it’s okay not to be all swept up in the holiday spirit this year. And comforting, if sad, to know that so many others are experiencing the same irritation/despair that I am stuck with. I am going to do my best to let go of my desire to feel Christmassy. Trying to force it – even trying to allow space for it to seep in – is just not working. (Cut to scene from this weekend, where I had our Echo play Christmas music while I baked, but most songs were annoying me so I kept saying “Skip” and ended up sobbing into my cranberry crumble bars.) (The bars taste decent but look a mess, possibly because I filled them with sadness. The crust, while tasty, cannot bear the weight of the cranberries heaped on top of it. Same, crumble bars, same.)
My bad mood is probably due to two main things. The smaller of the two is that my husband is on call this week. It’s his first time being on call for Christmas since Carla was born, so we have been very lucky. I am grateful for all those Christmasses that he wasn’t on call, and acknowledge that it is his turn. But also, he will be stressed and grumpy all week, plus his hours will be extremely unpredictable, plus we will have to rush through Christmas morning so he can head into the hospital.
The larger is, of course, the current state of the pandemic. I am worried about a friend who is traveling overseas. I am worried about my parents, who are traveling to visit us. I am worried about my husband, who will be in a hospital that is so overrun with Covid patients, outpatient procedures have been cancelled/delayed to divert resources to those who need them the most. I am not particularly worried about us getting Covid – it feels inevitable, once again; we have been so lucky so far – because we have all been as vaccinated as possible. If (WHEN) we get it, we should, god willing, live through the experience. But I am worried about my husband (or Carla, or me) bringing it home to my parents. They are vaccinated and boosted, but they are in that vulnerable age range and I cannot bear the thought of infecting them. We got a delivery of at-home testing kits just yesterday, and I ordered a bunch more, so I guess we will just continue to be as careful as possible and also test frequently?
I did manage to do a big chunk of the wrapping. I made the (sub-par) cranberry bars. Carla delivered her homemade dog treats to all the dogs of the neighborhood. The three of us watched Elf. So I feel like I am going through the Christmas motions, at least. Sometimes that’s all you can do, right?
Speaking of Christmas motions: we all have to eat. I made my first of three? four? planned trips to the grocery store this morning. Here’s the plan:
Dinners for the Week of December 20-26
- Monday: Chicken + Roasted Potatoes + Salad – The potatoes are something I found in the freezer section, and all I need to do is figure out what quick-and-easy method I will use to roast/bake the chicken.
- Tuesday: Tacos
- Wednesday: One-Pot Salmon with Leeks + Salad – My husband, who does not particularly like salmon, perked right up when I suggested I make this dish this week. It is yummy and different.
- Thursday: Asian Chicken Salad (or possibly takeout) – I could have SWORN that my mother used to make something like this when I was a kid, but when I called her a few weeks ago to ask her to remind me what dressing she used, she claimed that she had never once made this ever in her life. So I am going to make it for her.
- Friday: Mulligatawny Soup + Miracle No-Knead Bread + Salad – This is my family-of-origin’s traditional Christmas Eve dinner, and my husband is cool with it.
- Christmas Day:
- Baked French Toast + Breakfast Strata – I can’t settle on a strata. We made this sausage and mushroom version a few years ago, and it was a success. But this one with potatoes and bacon sounds better to me. (I wonder if I could sneak a little spinach into it?) My husband requested something savory in addition to the baked French toast, and all of these can be made ahead. But I admit to feeling a little pre-exhausted by the thought of making BOTH on Christmas Eve, especially when we need to be Santa’s helpers as well. I may see if I can persuade my husband to content himself with some bacon and maybe a fried egg or two instead.
- Spice Roast (paywall) + Garlic Goat Cheese Mashed Potatoes + Caesar Salad – This is my family-of-origin’s traditional Christmas Day dinner, and my father makes the Caesar salad and the spice roast, and the particular mixture of spices will forever and always make me think of Christmas.
- Blueberry Pie – I have wheedled my mother into making blueberry pie. It is truly the taste of my childhood. Maybe Carla will allow herself to be diverted from her toys for a few minutes to help?
- Sunday: Cheese Board – I like a good cheese board, and my parents seem happy to indulge. We’ll pack it with salami, cheeses, nuts, dried apricots, olives, artichoke hearts, mini-croissants, and whatever little baked pastries sound good at Trader Joe’s. I will also make this cranberry salsa for us to snack on.
The grocery store seemed decently well-stocked. I was able to get frozen pancakes, Lunchables (although Carla, who fetched them from the deli counter, said there were only four total, so she grabbed two), and cream cheese. In fact, cream cheese was quite a bit more plentiful than it has been in weeks past. I usually get a container of chow mein noodles to add a little crunchy topping to the Asian salad, and there was a big bare space on the shelf where they should be. It was the very bottom shelf, so I couldn’t see that there were four containers at the very back of the shelf until I crouched down. But I got one of them and feel very pleased indeed.
I always like to hear what everyone’s eating for Christmas dinners. Plus, thinking about food is a GREAT distraction from reading the news, thinking about the news, and feeling sorry for oneself about not feeling the Christmas spirit this year.
For Christmas Eve, we do BBQ. Brisket, burnt ends, pulled pork and pulled chicken. Sides are hashbrown casserole, cheesey corn, and baked beans. For Christmas dinner, we have prime rib.
YUM
Our usual Christmas food tradition is to dress up in our Christmas outfits and go out for a “fancy” dinner (we go quite early, at like 4:00ish so as not to be out too late) and then come home to a kitchen that is still clean to do all the Christmas prep. Then Christmas morning we have either cinnamon rolls or breakfast casserole or tubes of M&Ms from our stockings for breakfast. We then have something simple, like soup and bread for lunch/dinner because no one is hungry after eating junk all day. Then the cousins fly in on the 27th ish and we have official fancy Christmas dinner on the 28th ish with beef tenderloin and roasted vegetables and salad and rolls and etc.
This year we aren’t doing Christmas Eve out so we will probably get multiple takeouts (Alex and I will probably get sushi, Matt and Elizabeth will probably get Roadhouse or some kind of steak, Ryan may get pizza) and there will be no cousins and no fancy Christmas dinner. But I think we are thinking soup and bagel sandwiches for Christmas food this year and looking forward to a cozy day of presents and no obligations.
Presents and no obligations is definitely its own kind of wonderful. But your pre-pandemic traditions sound lovely! Especially the clean kitchen one!
We’re doing the full Thanksgiving dinner since my brother will be here for Christmas. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and angel salad (which is a tradition from Mom’s side of the family). Pray that she can find a small turkey at the store tomorrow!
Being a lazy cook mostly, I am interested in the roasted potatoes from the freezer section. Have you had them before? Please report back!
Woo! That sounds wonderful! I will definitely keep you posted about the potatoes
As for Christmas food around here…The Husband always makes a seafood feast for Christmas Eve (it’s an Italian tradition, apparently, which is fine with me since I love seafood). For Christmas Day, I think he is planning for a ham and I have no idea what else…hopefully mashed potatoes will make an appearance. I’m still deciding on desserts (says the woman who is currently up to her ears in cookies). Speaking of desserts, that is where I have noticed a lot of shortages around here…the baking aisle is a wasteland.
Suzanne, this year – almost more than last year – has been a long and difficult year (probably because this year doesn’t look very different from last year and we all had high hopes that it would) . So it’s no surprise that you are out of sorts. And yes, sometimes just going through the motions is all you can do and that is okay. I know it’s hard. And you need to know, you are doing great. Sending hugs.
Thank you, Gigi. Hugs back at you ❤️
We will be traveling to my in-laws and back on Christmas Day, so I’ll be eating whatever swill they provide (I don’t mean to be mean, but…) and my husband will just bring a frozen meal to eat because he can’t eat any of it. We have to drive 3 hours there, eat a substandard meal, and drive three hours back, and I am just not in the Christmas spirit about it. Oh, well.
I’m so sorry. I hope you can have a more festive time when you are back home.
Favorite part: “The bars taste decent but look a mess, possibly because I filled them with sadness.”
I too had heard of a cream cheese shortage, and so I put it on the list, and then found that if anything it was more plentiful than usual. But I bought two unneeded packages of it anyway. Well-played, cream cheese. Well-played.
Hmm I also bought two boxes I did not need. A cream cheese conspiracy.
Cheese boards have become my thing lately… who can go wrong with some fatty cheese and yummy wine?!
Exactly!
Fake it til you make it?
Here in Canada our cream cheese supply is humming along splendidly – it is the turkeys (which approximately EVERY Canadian eats on Christmas Day) that are in short supply. They are selling out within minutes; I actually reverted to texting an acquaintance who OWNS a grocery store thinking she might set one aside for me and they were already sold out. Thankfully my husband managed to nab a small one a few days later at a different store.
I used store-bought rotisserie chickens at Thanksgiving (in October, here in Canada) and the kids looked at me like I had 8 heads. “No TURKEY?!” they wailed. Rotisserie chickens are a million times easier and objectively delicious, but I will do the turkey thing lest my children go on to need therapy later in life over the fact their mother forever ruined their holiday culinary memories by stooping to the low of rotisserie chickens. Though, because the turkey we did manage to source is so small, we will almost certainly wind up buying some rotisserie chickens to augment leftovers…
I’m glad you found a small one! These shortages are so odd!
Oh, my friend. Hugs to you. I cannot imagine the strain of having my husband work in a hospital overrun with Covid. Our hospitals were like that here in the fall and I fear it’s going to happen again very soon. It’s okay to be not okay and it’s okay to feel the way you feel – and I’m sending lots of love and hugs across the miles. Also, it sucks to have to be on call at Christmas.
Dinners! We are going to go to my parents’ on Christmas Day and my mom is making a turkey, which I will not eat, obviously, but she always makes me portabella mushrooms and this really great sweet potato dish that I love. On Christmas Eve, we always – for some reason, I don’t know how this tradition started – barbeque steaks, which, AGAIN, I DON’T EAT but I will be making a salad and kalettes and sweet potatoes (a different way) and maybe this roasted broccoli dish I found at the Kitchn website. It’s really good and everyone loves it. Oh! And my mom makes a chocolate Yule log which I love so much! So that will be great.
Wishing you and your family the absolute best for the holidays and the coming year, and I hope Carla loves her rilly big box of craft supplies.
Those traditions sound delicious and hooray for kalettes which I am still so curious to try! Merry Christmas!
Those bars don’t look subpar. They look delicious. Cream cheese supply has been spotty here.
We’re having lasagna for Christmas dinner because we’ve done it for a few years in a row and now the kids think it’s a sacrosanct tradition. I’m not thrilled because it means I will either have to have a very tiny piece or go out of range and I haven’t decided yet which it’s going to be. On the other hand, they both love pasta and I hardly ever make it since being diagnosed and it is Christmas so I guess they deserve it.
Ahhh that is disappointing. Hoping you find something delicious to eat as well.
I, too, succumbed and bought cream cheese that I did not really need. And I do think your cranberry bars look festive and pretty! It really does suck, for your husband and you, that he is on call this week and in the midst of covid, so you have my utmost sympathy and empathy.
Christmas Day will be me and my son (traveling in from Chicago – he is 31). I’m making a chicken pot pie (from scratch, I love them) for Christmas Eve, and for Christmas Day I’m making manicotti. It’s a recipe where you make crepes for the manicotti tubes and it is just so delicious! He also just messaged me and specifically requested my banana pudding, so you know I’m heading to the grocery store to buy ingredients for that. 🙂
My daughter and her (large) family will be here on Tuesday the 28th. She also requested pasta, but doesn’t like ricotta — she wants baked ziti. No problem! I have meatballs already made and frozen, and I’m making the gravy tomorrow. (I’m Italian, I call it gravy because my family always did, but I know most people think I’m nuts for doing that!)
I used to always make a ham on Christmas but that has fallen by the wayside. I absolutely love pasta – I grew up with ham and lasagna or ravioli as our traditional Christmas dinner, so having some kind of pasta just feels right.
Pasta for Christmas sounds wonderful — and how great to have your kids home!
I bought three boxes of cream cheese at Aldi the other day. I feel like the March 2020 toilet paper hoarders. I’m prepared to share them if anyone needs them.
I’ve been sick with a “cold” since Sunday. At least, that’s what I am hoping it is. I’m vaccinated and boosted (as is our entire family), however, my husband travels for work and caught a “cold” a few weeks ago, which he then passed on to me. With everything going on, we are all on high alert. I’m feeling much better today, but I’m behind on everything, so I can sympathize with your lack of Christmas spirit.
Your menu sounds wonderful. I’m making homemade soup and bread for Christmas Day. This is a new tradition for us, and I hope we enjoy it going forward.
More than many, you have real reasons to worry, and complain. Just like chicken soup, complaining can be great for the soul 🙂 I’ve never believed those who said “can’t complain”, of course you can, and sometimes, should! So consider it catharsis for the soul!
We’ve embraced less-than-traditional meals this holiday season, pancakes, banana bread, extremely good for the soul, too!
I’m verrrry late to comment on this post but I love everyone’s Christmas Day menus. My mom used to do a Christmas Day brunch for us and all of my cousins, and I’ve kind-of adopted that as my nuclear family’s tradition. I make homemade crepes, served with a variety of toppings, and an egg casserole with green chiles and red sauce. It’s so yummy. Some years I make mimosas to go with it. 😉
For Christmas day dinner, I have done lasagna before, or turkey/ham like Thanksgiving, or sometimes just ham and sides.
It’s never too late to discuss food! 😊