Christmas Eve Preparations

The afternoon of Christmas Eve is spent mostly in the kitchen and doing sundry cleaning. The reason for all the cooking is that we must do the meal prep for our Christmas Eve dinner as well as the Christmas Morning Brunch which we serve to our entire family. When we have a big cooking day everyone pitches in to help. Here JoAn is taking care of the Cherry soup which was to be served cold on Christmas morning. (It was really good and looked so pretty. It actually tasted better served hot a couple days later. I will definitely repeat this recipe. It is a good way to use up all the sour cherries in the freezer.)

Thomas worked hard frying up sausage and bacon to go in the quiche we made for Christmas brunch.

JoAn was greasing the pans for the potato casserole we made for brunch. I have worked with the children from the time they were young to be helpful and competent in the kitchen. It is a good family time as well.

T-Bob took a break from his Legos and Bionicles to wash veggies and cut up the broccoli.

I was able to go out to the garden and cut some fresh herbs to use in our shrimp bisque. This is thyme and sage. We also used fresh lemon. It was yummy, even our non-seafood eaters like this. They don't want the shrimp, but they love the soup.

It smells so good as it sits steaming on the stove.

Our friends at a local restaurant made the crab cheesecake for us. It was really tasty as she used baby leeks and lots of big pieces of crab. It was moist and delicious. She made it with the gluten free crumbs in the crust so everybody could eat it (except the dairy-free people).

Michelle set the table and created a simple center piece with cinnamon sticks, a candle, and a place mat.

This is how it looked before most of the food was put on. Our only mishap was with the Elegant Baked fish. Mr. Boots made it and JoAn told him to follow the recipe to the letter. He did. I usually don't on this one. It calls for a TABLESPOON of TABASCO sauce for a pound and a half of fish. That's really hot, as we discovered when we started to eat it. I usually only use about a quarter teaspoon when I make it. Mr. Boots really liked it as he enjoys spicy things. Some of the younger children skipped it. We didn't need tears on Christmas Eve, but we did need lots of beverages to drink. We finished up the meal with homemade ice cream which JoAn mixed up and Mr. Boots ran the ice cream maker.

~Mom