Christmas Food

One of our favorite parts of Christmas are the traditional foods we eat. When I was young my cousins always had waffles with strawberries and whipped cream on Christmas morning. I thought that was the most beautiful Christmas tradition ever. (Pancakes with strawberries & whipped cream are still my favorite IHOP meal to this day.) But waffles on Christmas morning don't work here for several reasons. First, they're pretty time consuming to prepare. No one wants that! Even if we switch to pancakes there's still the problem of an all-carb/high sugar meal coming in the middle of all of that Christmas candy. Not a very good combination for anyone related to me!

Last year we finally tried make-ahead casseroles.

We made one that was protein based and one that was made out of cream cheese and crescent rolls. It was a smash success. Our tummies were full of enough egg & cheese & sausage to be able to eat plenty of candy and still be relatively calm. Best of all, there were plenty of leftovers for lunch and breakfast the day after Christmas.

But our favorite Christmas Day food tradition is the Mexican Feast that Russ makes for dinner. We have other Mexican Feasts throughout the year, but having one on Christmas Day when there are no other responsibilities and everyone is relaxed (now that all of the shopping and present wrapping are over!) and happy is the best.

Here are some pictures from the feast: muchaca burrito filling, Ken & Alisyn's festive chip & dip platter, the very necessary guacamole, and Alisyn cutting millions of tomatoes. I would have had a picture of Russ's specialty--the southwest eggrolls, but while I was on the phone with dear friends in another state the eggrolls were both finished and eaten. Fortunately Russ saved me some eggrolls, or I might not been happy about the phone call!

After all of the food was eating, the game playing began. Including our favorite new game--called Guillotine. Subtitle? Heads Will Roll. How could we resist that?