Christmas 2012

NOTE: I started this post back in January and am just not getting around to posting. Can you say LAZY!!

I realize I am a bit late on getting this posted. I am going with the excuse that January is my busiest month of the year and I'm exhausted 99.8% of the time and knew this post would be a bigger undertaking. As Christmas tradition in our household goes, on Christmas day we basically put out some appetizers and just eat all day. Not a bad tradition if I may say! We typically stick to the usuals, velveeta dip, salsa/cream cheese dip, black olive dip, cold shrimp and cocktail sauce, taco dip (anyone sense this "dip" theme here), meatballs, little wienies, and our baked pumpernickel breads. This year we shook it up and made less food (boo) and different foods (yay)! Here is the lineup:

Christmas 2011 Feast

As some of you may know, Kurt and I stay at our house on Christmas. Our parents did such a great job making Christmas so special for us as kids, we want Riglee (and any future children) to have that same Christmas morning excitement! So we literally hunker down, lock the doors, stay in our jammies, and eat all day long. Like last year, we had a feast of appetizers on Christmas day. We pretty much leave the food out all day and just eat as we please. Here is a taste of our day:

Lamb Lollipops?!



So on December 26th my brothers, David and Mikey, came over for a little family dinner! David has been working for the UW system directly under one of their head chefs. He's always wanted to be a chef and always makes delicious food. Obviously he is the one who gets stuck cooking for all of us. David decided dinner would be lamb and potatoes and I was in charge of the veggie. Now, lamb would probably not be on my top 3 choice of meals (they would probably be pasta, pasta, then beef......with pasta) but this lamb was ahhh-mazing! I don't know exactly what he put on it but he had some sort of panko/herb crust and it was cooked perfectly and was very tender. I mean, this lamb was really really good, even Kurt loved it!

And ohmygoodness the homemade mashed red potatoes with a cream and pea sauce. David just heated up some cream and added frozen peas with salt and lots of pepper. This was so incredibly simple but added so much flavor and depth to the meal....why didn't I think of this before?! I know I don't have any recipes for this meal but I just had to show it off!!

Christmas Munching...

This pretty much explains the excitement we feel about eating on Christmas. For the past 11 years we have been enjoying Christmas up north with our families, namely Kurt's family. Christmas Eve his parents put on a surf 'n' turf dinner and Christmas day is filled with gorging on appetizers and desserts (all while we are in our pajamas of course, we need the expandable waistlines). Since we now have our own child, we want to start making Christmas as special for her as our parents have made it for us. This means we opted to stay home for Christmas this year and spend it as our own little family.

Christmas Eve we did a nice dinner of steak, baked potato, corn, and salad. It was delicious and traditional for a nice dinner. Now Christmas day is where it is at!! We also decided to stick with the appetizer theme and just did a whole lot of eating. Here is our Christmas 2010 menu:

More importantly, here is the food (recipes to come later)!



The spread



Crackers with brie and apricot jelly

Shrimp cocktail (what is Christmas without shrimp cocktail)

BBQ little wienies & sweet and sour meatballs

Veggies & dip



Velveeta sausage dip

Cream cheese & salsa dip



Christmas cookies provided by Kurt's mom



Strawberry swirl cheesecake



I made Kurt wait to eat until I took pictures, he was obviously too excited to listen!