Prep Work

So remember my crazy thanksgiving post? Yeah well, we tend to eat similarly for Christmas. What can I say i come from a family of eaters! We have so many traditions at Christmas, but since this is a food blog I will try to stick to our "foodie traditions".

Going in chronological order we normally spend Christmas Eve at my grandparents house having Venison Cacciatore and eating all my grandma's baked goods. While growing up my grandpa and dad both used to go hunting so we always had venison in the freezer. I was never a huge fan...a bit gamey for my taste. There are many cuts of venison (deer meat) and some are more gamey than others, and when you put the meat in cacciatore it really gets rid of the gaminess. This dish has been passed down from my grandpa to my dad and now my cousin Josh makes it. This year we didn't have the dish until the day after Christmas (we also enjoyed a great Italian feast at my Uncle pats and Aunt Gina's)...but I couldn't talk about Christmas food traditions without mentioning that one

Of course the first thing i discussed with my mom when I woke up on Christmas Eve was Christmas dinner! As mentioned before we tend to have the same food for Christmas that we have for Thanksgiving. Alot of our dishes make a reappearance. Even though my Mom was hosting I of course wanted to contribute some dishes as well. My mom had planned both Turkey and Ham for meats so i choose to make a Scallop Potato dish from Cooking Light (per erin's request), a Brussels Sprout recipe from Weight Watchers and my HG Squashtastic dish from Thanksgiving! I also told my mom I would handle making my grandma's rolls.

I really wanted to enjoy Christmas day so I prepped some of my ingredients for the dishes the night before. As much as I love to cook sometimes the prep work is not so much fun! I ended up doing alot of the "cutting" the night before:

-Brussels sprouts

-peel and cut the butternut squash (with the help of my dad...thanks dad!)

Christmas morning I used my NEW KNIVES (thanks Santa) to prep the rest of the ingredients for the dishes so that when dinner came all I needed to do was throw them in the oven.

My mom and I also worked on my grandma's rolls because they have to sit for about three hours before popping them in the oven for twenty mins.

We sipped Pomegranate Mimosas and finished the prep work....all ready for dinner :)!