One last food post about our magnificent December 25 dinner, and then I'll get back to serious talk about space aliens. This year, since Christmas and the final night of Hanukkah happened on the same day, we decided to do a really big holiday dinner. Both of our kids would be home, and we invited two sets of neighbors for a grand total of eight people around the table.
The old table is infinitely expandable, but the dining room isn't, so we had to move all the furniture from the living room to the dining room, and put the table in the bigger space. Fortunately, our sofa is out for reupholstering, so most of the things we had to move were easily portable.
Diane started making some of the dishes two days before, and of course I had started our Christmas Pudding at the beginning of November. On Christmas Eve we followed my family's tradition of eating out — eminently practical because the last thing you want is a sink full of dishes on Christmas morning.
The meal was set for 4:00 p.m., so we started cooking at 11. The cooking ended just as (after) the first guests arrived, and then we spent the next three and a half hours eating.
The menu:
Oyster Patties — Roast Chestnuts — Chocolate Maccabees
Crémant de Bourgogne
Potage Crécy — Homemade rolls
Cold Steamed Salmon — Green Beans
Vouvray
Amuse-Bouche (Mushroom Puffs)
Beef Rib Roast — Oven-Baked Latke
Bordeaux
Apple Pie — Christmas Pudding Flambé
Coffee
Overall, an excellent dinner, and we're going to be eating beef and salmon until Valentine's Day. The pudding was more crumbly than last year's version, so I will go back to a six-month pudding or maybe even put one down in January for Christmas 2023. We lit the menorah, talked at length about things, and parted on a cold night feeling content.
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