re: What's your Christmas Day Lunch/Dinner Menu?

Same for the last 20+ years:

Shrimp and andouille gumbo
My specialty--could fill several 55gal drums with all the pots I've made in my life. Nothing real special about it. I had assumed that everyone cooked down the shrimp shells and heads for a stock, but some folks have recently told me it sounded crazy. But, yeah, make my own roux, peel and devein the swimps, use the best andouille I can find, bias-cut a little alligator sausage, hand-chop all the veggies. It's not rocket science, but folks seem to like it.

Seafood gumbo
Make this one as a tribute to my mom (who taught me how to make a roux and the whole shrimp stock thing). She had a couple of recipes she would consult, but eventually I ended up writing down everything she did and making a record of something I could actually recreate myself. My gumbos are a little richer/thicker. Hers is darker but thinner. Okra doesn't get near any of them. All the usual seafood: Shrimp, crab & oyster. Usually Louisiana rice from friends in SWLA, but I've bought rice from a nearby Chinese restaurant a few times over the years.

Potato salad
This thing comes from a recipe my mom's friend had published in the Farm Bureau cookbook 40 years ago. Includes red onions finely diced and is more tart/tangy than sweet. Not my personal favorite, but my wife loves it. So, it's perpetually on our Christmas menu.

Spinach madeleine
This one is just the traditional recipe from The Advocate. The recipe in my book is a photocopy of another photocopy from the newspaper. It's another dish that's not a favorite for me, but my wife likes it, and I like her. It calls for the old Kraft garlic cheese roll which hasn't been available for a long time. I found it in another brand for a while, but nowadays I use my mom's substitute of Colby cheese, jalapeno Tabasco, and a couple of other things.

Green salad from garden
The lettuce patch is usually in full production around Christmas, and no family gathering is complete without a huge bowl of leaf lettuce and a half-dozen homemade dressings. We have at least 40 satsuma trees around the farm, but the salad always gets mandarin oranges from a can--I've never understood that one, but I don't make the rules. Anyway, the salad gets those plus some toasted almonds, hand-crumbled bacon, and bleu cheese.

Homemade mac & cheese
The neighbor to our farm would have a "cattle working" day once a year and bring us all in for lunch afterwards. Her homemade macaroni and cheese was a highlight of that meal, and my mom finally pried its recipe from the lady before her death. My mom swears the old lady intentionally omitted something from the recipe, so my book has the lady's handwritten list with my mom's snarky comments in the margins. Again, it's not anything worthy of a Michelin star, but it's a solid contender for a deep South staple dish. The Baptists at my wife's church say it's good when I make it, so that's a pretty good recommendation on its own.

Shrimp dip
This one helped me nab my wife in the first place, so it always has a spot on our holiday table. Nothing fancy--shrimp boiled in a little crab boil, eggs, mayo, and a few other things. Originally from "A Taste of Louisiana" cookbook, photocopied and given to me with my mom's handwritten notes. I had just met this pretty young thing at a school club, and I was trying to approach her. The club had a potluck lunch near semester's end, and I brought this dip as my contribution. The bowl was wiped out quickly, but she got a taste and asked me for the recipe. I brought her a full bowl a few days later and told her she didn't need the recipe--just ask me whenever she wanted more. She apparently wanted more, because we've been together a quarter century. And, she still doesn't have the recipe.

French bread
Fresh, from New Orleans. A couple of loaves just sliced and served with butter and another couple of loaves broiled with butter and garlic from a neighbor's garden.

Mississippi mud
Chopped pecans, chocolate pudding (cooked not instant), real whipped cream (not Cool Whip), and shaved chocolate topping. Simple, basic stuff that I'm mostly using just to introduce my kids to cooking. Also, they complain if it's not a dessert option.

Pecan, pumpkin, chocolate, cherry pies
Pecans from our trees, pumpkin from my kids' garden. Not sure why, but these are the chosen flavors for Christmas. I tried a few lemon pies (meringue and icebox) one year, and I was the only one who ate them--not that I'm complaining. But, again, nothing special here. Bake a crust, cook a filling, and bake the pie. Only rule is that crusts cannot be frozen--they must be made from scratch. True story: I was late teens before I even knew frozen pie crusts were a thing. I would occasionally encounter pies in the little aluminum tins and wonder how in the world the baker was able to make them so neat. My wife keeps a few frozen shells for her things, but mine have to be baked from scratch in a white Corningware dish for Christmas.

This whole list of things actually started when I brought my wife (then fiancee) and her family to their first dinner with my family. It was a Christmas Eve, freezing outside, roaring fire in the fireplace, and "a little meal" my mom put together for the occasion. Her family is mostly Yankee transplants, and they were blown away--they still talk about it 20+ years later. Since then, I've endured their family's own interpretation of gumbo, and it's pretty awful. My wife actually admitted to being apprehensive when learning my mom was making gumbo for that gathering--the stuff she had tasted to that point was a thin okra/tomato stew with a few floating shrimp. Anyway, they got to experience my mom's handiwork, and now it's an expected part of every Christmas. Over the years, the meal has transitioned from entirely my mom's to almost entirely my own.

I've heard rumors that our teenage son may be bringing his own Yankee girl to this year's meal, so hopefully we can start passing along the tradition.

We are doing Christmas next weekend. Mom sent me the below the other day. We go pretty “traditional party food” for holidays since it’s really the only time of year you get those sorts of things.

Ham
rolls
cheesy potato casserole
broccoli casserole
meatballs
spicy pretzels
almond Roca candy
peanut butter fudge
Ritz with peanut butter dipped in white chocolate
veggie tray

I’ll probably make sausage balls and one or two other things. My uncle is having some health issues and they put him on a clean eating regimen, so I’ll probably do a vegetable of some sort so he’s not stuck eating ham with no decent side options.

quote:

---

Take out Chinese food. Been doing that for about 10 years now and will never go back.

---

We throw a NYE party with about 40-50 guests, and I always cook, but we decided this year we are doing a buffet setup with catered takeout by Nine Dragon. Bought a big disposable chafing dish set and some chopsticks/Asian decor I think it will be a hit.

Rib roast. Asparagus. Some other stuff, maybe sautéed mushrooms. Homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast.