This past Thanksgiving saw a change for us. Instead of doing the massive overindulgence of a Thanksgiving dinner, we opted instead for a simple snack tray.
Of course, the kids didn’t starve to death, oh no. Son&Heir went to his mother’s family (guest count: “over 20 FFS!”) and Daughter went to her newly-acquired in-laws (guest count: “about 10 or so”) so they arrived at our place early last Thursday evening groaning with gluttony.
So for New Wife and I to have gone Full Thanksgiving with a turkey and the whole catastrophe could have been classified as child abuse. Well okay, the “children” are all in their mid-30s so maybe not, but you get my drift.
The chances are that the kids would barely have touched our meal anyway — and with the cost of food nowadays…
Then just yesterday I saw this little snippet:
Nearly six in ten Brits would rather have a takeaway than a traditional Christmas dinner, according to a survey.
A staggering 59 per cent of the nation say they would prefer to order a takeaway than cook up a roast dinner with all the trimmings on Christmas Day.
…and I can see where they’re coming from, just based on my own experience.
Of course, I plan on doing a proper Christmas feast for our lot:
… but as usual, this will take place on Boxing Day rather than on Christmas Day proper, so the kids can do Christmas with the other family branches just as they did on Thanksgiving.
The reason I’m hosting Boxing Day dinner at all is partly tradition — we’ve always celebrated Christmas that way — and partly because I can eat roast beef leftovers for days afterwards. (I can’t do that with Thanksgiving turkey because it can cause a gout flare-up. Beef, however, is a safe bet.)
The only slight bummer is that I’ll be on my own over Christmas, as New Wife is off to Seffrica for most of December and early January to bless the New Grandson — cost thereof will be most generously met by her #2 Son — so I’ll be doing the dinner myself. (No big deal: I’m debating whether to do roast beef or leg of lamb — the kids are agnostic on the subject, they love both.)
Hell, I might just get the butcher to slice the raw beef/lamb really thinly (a.k.a. “shabu shabu”), and do a “table roast” on a hot steel plate, Mediterranean style, with Greek salad, hot pita bread and hummus, and dessert of baklava or cheesecake. They love that idea as well.
Tradition? I don’ need no steenkin’ tradition. But I draw the line at takeout, tempted as I am by the thought of a no-hassle huge dish of fish ‘n chips supplied by the tavern across the road.
I need to get something to eat, now. Excuse me.
Something my brother & his wife do is that they spend Christmas one year with her parents and New Year with his, then reverse the next year. It’s worked very well.
As for the meal itself, we have our feast on Christmas Eve so we can spend Christmas Day recovering. And like you, turkey is absolutely banned. Roast beef and roast saddle of lamb were my mother’s go-tos. Me? I’m best kept out of the kitchen.
Turkey and gout? I had no idea. Apparently my long-ago gout is in remission, since I had a Very Turkey Holiday. The wife and I have a frugal shopping game we play each year to kick off the holidays: here in South Texas, HEB runs an annual special for a combination of a smoked ham and a turkey. Buy a ham, and get a frozen sub-12-pound turkey free. So of course we buy the smallest of hams and the largest of free turkeys. Three times. Each of the turkeys gets smoked in the backyard smoker, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, and Labor Day. On each occasion, there’s plenty of hot-off-the-smoker turkey with nice leftovers and turkey stock (love ya, crock pot) to last for a month or so.
Not to knock beef, no siree. The city of San Antonio recent committed an expensive bit of ineffectual virtue signaling with a Voluntary Weapons Exchange (gun buyback for you euphemistically challenged). Having the resources and a desire to “see the elephant,” I participated by trading in my late grandmother’s pot-metal .22 Saturday Night Special revolver for $200 in HEB gift cards (that gun was so sketchy, I was afraid to fire it). One of said cards will be spent on a very large prime rib roast, destined for the aforementioned smoker on Christmas Day (which falls on a Monday, our regularly scheduled weekly Beef Meets Fire Day). So delicious prime rib for Christmas dinner AND Boxing Day.
Absolutely agree. Depending on the year and schedule, some Christmas meals are just all day buffet style snacks. Tamales, chips and dip, queso, cookies, sliced ham and cheese, crackers, dried sausage, something smoked and sliced real thin, cake, pie, sausage balls, etc. Lots of small paper plates so you can graze, toss plate in trash, then an hour later go graze again. Outside of a crock pot to keep the queso melted, everything else is room temp. You can nuke the tamales if you want them hot.
Thinking about a smoked brisket for New Year’s.
My immediate family (including the late wife) are conservative Christian, but we picked up a Christmas tradition from East Coast US Jews: Christmas Chinese. Before my wife got sick and The Evil Virus struck, our favorite Christmas tradition was to go to the local Chinese buffet on Christmas eve for dinner (Christmas day was usually reserved for my family).
This year my daughter and son-in-law will have to leave early Christmas day to get back to his job. We fixed a decent turkey for Thanksgiving, so I’m hoping that we’ll make it back to the buffet one night in the week.
I’ve got a frozen turkey from last year that I’ll need to cook next week. Fortunately, I have learned the secrets to cooking a great turkey: bag it, rub it with salt and spices, pour salt water with spices in down its rear until it’s full, and bake it on its back (upside down) until the last 30 minutes (when you also open the bag and drain the water so it’ll dry out a little). The skin won’t brown, but the breast meat will be almost as moist as the dark meat. I cube the meat, refreeze it, and break it out with rice in the rice cooker when I need quick protein and rice.
Growing up we went to Mass on Christmas Eve then got take out Chinese for dinner on Christmas Eve. Breakfast on Christmas was left over Chinese food then a roast of some sort around midday.
Since I have been going to my inlaws for Christmas, we have a big buffet on Christmas Eve then a big meal at midday on Christmas. My brother in law makes prime rib or something or other on Christmas. He went ballistic one year when we joked around that we could still see the jockey’s whip marks on the beef.
Thanksgiving we got a fresh twenty-eight pound turkey for ten people. We have lots of leftovers including turkey broth for homemade soup during the winter.
Your lamb dish for Christmas sounds delicious. Care to share the recipe? My missus usually makes lamb with a recipe my mother got from a Greek friend of my sister’s. It’s really simple like garlic, olive oil and oregano I think.
JQ
Crikey, rib of beef. Sounds lovely. I can’t remember the last time I bought beef. Can’t afford a piece big enough to make it worthwhile – as we all know bone in is better…..
Also scaled back this year from the usual seven courses as the Outlaws are knocking on now. . Will have blinis, caviar and smoked salmon with something bubbly to stave off the hunger pangs first. Then a fish platter – some different flavour smoked salmon, large prawns shell on, tempura bits, maybe calamari and scallops in a nice sauce too. Next comes roast turkey crown with a lattice of bacon atop it, a home cooked ham slow cooked with star anise, then roasted with a grainy mustard and honey crust, apricot and sausage meat stuffing, pigs in blankets*, roasties*, yorkies*, about four different veg, gravy and Paxo*. Then Christmas pud with thick custard, then a cheese board – two soft, one hard, one blue, fancy crackers, nuts, grapes and dried fruit.
Gout? Phah. We laugh in the face of gout.
* I’m sure Kim can translate
I’m having pork – just as a litmus test for a Christian celebration.
Don’t/can’t/won’t eat it for religious reasons? Get the fuck out of here.