Christmas Cooking with the Curly's

For those of you keeping track, this covers numbers 1, 2, 4 & 8 on the "I'm Back" Don't List and number 2 on the Do list.

Oh boy. Christmas dinner. I was SO excited about Christmas dinner. I was actually disappointed that we were going to have ham and mashed potatoes. It seemed so anti-climatic. We needed to do something BIG!

And then I threw a fit about having to chop up marshmallows for the Watergate salad (that I grew up eating without marshmallows and calling pistachio pudding) and suddenly ham and mashed potatoes was just fine and if you don't like it deal with it.

Ah, yes, the joy and stress of holiday cooking.

Christmas breakfast was Cinnamon Marshmallow Biscuits. Which Mr. Curly affectionately dubbed "Alien Pod Breakfast."

This was a new recipe to me and one we will definitely do again. While they look a little odd (the second batch I made for my parents was better) they are too too yummy not to have again.

Christmas dinner was ham, potato casserole, corn, steamed carrots, crescent rolls (what happened to croissants, Pillsbury?), Watergate salad, and for dessert - triple layer chocolate pie, pumpkin pie and cake. Not too shabby, especially when put out on the vintage diner dishes with Christmas-y napkins and the fancy stemware used for pepsi and mountain dew (what can I say, we're not drinkers here).

We bought a 10 lb ham. We were supposed to have 4 other adults joining us, or at least 3 others, which would mean either 1.4 lbs of ham per person (if you could Curly Girl and Boy as one adult, even though we knew they wouldn't eat ham) or 1.7 lbs of ham per person, respectively.

It was a great ham. It tasted delicious. For Christmas lunch (done so that travellers could travel during the day, and it is what I'm used to) and Christmas supper. And Sunday lunch. And Monday lunch. And Wednesday lunch and Thursday lunch and Friday lunch. And then we put the leftovers in the freezer because we just couldn't stand it anymore.

We made a mashed potato/twice baked potato casserole thing. I say we, actually, Mr. Curly made it. I usually only have this at Thanksgiving with Mr. Curly's family. It feeds 30 plus people. We put some in the freezer right away. We cooked a 9x13 dish of potatoes that bubbled over the top. It was marvelous (though we learned the difference between onion powder and onion salt and had no paprika to make it pretty).

And it was pretty good for Christmas supper, and Sunday lunch. And Tuesday night with our pork roast (yes, more pig, sorry to all my kosher friends). And then we heated up the leftovers (AGAIN) to put chicken and noodle soup on top of it Wednesday night. It was really good and really gone then. Finally.

Curly Girl and I made "Happy Birthday Jesus" cake. $1.50 for a Christmas tree pan, $0.57 for a jiffy cake mix, and powder sugar icing (all things on hand). We learned that powder sugar snow melts into powder sugar icing, leaving your tree bare. Only the kids ate this, and only for breakfast, so I honestly can't tell you if it was good or not. But Curly Girl loved it and wanted to keep decorating and decorating and decorating... she has an artist's heart.

The pie was marvelous, I've never had a crust turn out so beautifully! Thank you Marie Calendar and aluminum foil!

As for the pizza thing... well, I turned one side of a square pizza char-black and filled the house with smoke. We thought it was spilled food inside the oven, no it was the pizza crust hanging off the baking sheet and touching the side of the oven. So much for cooking two pizzas at once....
But the rest of it was good.

And really the best part - my new gas oven is fantastic. And we didn't use a microwave once.