Naptime Blog

My husband and I are cooking Christmas dinner this year.  We are hosting 15 or more family members.  Both my family and my in-laws are of Italian descent, and both families have kept the holiday traditions alive through the years with menus.  I cannot believe how much food is actually served at a holiday in our family!

First, we begin with an antipasto (appetizer) which consists of various cheeses and deli style meats.  These antipasto trays are served with bread and some salads, peppers, olives, sweet breads, stuffed mushrooms, and more.  (Hang on, I am FAR from done!)

Next is the pasta course.  Christmas is generally lasagna, with mini meatballs inside.  We cannot forget the “gravy meat”, which is meatballs and sausage among other meats served in the lasagna sauce.

Then comes the main course, which is either one or two of the following: roast beef, fresh ham, leg of lamb or turkey.  This is accompanied by various vegetables and starches, such as stuffed artichokes, green beans, broccoli, salad, baked potatoes, yams, more bread and other fixings that go along with the meats.  (And the meal continues, thank goodness this is only one day a year!)

Fruit and nuts come next, with various winter fruits and nuts, including my favorite, chestnuts.  I guess we use the excuse that there are all these fresh fruits and veggies in the meal, therefore we are eating “healthy”! 

If anyone still has room left (which most of us FIND room for dessert!), dessert is last, served with different types of coffees and liquors.  Oops, I forgot to mention the red and white wines that are served throughout the meal.  So yes, I guess my family is stuffed and drunk by evening!  Everyone who comes to dinner has either baked cookies, pies, cheesecakes, and/or purchased a variety of these as well as pastries for dessert.  Wow, I am getting a stomach ache just thinking about all this food!  But I believe everyone should experience this kind of meal if just ONCE!  Amazing!

Our supermarket hosts a special each holiday season, just before Thanksgiving, that if you accumulate a certain number of points from shopping in the weeks before Thanksgiving, you can earn a one time use 20% off coupon on a future purchase to be redeemed the week of Thanksgiving.  So my husband and I took advantage and managed to purchase any items for Christmas dinner that we could in advance with the discount coupon. 

Now just imagine how much money it costs to purchase all of these things?  The dry sausage and cheeses alone are a small fortune!  We decided to save wherever we could and buy generic.  Many of the food items above do not come in generic, however, I am proud to say that I saved a fortune on other items needed to prepare dinner!  For instance, instead of buying ‘Reynold’s Wrap’ at $6.99 a roll, I bought the store brand at $3.99!  I bought store brand baggies to wrap up the cheeses in and saved another small fortune!  And because I want to be able to toss after dessert and get some much needed rest, we got the store brand coffee cups and dessert plates as well! 

We will need to spend an afternoon the week of Christmas shopping for more groceries for Christmas dinner.  So while many people shop for gifts, this year I will be adding “groceries” to my Christmas shopping list!

Jennifer
Wife to Paul, Mom to Juliana (7), Anthony and Louis (1) and Joseph (2 months)
www.nevaland.com

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 5:56 am and is filed under Cooking, Entertainment, Holidays, Jennifer, Store Brand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.