Ellen made some excellent roast chicken with apples and sweet potatoes. Good enough for us simple folk. Your festival sounds grand, though.

Salad, roasted turkey breast w/ gravy, green beans, roasted potatoes, Stove Top stuffing, and apple pie.

Traditional enough for ya?

Thanks to a screwup by the butcher, we ended a decades-long Roth family tradition of roast pork cooked over beans (which soak up the drippings yum yum) and had... prime rib. "8 bones" of beef sure is a lot bigger than 8 bones of pork. Lot more expensive too.

And goddam delicious. Especially with Yorkshire pudding and pan-roasted root vegetables.

Now what do I do with 2 lbs. of soaked lima beans that were all ready for a roast that Santa never delivered?

A sort of deconstructed shepherd's pie -- mashed potato and celery root with black lentils, and roasted root vegetables in a wine-and-mushroom sauce. And then Christmas pudding with boozy sauce for dessert.

3 - Puree them with rosemary and serve as a side with something like lamchops?

something like lamchops

This is a funny way of spelling "fried chicken".

I really disliked Replicant.

What butcher did you use, that had replicant? You hardly ever see that anymore, around here at any rate.

I have rejected "What, do you just do eyes?" in favor of "No, no, The Magnificent Butcher is Hung."

Fresh ham, mashed potatoes, sweet potato and apple souffle, brussels sprouts and peal onions roasted with bacon and lemon, stuffing that had been frozen (uncooked) for Thanksgiving. Dessert: mincemeat and pumpkon pies, gingerbread cake, carrot pudding with rum sauce. The pudding and sauce is an old family recipe that my Mormon family has been making without the alcohol; this year I restored the rum to the sauce and set the pudding aflame with even more rum: very pagan and solsticey.

Baked ham, scratch biscuits, sweet potatoes, green beans, beets, deviled eggs, then a dessert course that included very tasty homemade fruit cake and chocolate cake, all washed down with loads of sweet tea.

I made an omelette.

Had two Xmas dinners, at my wife's dad's and mom's house, respectively. Her dad has pretty much eschewed the standard dinner in favor of various salads, cheeses, and other graze-ables. Her mom served a ham for the meat-eaters, and a tofu-pasta thing for the vegetarians, along with garlic mashed potatoes, squash, and homemade real Southern biscuits. Yum.

Although her dad no longer does a big Christmas dinner, he used to, and the very first time I went to their house for the holidays, dinner was ham and lobster salad. Perfect for their daughter's Jewish boyfriend. (Fortunately, I eat both, as they are delicious.)

Ham with Jack Daniels glaze. Broccoli cheddar soup. Lots of cheese. Lots of wine. Lots of pie. Lots of pot.

4- Yeah, I had something like that in mind. I also saw a recipe for cream of dried bean soup. Now I have to figure out how many wet beans a cup of dried beans makes, since the soup recipe specifies dried.

Oh, and I forgot the delicious red velvet cake (although it was a bit too moist/gummy, disappointing its baker).

This post discriminates against Jews and other living things.

Why, Ben? Was your omelette not delicious enough?

Your Christmas dinner sounds glorious, LizardBreath.

Julbord on Christmas Eve, lutfisk and risgrynsgröt yesterday. Obviously.

Lutfisk? Really? The 'pickled in lye' stuff? Is it good?

I just looked up Julbord, sounds tasty. Is "God Jul" Swedish for "Happy Xmas"?

Oh of course -- "jul" = "yule".

A Julbord looks fantastic. I'm a big fan of cold, preserved fish.

Lobster Xmas eve, turkey last night. Snook tonight.

Cooked a couple of burgers, with onions and mushrooms. Later, I baked in my recently acquired toaster/convection oven, a small peach cobbler.

Oh, and some leftover bacon and cheddar quiche for lunch.

My gout has been flaring up a lot in recent days and weeks, and today it's up into "barely able to walk/hop/hobble" extremely painful. Woot!

Still surrounded by many feet of snow outside, anyway.

I've only been to a "Christmas dinner" once in my life, and that was when I was in England in 1996; this is the tenth anniversary!

"Lutfisk? Really? The 'pickled in lye' stuff? Is it good?"

As good as anything pickled in lye. (There used to be lots in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, and in Minneapolis, and other places in-between where Scandanavians had settled.)

I'm told it's an acquired taste. (I should talk; I do enjoy pickled herring now and again.)

Christmas Eve was a big potluck thing at my brother-in-law's place (father-in-law lives next door), but yesterday was just mellow. Opened stockings, drank coffee, read the paper, went for a run, took the kid to a movie, paddled my kayak a bit, and then hung out, ate leftover oyster sauce chicken cake noodle, read a book, and got a good night's sleep. Pretty damn idyllic after the way it's been lately, but need to do more kid stuff next weekend.

We had 3 holiday meals this weekend.

Friday night was a belated Hanukkah party: latkes (both original crispy and a low-carb zucchini version), gefilte fish, apple fritters, wine and lethally potent eggnog.

Sunday afternoon was the family Christmas, and we did brunch again this year: a massive cheese platter before the meal, followed by eggs benedict, roasted potatoes, salads (green and fruit), coffee cake and snickerdoodles.

Sunday night was a White Trash Christmas party: Kraft macaroni and cheese (both with and without bits of Oscar Meyer hot dog), tuna casserole, hamburger casserole, seven-layer dip (my contribution, proudly made with as few fresh ingredients as possible), spinach dip, dippables (carrots, celery, Ruffles, tortilla chips), Little Debbie snack cakes, Krispy Kremes and leftovers of the aforementioned snickerdoodles, all washed down with peach moonshine and PBR.

So no eating until New Year's, when Mom's roasting a turkey. We don't normally do a New Year's meal, but my mother and brother have a philosophical disgreement on turkey, and my brother usually does the meal planning and a lot of the cooking for holidays. But Mom wants turkey, so she's going to make a special meal just so she can have her turkey.

Er, the Christmas meals were on Monday. Holidays mess with my mental calendar.

Pickled herrings are for Jan. 1.

It's not just a good idea, it's the law.

You misspelled "black-eyed peas." Which I may bring to New Year's just for the looks of blank incomprehension from my very Northern family.

I've never tried lutefisk, largely because older relatives remember it with enough horror that it seems like a Bad Idea to go to the trouble of hunting some up. But pickled herring and acquavit are pretty good stuff.

Luteisk is definitely an acquired taste. I believe that it's mostly eaten for ritual reasons. In Minnesota it's only served or sold in the 2 months before Christmas. I've had it three times in my life, most recently a year ago.

The lye isn't a taste factor, though, it's just part of the reconstitution process. Lutefisk is gelatinous, which is fine with me, but it's fishy in the bad sense.

Pickled herring, though, is a treat any day of the year. Like sweet-and-sour sushi, but with bigger hunks of fish.

all washed down with peach moonshine

I would just like to salute your choice and note that in my most humble of opinions this is the only way to have moonshine. Truly, it is the gods' own delight in very tiny quantities. It also burns magnificently when splashed onto a fire.

I had four dinners (one later today). Duck in a restaurant, duck at my brother's house, dim sum in a restaurant, and later sushi. Our holiday is complicated by my niece's Dec. 23 birthday, at which sushi is traditional.

So far: prawns with lemon grass and garlic, a trifle, some cheeses, an outstanding port, some fruit, some croissants, some potted shrimps, a capon roasted in goose fat, a chestnut stuffing, some potatoes, some parsnips, some peas, a cauliflower, a cranberry sauce, a bread sauce, a dried fruit pudding, some ham, some chutney, more cheese, more port, more breakfast foods, more roasted things ...

... only cold this time, more trifle, some soup, more cheese, more port. We are burghers. Tomorrow, a sausage stew and half a cow.

As has become my custom on holidays, I committed a sin of extravagance against my wife's abstemious family: roast duck, crown roast of lamb, cherry/cranberry/port sauce, lamb and wild rice stuffing, sauteed spinach with lemon. Big hit. I felt like Babette.

If you like pickled herring, as all right-thinking people do, you'd probably also like boquerones, Spanish pickled anchovies. They're magically delicious.

Merry second day of Christmas.

a fresh ham stuffed with proscuttio

I am confused. I (almost) never cook or eat ham so this could be completely normal, but is it normal to stuff a meat with a variation on the same meat?

Perhaps it is the pork stuffed with pork that caused w-lfs-n to object.

"19: Lutfisk? Really? The 'pickled in lye' stuff? Is it good?"

I've always wondered if the course assorted midwesterners speak of with horror is really the same bland fish I eat every Christmas.

I've made some research, going so far as to calling relatives, and apparently it's not.

Swedish style lye fish (lutfisk) is made from ling, and served with lots of Béchamel sauce and allspice. The fish itself has barely any taste, and absolutely no smell. It's IMO fairly yummy as long as you have lots of sauce and spice.

Norwegian lye fish (lutefisk), which clearly is what's popular in he midwest, is made from cod, and served with o, bacon, green pea stew, potatoes, meatballs, and especially in the US something called lefse.

Lefse is a kind of potato-flour tortilla and is highly recommended.

Lutfisk / Lutefisk is more than a "tomato / tomahto" difference.

We ate some delicious adas polow: rice with chicken, raisins, dates, orange peel, uh, and a bunch of other stuff.

"Popular" is not quite the right word. "Famous" or "notorious" would be better. I've always felt that it's eaten to memorialize the hard life back in in Norway -- the Norwegian immigrants were usually quite poor. (My family is not Norwegian in background, so I wouldn't really know).

Take-out Palestinian, from Pita Inn in Skokie.

I don't know if lutefisk is exactly popular in the Midwest. (I happen to like it well enough.) But it's not the Swedish version, no. I suspect that even the sturdy Norwegian version underwent a sea-change on these shores. Carried over the cod as spokes in the wagon wheels or something.

On the other hand, lefse needs no apologies.

This thread is almost making me hungry again.

Christmas Eve we had a ham (cooked in Coke), pints of parsley sauce, and a potato gratin. Yesterday we had a goose, a turkey crown, roast potatoes, roast parsnips and carrots, buttery carrots, peas and broccoli, bread sauce, 2 kinds of gravy, and 108 cocktail sausages wrapped in bacon. A sausage plait for later, and my MIL tried to cook profiteroles, but I think she was too drunk by then, and they came out very flat and looking like teeny Yorkshire puddings.

Today I've had a goose and stuffing sandwich, another slice of sausage plait, several sausages, some crisps and lots of chocolates. C is cooking the kids bacon sandwiches now (8.20pm here). I'm going to have more leftovers later.

cooked in Coke

This seems like an evil thing to do to an innocent ham. But who knows? Perhaps the nastiness of Coke transforms through cooking into something that is tasty in combination with ham.

I have never eaten goose and feel like I am missing out.

(I'm picturing something sort of halfway between duck and turkey -- am I in the ballpark?)

No, the duck goes inside the turkey, the chicken goes inside the duck.

Pita Inn

Definitely one of the great take-out places anywhere in the country (the one in Wheeling has slightly better food nowadays).

46: Coca-cola used in this fashion is very tasty. The sugar does amazing things to the outside of a ham. It's a lot like a brown-sugar or maple glaze.

No, the duck goes inside the turkey, the chicken goes inside the duck.

Please, this is a family blog.

Turkey crowns?

It was my first time having goose - it's beefier than a duck - I was imagining something more between duck and turkey too, based on absolutely nothing. Really nice, even though I did forget to take it out of the oven and so it was a bit overcooked (which was very annoying seeing as I had written myself a plan and had followed it perfectly for everything else).

And yep, cooking it in Coke is great - I could never go back to water again now. And then my MIL put a brown sugar and mustard powder glaze on it and we finished it off in the oven.

Saw a Gooducken for sale - seemed to be a goose stuffed with turkey, duck and guinea fowl (dunno in what order) - 200 quid. Erm ... no thanks.

Oh, a turkey crown is just the breast section, none of those pesky legs. Didn't want the whole thing, what with the goose, and the remains of the ham, etc. Much quicker to cook too.

pesky legs

What!!??!1/

Seriously, the legs are great.

Beefy duck is an excellent description of goose. Nowhere near turkey. And the stuffing for the fresh ham also included ground pork with the prosciutto -- one could call it pork three ways.

Turkey legs are like the best thing about the whole entire Renaissance Faire.

14: it should be close to 3:1 cooked for lima beans, I think. Soaked will be most of that.

If it were white beans, I'd suggest making a hummous-a-like with roast garlic and good olive oil. It's amazing, but I'm not sure how it would work with lima beans.

Turkeys are new world birds, of course.

...The Renaissance Faire is a New World tradition.

A lamb shank roasted in the oven with lots of rosemary & some garlic; potatoes roasted with the lamb; a great chestnut/prune/onion thing; freshly-baked bread; cauliflower also roasted in the oven; and apple pie for dessert.

Lots of good cooks with time on their hands is a good thing.

Turkey was a traditional English holiday meal pre-1620. At my URL you will find, along with toher things, the history of the various names for the turkey bird.

I haven't even had mine yet (tonight). This thread is making me almost as hungry as the smells wafting up from the kitchen.

58 is wrong anyway: the mimes are the best thing about the Renaissance Faire.

Mmmm, mimes!

Yeah, w-lfs-n, and what about Scrooge asking the kid to get the turkey that's as big as he is?

Scrooge is post-Renaissance.

Sure, if you use your definition. I'm using Emerson's.

We had salad, garlic mashed potatoes, green beans w/pecans, beef tenderloin and warm brownies with ice cream, chocolate syrup and whipped cream. Kevin likes to cook, especially holiday meals and trying new things. I usually make dessert and maybe a side or salad, but this year I had the flu so he ended up making everything.

He was feeling uninspired wrt what to make this year; that's why he went with the Parade magazine recipe. It was very tasty, but too bad he didn't see this thread before Christmas. I think he would've taken away some great ideas.

America's Test Kitchen has a recipe for a fresh ham brined in Coca-Cola that we made for Christmas a few years ago that is un-freakin-believable. One of the alternate recipes is a Coca-Cola jalapeno ham. If you're going to make this recipe, the best thing to do is to plan way way ahead and buy Kosher Coke at Easter so you've got real sugar in it instead of corn syrup. I'd never had a fresh ham instead of a cured ham before and it was outstanding.

We had crab legs for dinner this Christmas. Yum yum yum.

And when I say we had crab legs, I mean we had crab legs. That's all we had. No sides. Just pounds and pounds of them.

Traditional Norwegian Xmas eve celebration: Cheese and non-traditional veg and crackers and julekake as pre-meal munchies, along with some cask-strength Scotch, in the Norwegian tradition of drinking. [OK, not an ethnic drink, but...] All this around the juletre, decorated in traditional white lights, tho' with an untraditional penguin in sunglasses as a topper. The Julenisse brought gifts.

Dinner: Baked ham with pineapple and spices, baked salmon in a beurre blanc sauce with garlic and herbs, potatoes, cauliflower, peas, onions in bechamel sauce, brød og smor. Wine and cider to drink.

For dessert: I'm an ecumenical baker: There was a dark chocolate cake with chocolate ganache in the shape of a dreidel, complete with a ג & ה ,ש in gold dragées, surrounded by Hanukkah gelt, and a family variation on traditional Norwegian marzipan cake [no jam, but ground hasselnøttene in the whipped cream].

No lutefisk. Lutefisk is the reason Vikings went a-viking: To find tastier food. Lots of leftovers for Christmas day [or as we like to call it "That funny thing the visitors from the south thought should replace the Jul festivities that we went along with as long as no one objected to the beer drinking and the fattigman"]. We slept in, waking occasionally to read our Solstice gifts.

God jul og godt nytt år!

We had a whole ham with a beer marinade/gravy, green beans stewed with ham fat, 2 loaves of the NYT no-knead bread, mashed potatoes, and a mixed-greens-and-pear salad with lemon honey vinaigrette. My sister made a half-dozen different chocolate treats, and I made 4 batches of cookies.

Tomorrow, for Christmas with my wife's family, we're having bacon-wrapped roasted quail in a raspberry balsamic glaze with sides TBD.

Oh crap, I meant to make some of that bread while I was down here to take advantage of the larger pots available here. Oh well.

buy Kosher Coke at Easter

That doesn't seem to be the relevant holiday.

Ben, it's really an invincible recipe. Just use some round cake pans and tent them with tinfoil.

Can't one just go into the Mexican foods aisle and get some Mexican all-sugar Coke at any time of the year?

I heard they're starting or have started to use corn syrup in the mexican cokes too. In fact the last few times I got a mexican coke at taquerias I think they were cornsyrupiferous.

The Mexican Coke distribution network is not that comprehensive, especially since it seems to be discouraged by Coca-Cola. And it's also a waste of returnable bottles!

Roast turkey, spiral-cut ham, stuffing, rolls, creamed spinach casserole, cranberry sauce, salad, stewed pears. And this was supposedly the "Christmas lunch" that was downscaled from the "Christmas dinner" of years past.

Also, the infamous "Old Quaker Lady" eggnog - 12 egg yolks, 2c sugar, 3c evaporated milk, 1 qt heavy cream, and 1qt bourbon.

Vegetarian chili, from a box.

What is spiral cut ham, do you cut it yourself? Does it open up like a meat slinky?

What is "old quaker lady" eggnog?

I spent christmas with some old quakers, and I was the only one drinking. It was a sign that they have let me into the family that this behavior was indulged.

OTOH, I found out just how far birthright quakers (those born into the religion) can stray from the central images of the religion (if not its teachings) when my wife pulled open a drawer in my father-in-law's bathroom and showed me *his gun*.

I made a super geeky Harry Potter dinner for my family on Christmas eve -- pumpkin pasties (sort of a butternut squash intensive Cornish pasty), buttered peas, mashed turnips, butterbeer (cream soda + butterscotch schnapps, courtesy of some HP fansite), and sausages. It was all surprisingly quite good.

85: s/b "recipe courtesy of"

84--
c'mon, robby--you know the old quaker saying:
if you want non-violence, prepare for popping caps.

Our Coke has sugar in it - carboanted water, sugar, caramel colour, phosphoric acid and flavourings including caffeine.

And I don't really have anything against turkey legs, but the turkey was an insurance policy against anyone not liking the goose, and I wanted to only have a reasonable amount of leftovers that would actually get eaten. (We're out for dinner for the next three days, possibly Saturday too, and then again on Sunday.) It's working so far.

The eggnog is just the ingredients I mentioned - dissolve the sugar in the booze (use mid-grade bourbon, not something high-quality and strong-tasting), mix up the egg yolks and slowly add the booze. Let sit at least 12h in the fridge. Mix in the evaporated milk; let sit another 12h in the fridge. Whip cream and fold in.

The name is a family name - commemerating the remarkable fact that my grandmother, who is generally a teetotaler, made such an intensely boozy eggnog.

Spiral-cut ham would open up like a meat Slinky if you could keep the slice in one piece; the fat bits don't hold together very well.

Goose risotto is an amazing way to deal with the leftovers.

The plan is actually cassoulet (or some vague facsimile thereof) tomorrow.

Yay cassoulet!

Nathan -- I wrote your recipe down and will make it sometime, this winter or next. Never made egg nog but this sounds very good. (Hmm, my neighbors are having a New Years party, maybe I should bring this.) Should egg yolks be microwaved prior to inclusion in the drink?

They should be microwaved in the shell, because the calcium stabilizes the albumin pH.

Stabilizes them into little pieces all over the microwave.

I've made eggnog but never heated the yolks or whites. I don't think it would be good. Anyway, look at all the booze in there. Surely it will kill the germs.

Use fresh eggs, you'll be fine.

Md 20/400 is a party pooper.

Truth.

When I was in HS, many years ago, I worked as a "cook" at a HoJo's. I had never used a microwave. Another cook convinced me that the fastest way to poach an egg was to microwave it in the shell. KaBOOOM! It was fun except for the cleaing up part.

I've been waiting for this thread to reach 100 to post this, but now I have to leave work and you guys aren't getting the job done. Therefore:

Naked Kobe!

If the unstabalized albumin pH kills someone, we will know whom to blame.

"Unstabilized".

Nathan's grandmother's Quaker egg-nog recipe is currently in progress, and will be taken across the street to our neighbor's party this evening. And: I used the whites of the eggs whose yolks went into the nog, to make meringues. I have never made them before but they came out very nicely indeed -- the first batch at any rate. Batch #2 will come out of the oven in about ten minutes. I sort of didn't realize how many cookies the whites of 12 eggs would generate; I think there are going to be 4 batches in all, of about 35-40 small cookies to a batch.

Hm -- I mean "3 batches in all". Batch #2 does measure up to the first. O happy day!