This apparently was the off year of the every-other-one-is-a-great-Christmas rotation.
It started out strange being in the middle of the week and most everyone working the days before and after. We celebrated with the kids on the Saturday before, and the Hubs lost his pop, and we were just getting through the best we could. Add to that the cold/flu season and we had a day quite different than usual.
It's always great to spend time with family and of course the cornerstone of holidays around here is food. After a year of experimentation with canning and developing other recipes, I was excited to baste the last of the brandied fig sauce from our yard on the fresh spiral ham.
The dinner menu was: zucchini bake, scalloped potatoes, a fresh loaf of artisan bread, steamed green beans, ham, and homemade chocolates for dessert. The ham came out last, heated and glazed and -- does it look kinda weird to you? We all gathered around and peered down at it. The edges crumbled away in our hands and as we opened the slices, the inside was slimy and had green spots. Oh lord. The only place this ham can go is in the trash.
It's 5pm and the sides are cooling on the counter as my sis-in and I frantically scrounge through the freezer and fridge trying to come up with a main course. Raviolis? Perfect! We cooked them up, tossed them with a pesto cheese and butter sauce ~ and had an all carb Christmas dinner with chocolates and wine. And after dinner, everyone kept nodding off, even without the tryptophan.
On the 26th we enjoyed a redeemingly nice breakfast, except for the dogs who got into our nephew's backpack upstairs and chewed up a plastic pill box containing one Zoloft pill. Not poisonous to dogs, thankfully, but Lily did spend the rest of the day drugged out and sprawled across the sofa with her head hanging off the edge, looking around absent-mindedly.
I am looking forward with glee to the on-year Christmas of 2014, sans ham and *always* with a main dish back up.
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