I’m reading this and making notes. I will host a small Christmas Day at my house and the 26th I will host another small gathering. It will be my first time having any of my siblings at my house for Christmas. For many years we went to my Mom, after she passed away we went to one sibling and several other siblings joined us there. This year one sibling and his wife will come to my house. My other brother and his wife and kids will come up on the 26th. I think I might have 1 of my kids. My other local kid and his fiancé are hosting her family. I hope we can all get together at some point if only for a walk.
H and I are Jewish so we won’t have a tree. I need to figure out what to feed everyone. I might go with the tamale route for one of the meals.
Re: Costco and the meat quality and quantities. We sometimes buy the large 4 pack of rib eyes. They are all thick and very good. H and I split one as they are large (he eats more of it than me and sometimes there is even some left of that ) . The other three we freeze carefully and they freeze very well and taste the same as the first one. We thaw out one at a time over the course of a couple of months .
Christmas Eve is whatever people feel like after some discussion. Soups are popular. Sometimes pasta. We have vegetarians, so it’s not meat-heavy. Christmas morning is brunch and coffee cake and croissants and bacon and fresh OJ and champagne and so on. Christmas afternoon is a movie and Chinese food (at a Chinese restaurant).
This year we’ll be at a seafood banquet in Chinatown in San Francisco. Latkes the next day.
For dessert at Thanksgiving this year, my mom got a pumpkin pie ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. It was a smash. It would work great for Christmas, too.
2 years ago my H and I were visiting our D in San Francisco. We had spent a wonderful day exploring Point Reyes and figured we would stop at the Safeway near her apartment to pick something up or order Chinese for dinner. Every restaurant we called was no longer taking any more to go orders. We tried a few to see if we could get a table and could not find anywhere that wanted to seat anymore tables. One place told us that the patrons already seated were having to wait over an hour to even get their food. We decided to get in the car and head towards Fishermen Wharf thinking in the tourist area we would find open restaurants. After finding most places closed or with hours wait we ended up in a Dennys. We sat and the people behind us told us they had received drinks an hour ago and no food yet. We walked out and ended up picking up a frozen pizza at Walgreens. We were at least better off than the tourist who had no kitchen to cook in. We ended up eating frozen pizza and the leftovers from the Chanukah meal I had brought up from home that we had eaten the night before.
Morale of story if you’re in San Francisco on Christmas Day make sure you have a dinner reservation.
I forgot to mention that traditionally I make sausage gravy and biscuits for breakfast on Christmas Day. An annual indulgence.
Christmas Eve:
• Baccala (salted cod), soaked 24+ hours in fridge to remove salt, changing out the water a few times. Then simmered 10-15 minutes until tender, drained, then into food processor to shred, then add EVOO, lots of fresh garlic and heavy cream until very fluffy and spreadable. Fresh crusty Italian bread to go with it. This is very decadent.
• Scallops wrapped in bacon. I got these from BJ’s.
• Cold calamari pasta salad (with garlic, EVOO, celery, black olives, water chestnuts.)
I expect I will also make black rice using the ink sacs from the squid, and adding shredded Parmigiano Reggiano and Pecorino Romano cheeses.
Christmas day:
Honey Baked Ham
Roasted brussels sprouts and little potatoes, or roasted mini peppers and onions; I have not decided yet. Whichever is not made for Christmas will be made a day or two earlier, or later.
Desserts and snacks:
Fiocchi --deep fried bow ties, sprinkled with sugar. I make these with my pasta machine. The dough contains eggs, butter and sugar. Some people know these by other names.
Panettone-- I make this in my bread machine.
We usually also still have leftover birthday cake from a few days earlier.
The basement freezer is already stocked with tubs of holiday flavors of ice cream made in a local shop: eggnog, gingerbread and peppermint stick.
Ever since my D was young we served sparkling apple juice, and she still likes it, so we have continued this tradition.
Oooh yummy, I love bacalao. I have a friend who used to combine it with mashed potatoes into a brandade. Yum! He hasn’t made it in a while; thanks for reminding me of it!
Adding potatoes sound good too. I think that would dilute the intensity of the flavor, but some might prefer it less intense.
My mother and grandmother used a handheld electric beater, not a food processor. But I think they still shredded it pretty thoroughly. The wisps of fish float in the oil and cream… an emulsion… We refrigerate it, but take it out of the fridge a little while before serving so that the the olive oil warms up and the mixture softens and is more spreadable.
Christmas Eve is our formal, big dinner. French onion soup, prime rib, twice baked potatoes, veggies and chocolate mousse. Christmas day is appetizers and I even just buy the chocolate peppermint cake from Williams Sonoma. We do cheese fondue, potstickers, buffalo chicken dip, crab dip.
D’s boyfriend’s mom graciously reached out and suggested that she do Christmas Eve and we do Christmas Day. So I’m going with my traditional prime rib, twice stuffed potatoes, shrimp cocktail, Yorkshire pudding, green beans with almonds dinner. But I want to touch base with mom, who loves to cook, to see if she wants to bring anything that says Christmas to her. D said that Thanksgiving was Turkey and Prime Rib and pierogies.
Dessert is going to be profiteroles and maybe a trifle. I thought BF’s mom might want to do a dessert or a salad or a side, so I’ll wait to find out. I hope that we turn an awkward, hardly know you situation into something fun.
My mother always made baccala on Christmas Eve. She soaked it for 2 days and changed the water frequently. She also added potato (diced). I’ve made it a few times, but my family wasn’t crazy about it.
I also make Fritule at Christmas time–it’s a Croatian donut-like sweet. My mom didn’t bake at all, but made Fritule at Christmas. They were a real treat for us. This recipe is similar to hers. She used slivovitz (it’s a plum brandy).
http://www.jamieoliver.com/news-and-features/features/croatian-fritule
Sausage biscuits and gravy, you almost make me cry. Because, @Consolation, yours is probably divine.
Tradition here, for Christmas day, is brunch, including biscuits with Smithfield ham. (MIL was from VA.) I’ve also got Scrapple (I’m from Phila.) And I think we’ll do the gravy. I hope the weather’s good because we’ll need a long walk after (and maybe, before.)
Consolation, can you point me to a good ham Madeira recipe?
For many years we had ham, Gouda scalloped potatoes, deviled eggs and tortellini pesto salad for Christmas Eve. Now D2 and I don’t eat ham and it was too crazy trying to get the dinner ready after early church service so we switched to having a family appetizer competition. It is fun and we love being in the kitchen together. We even have a gaudy trophy that gets the winner’ s name put on it and bragging rights for that year.
On Christmas Day we have always had a repeat Thanksgiving turkey dinner. Last year some said they were tired of the turkey so I made regular manicotti, homemade meatballs, seafood lasagna, salad and homemade bread. It was a hit so we are repeating this year.
Will be on the slopes. Taking DH out to a nice local farm to table venue there for his birthday
I love the idea of an appetizer competition.
Love the appetizer competition!!
@lookingforward , I always use the recipe for ham braised in Madeira in Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume 1. I use duxelles, not truffles, although I’m sure truffles would be wonderful, if insanely expensive. (The Madeira is bad enough!) Note that this is a variation on the recipe for ham with Cream and Mushroom sauce, and does not contain cream.
I can’t seem to find the actual recipe online at the moment. The eatyourbooks site is having some kind of problem.
I really, really love brandade. There are those of us who love it, and those who do not, as Julia said. 
(Like mince pie, Christmas pudding, and fruitcake.)
@Bromfield2 , those sound fabulous. I am tempted to make them using dried tart cherries instead of raisins…
I always want to like mince pie and figgy pudding and fruitcake, but I just don’t. For some reason though I love Stollen and panettone which really aren’t that different from fruitcake.
The competition has really been fun. Every family member has to find a recipe, shop for ingredients and make it. Pinterest is a very popular source for recipes.The young kids or non cooks can bring cheese and crackers but we tease them that they won’t win! We are a tough crowd! 
We have found that you really need to know your audience to win this! I love to cook but some of my earlier more elaborate appetizers weren’t winners. The first year I made a roast beef crostini with homemade caper and horseradish sauce and while it was gobbled down it didn’t get the votes from the younger crowd. Shhh…my secret recipe this year is Mac 'n Cheese cups made in a muffin tin with bacon wrapped around it. Seems like everyone really likes bacon in their recipes. Wish me luck!