Christmas meals

What do you have on Christmas day? Are your meals tried and true favorites? Are they foods you’ve always had?

For breakfast, I’ve served Victorian Tea Pastry (called Pea Tasty by my sons when they were little) plus a fruit salad made of diced pears and apples tossed with a bit of vanilla yogurt. We'll have that this year because it's just so good. Lunch is normal, whatever we’ve been eating lately. That means it will probably be my spicy vegetable soup plus some chips.

Dinner will be different from what I usually make. I’ve made my mother’s pork recipe for years and I do love it but I’m ready to have something else. So I found a recipe for Cornish game hens in Nigella Express cookbook that sounds good and mostly hands off. The recipe calls for putting sweet potatoes right in the roasting pan with the hens. I will put in one for me and a couple of small red potatoes for Kent since he despises sweet potatoes. I’m also making an autumn salad (romaine, diced pears, toasted pecans, feta cheese, dried cranberries plus balsamic vinaigrette), and creamed onions. I already made a pumpkin pie this week and if it’s still around, we’ll have some of that. If not, we’ll have peppermint ice cream.

New traditions

I've loved seeing what my sons want to continue for their holiday traditions--for the most part, they've taken everything I did and incorporated them into their own family celebrations. That makes me feel really good.

This is our fifth Thanksgiving with Ben and Jen and the second year Jordan and Sophie have been able to join us. So we have a couple of new traditions:

• Our Great Pizza Cook-off. This started as a competition between Kent and Ben and now we've decided it's really just a way for us all to have great pizza. This will be our third cook-off.
• Catan Championships. Jordan, Ben and Kent played last year and are playing again this year. I think this will be a new tradition for them.
• Faux Christmas. Ben and Jen graciously put up their tree the Friday after Thanksgiving so we can help and then we open presents. Alison is old enough to know that this isn't the real Christmas celebration and still young enough to enjoy opening all the gifts.
• Pea Tasty. OK it's not really called that, it's called tea pastry but Ben couldn't say that when he was a little kid. We always had the pea tasty for Christmas breakfast and that's a tradition Ben has continued.
• Bake time with Alison. Last year Sophie and Alison made cookies together and this year they are going to make cup cakes. I think Sophie is a saint.

Did you know your adult children develop strong opinions of their own? And that you can really learn from them? Well they do and I most definitely have learned from both sons. This week, Ben told me I shouldn't use the tag "stupid things you're rather not know." He said it's demeaning about what I write and also slightly dismissive toward the people who read this blog. I've thought about it, and I'm going to stop using that tag. It will be hard but I'm going to give it a whirl.