Menu: Christmas 2017

Welcome back to the dinner table!  I'm sure you were on pins and needles after that last post.  Will our author finalize her most festive menu of the year?  can she recover her meal-planning mojo in time to whip up a fabulous feast that won't cause a nervous breakdown at 3pm on 12/25/17?  Put your minds at ease 'cause here it is, Christmas Dinner 2017:

(For 6 adults and 1 kid)
Spiral-cut honey ham
Parsley leaf potatoes
Broccoli casserole
Buttermilk Biscuits
Orange, Pear, and Date Salad with Orange-Rosemary Vinaigrette

Desserts: pecan pie, macaroon trees, decorated sugar cookies

I realized that my menu was tending too far on the sweet spectrum with sweet potatoes AND honey ham AND those sweet desserts.  So I changed the potatoes to the Parsley Leaf Potatoes from Smitten Kitchen.  These potatoes seem easy yet fancy, as long as the leaves stay put!

My mom is bringing the broccoli casserole.  It's totally old school with frozen chopped broccoli, cream of mushroom soup, beaten eggs and lots of cheddar on top!  You gotta have at least one dish like that right???  It's like a super tacky Christmas stocking that you keep hanging up every year just because you are a sentimental fool, the kind who also cries whenever that one version of "Little Drummer Boy" comes on the radio....

Try something new for a big dinner?  Why not, I love to live dangerously.  I want something fresh and tangy for the menu. so I picked this lovely salad from an old issue of Fine Cooking that I pulled out of my desk at work!  Orange, Pear, and Date Salad with Orange-Rosemary Vinaigrette looks divine--now if Publix will just have some blood oranges so that my salad looks this pretty!  They did have the tiny mozzarella pearls so I'm good there.

The sugar cookies are my husband's grandmother's recipe.  Covered with sprinkles and colored sugar they make a fun addition to the table and a plate of them gets put on the mantle for You-Know-Who on Christmas Eve.  Sure you could look at the photo of them from last year and say my cookies are a hot mess, but whatever, this ain't no fancy food stylist's blog now is it??

Oh and the other thing that keeps me from having a breakdown at 3pm on the big day (other than keeping the meal simple) is a big pot of this stuff.  Keep the mugs of hot toddies full and no one gets hurt!

Merry Christmas, and God bless us, every one.