Rating: 💋 💋 💋 💋 💋
I mean, I'm not gonna give Christmas anything less than five kisses. It is Christmas, for crying out loud. How I would get through winter without the month of family, pretty lights, and sparkly bows I just do not know. The absolute best part of Christmas is unquestionably Christmas Eve.
Of course, preparation starts weeks in advance. My mom has been turning our home into a Christmas Wonderland since Black Friday, filling the house with those decorative porcelain villages and trains, decorating our tree with all of the family ornaments and shimmering lights, stringing garlands around the banisters, bedazzling (yes, bedazzling) our yard with even more sparkly lights, strategically strewing twenty-five elf dolls around the house (they're always watching...welcome to my childhood 😱), and prepping the groceries.
I raced out of work the Friday before Christmas, booked it to Penn Station so I could battle through the purge before getting to my parent's house, and happily settled into my vacation.
By December 23rd, I was eager to help my mom make the ragu for Christmas Eve. The sauce takes four hours to simmer so, in the interest of time, we made it a day ahead. I was put in charge of chopping the carrots and celery before adding them to the food processor, along with the parsley and garlic cloves.
What I learned through this experience: my mom always adds slightly extra of nearly all the ingredients. I saw her consider a clump of parsley, shrug, and reason, "Why not!" as she threw it into the machine. This same experience occurred with items such as the celery, parmesan, and the penne rigate itself. She says she likes to have a little extra. It is very similar to her always adding an extra spoonful when we say we have enough food on our plates at dinner. All of our Italian blood comes from our dad's side of the family, but you wouldn't know it from looking at the way our mom feeds us. It's comical.
While the food processor ripped into the vegetables, we had spicy sausage sizzling in olive oil on the stove. Once that was properly browned, we added in pork. My mom pureed whole tomatoes in the food processor and mixed tomato paste with water in a bowl, while I stirred the meat with a wooden spoon. Once the meat was properly cooked, we took it off the heat and added the vegetable mixture and tomato water to the pot. Then, the meat and tomato puree got popped back into the pot. I then took charge of stirring it occasionally over the course of four hours, while my mom picked up my older sister from the train station. When both my brother and sister arrived home for the holidays, they were greeted by the warm smell of simmering bolognese. Amongst it all, I was proud to help with the dinner and embrace my title of Official Pot-Stirrer.
And then I watched in dismay as my mom poured the ragu into a ziploc bag to store overnight.
On Christmas Eve morning, we watched our mom rescue the sauce from the ziploc, squirting it back into the pot from the plastic bag. I understand our fridge had limited space and the ragu needed to be stored in a flexible container, but still I heaved a sigh. My older sister, Shannon, laughed, saying that watching my mom scoop the ragu out of the bag looked just like when we were kids and we'd watch my dad pour the packaged marinara all over our Boboli's pizza. This anecdote just made me super nostalgic for Boboli's pizza, but I guess the holidays cannot totally escape nostalgia, now can they?
On Christmas Eve, we have to pack a million vital activities into one bloated day, so we run on a tight schedule. Every year without fail, I wake up, workout, eat breakfast, and immediately get to wrapping my gifts. That's my tradition. There have been some years when I almost had to cancel Christmas because wrapping was such an ordeal. This year fared much better, thank God. I put on my Christmas playlist - filled with classics such as 'Merry Christmas, Baby' by Bruce Springsteen, 'Santa Baby' by Madonna (which at four years old I decided was the best Christmas song EVER), and 'Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)' by U2 - and wrapped all of my gifts. Some of them might have had a bit more tape than I would've hoped for, but they all adhered to my overall gold, shiny aesthetic and looked relatively okay.
Thank God, because at precisely eleven o'clock we had to start the Christmas cookie cut-outs. I admit, I was a few minutes late because I was arranging my gifts under the tree. My brother, Conor, was not pleased about this, but I think that is because one of his favorite things to do is make fun of me. He teases me for anything and everything, but Christmas Eve runs to a pretty tight script: first I'll get flour everywhere, then I'll give my cookies a bunch of sprinkle faces that will get destroyed when baking in the oven makes them fat, and finally, post-cookies, I'll come down in my outfit for mass and Conor will have to send a picture to his friends because I look 'ridiculous'. This year, I would just like to say, I kept the flour and sprinkles contained, and I think my cookies turned out rather beautifully. Like, come on! They look so pleased to be a part of the celebration with their cute smiles!
As for my outfit, I create a Look for every year and, as much as Conor always hates it, his friends always hype me up. I collect their kind words and keep them for a boost for myself all year long. Last year, one day over winter break I wore ripped boy friend jeans over black fishnet tights (a favorite look that appalls my brother to no end), and his friends responded "Slay those rj's, sister." This year, I got "FASHUN" and "I f with that. Go off, sis." Thank you very much!
After Conor fully roasted my outfit - this year I apparently looked like a 'Palmer Girl' attending the opera - we went to church. We had to leave for the three o'clock mass at quarter to two, because that is the only way you can nab a seat.
Well, not this year! We arrived an hour early and there still was no place left at the inn.
Sorry. I couldn't resist. I'm done now, I swear.
The point is, we had to stand at the back of the church for mass, occasionally sitting on the heaters or kneeling on the floor. I fear what this will do to our mass planning for next year.
We came home and regrouped with cocktails, cheese, and crackers. My mom made me a rum and cider, because spiced rum is my favorite and that's the cocktail we've designed for it so far. Also, I think my mom likes adding the cinnamon stick because it makes it 'special'.
The big winner for the cocktail hour is the crab dip though. We do not do the Seven Fishes for Christmas Eve, because it is only six of us eating, and enough of my siblings are not crazy about seafood. There is just no reason to make people miserable with the menu on a holiday. So my mom makes a crab dip every year as an homage to our Italian heritage. In preschool, I inhaled the dish and my mom was shook that her three-year old was eating such a spicy dip. The fact of the matter is, crab dip is the best dip I have ever had. Paired best with Triscuits, I adore it and look forward to it every year. I would eat Triscuits with crab dip as a meal unto itself.
With our dinner, we drank the bottle of wine pictured below - a Ruffino. Conor brought up four bottles from the cellar and had me test all of them with the back of my hand to pick the coldest two, since I am allegedly "overly sensitive to temperature." I picked the coldest bottles, but just because they were cold does not mean they tasted good. I found the wine too heavy and full of too much sediment. In all fairness, it was a good wine, but red wine is my least favorite. I have had some I enjoyed, on the rare occasion. Nope, not this time. I struggled to get through the single glass I had with dinner.
Fortunately, we had the yummy pasta to wash out the taste.
On the bright side, dinner was delicious. We had butter lettuce with champagne vinaigrette - a crisp side dish to cut the fat - and the penne rigate with ragu bolognese. The pasta was perfectly al dente, firm and sliding off the fork, and provided a strong foundation for the heavy bolognese. Even better, the bolognese did not taste too heavy. The pasta was not wilting under the weight of the meat sauce, but working alongside it. The vegetable puree added a lot of flavor and spice to the sauce in a very discreet way, the tomato flavor was rich, and the meat was tender and fully marinated by the sauce. It was a fantastic kick off to a night full of many fun old traditions as well as new. We did the annual hunt for the pickle ornament, a German tradition, which Conor wins nearly every year. We did the sibling gift exchange before giving our gifts to our parents. All my gifts seemed to go over okay and Shannon knitted me a beautiful scarf, my younger sister gave me a lovely planner for 2020, and Conor killed it by gifting me a Fenty Beauty product - thank you all! Then we ended the night with a new activity: Cards Against Humanity. I enjoyed it, though it's a bit trickier with family. It was so fun my mom has been asking to play again ever since.
On Christmas Day, brunch is always the much-needed bridge between gifts for the kids and gifts for the parents. We cannot eat before the four of us open our stockings and gifts from "S.C," because helloooo, hunger is for the weak. Get unwrapping!
This year's brunch I had my most favorite Boston Mint Tea with honey, alongside a plate of fresh strawberries, a homemade Belgian waffle with maple syrup, and eggs scrambled with parsley and onions. My mom makes the waffles every year and I adore them. They are soft and fluffy and have all those perfect nooks and crannies to soak up lacunae of butter and syrup, making them far superior to pancakes, in my humble opinion. The eggs my dad made were a new dish, but they were a perfect opposite to the waffles - fresh, savory, and peppery.
It kept me going until I got to the Christmas party and laid eyes on the shrimp cocktail and Greek yogurt spinach dip with crudite. Then, amazingly, my appetite rediscovered itself.
For my family's big Christmas dinner at my aunt and uncle's house, there were so many delicious dishes from all over the family. I was caught up talking to my cousins, so I did not nab a picture of my plate, but I will say that people were absolutely raving about the turkey. We also had ham, sausage and meatballs, ziti, macaroni, cheddar roasted broccoli, and Caesar salad. I tried a bunch of dishes, and it was great to taste all the different flavors from the many cooks in our family. I feel very lucky to have such a big family full of people who are quick with a joke and steadfast in their support of each other. This Christmas was very special, as it was our first without our Granmom, and it really meant a lot to me to see us all there together, carrying on the traditions she started. One of my Granmom's greatest gifts was her strength, and it was so good to see how that bled into the strong bonds she created between all of us.
Here is a selection of all of the lovely desserts, with the top photographs coming from our family party and the bottom coming from my mom's kitchen.
My cousin got cookies from the bakery that did Beyonce's wedding cake. I tried one and I have to say, the wafer melted into my mouth and was perfectly bolstered by the lightest amount of vanilla cream. I respect the Carter's taste. The cannoli dip my one aunt brought was positively addictive, and the yule log my cousin's girl friend contributed was a star on the dessert table. The white cake was subtly sweet and spongy, and the chocolate frosting layers were whipped to a frothy perfection so they floated between the layers of cake. Check yes.
As for my mom's cookies, the chocolate chip are so tasty I have to make a concerted effort to NOT eat them. If they are not straight from the oven, I insist on microwaving my cookie for twenty seconds to emulate that oven-fresh gooey quality. I do not have much enthusiasm for sugar cookies because there really isn't much going on there, flavor-wise; I just love decorating them and having Conor yell at me for getting "too artistic" with my sprinkle decor. The chocolate cookies with crushed peppermint are fabulous and straight-forward with their chocomint flavor, and my younger sister swears by microwaving them and popping them on a scoop of ice cream. That is on my list of things to try in the new year. I love the peanut butter blossoms - little circles of peanut butter cookie stuffed with a Hershey kiss each. Chocolate peanut butter is the winning combination I can never resist, and having only one blossom at a time is a lot to ask. I try to be strong but ugh, they are just so cute and delicious.
So here I am, recovering from all the good food and preparing for New Year's.
I hope you all had a happy holiday, whatever and with whomever you celebrate, and I will catch you soon! As we hurtle into a new decade, I will leave you with the toast my dad gave us at Christmas Eve dinner:
"May your hearts be filled with happiness, and your souls, ambition."
XX,
MK
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