Wednesday, December 25, 2013

The One Pot Christmas

So, it's Christmas Eve!  I know that a lot of people have great holiday traditions.  In my husband's house growing up, they were elaborate.  Put up the tree on the 23rd (little Christmas Eve) and decorate.  Eat Aebleskiver.  Christmas dinner was actually on the 24th and included roast pork, cooked red cabbage, two kinds of potatoes, and a lot of other delicious vegetable side dishes.  There is dancing and singing around the Christmas tree.  Rice pudding.  A marzipan pig.  Lots of fun.

In my family as years went on, our holiday tradition became just eating snacks on Christmas eve - cheese and crackers, venison bologna (as long as someone got a deer that year), veggies and dip, etc.  The big meal was Christmas day - sometimes ham, sometimes turkey.

When we moved to California and stopped traveling home, we adopted our own traditions.  For years we cooked on Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve and had our friends over.  Then we had kids and every single holiday, one of the family was traveling.  (When you are on the school schedule, that's when you travel!)  Well this year, as luck would have it, both my husband and the wife of the other family have to work.  So, we are having them and their 2 kids over tonight for dinner.

But my husband is working.  Normally, we would do some kind of roast (turkey, beef, pork, ham) and my husband's famous mashed potatoes (with butter, sour cream, and cream cheese).  That was originally the plan for today, but we didn't get the potatoes done last night (I went to bed at 8:30 and slept till 7:30.  I feel a little guilty at skipping the gym.  But I'll take the kiddos for a walk today.  That will be good enough, right?)

So I surfed the land of google and found a couple of roast recipes.  This one and this one.  Our roast beef tonight was cooked on a bed of vegetables - potatoes, onions, mushrooms, garlic, and carrots.  A simple one pot meal with crescent rolls on the side (our friend is bringing green beans).  I didn't make any dessert but I had some cookies.

The problem with this plan is that the boys wanted dessert.  The roast was probably perfect when it came out of the oven.  Then the boys left to get dessert.  I put it back in the warm and off oven...and, it overcooked.  About 75% of the time, we overcook our roasts.  Ah well, it will make decent roast beef sandwiches.  The veggies were delicious. 

I leave you with a photo of the tree...