SWMBO and ours is kind of a rolling seafood feast. While I like little about living where I do, access to good fresh seafood is a plus. This year;

Lobster bisque
Fried Smelt with some homemade tarter sauce (hint use capers instead of pickle relish).
Seared Scallops over spinach, basil and cannellini beans with some lemon.
Olive Oil roasted gulf shrimp with lemon and pepper.

A little warm focaccia bread and a nice glass (ok, several) of a Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc (high grapefuit notes)

We do this while watching White Christmas and Polar Express. It's relaxing and enjoyable after the stress of the last few months. I hope everyone has a great Christmas Eve and treasures the family and memories they have.

King Crab,champagne, fresh salad and Chocolate Eclairs here Pugs.

Have a good holiday!

Tri-Tip and loaded baked potatoes...

Fried smelt sounds interesting..

We're having chili...

Steak and a squash casserole with bacon and cheddar (idea shamelessly stolen from Mannlicher). Little bit of Jim Beam.

beans?......

No comment.

Fried Smelt is one of those things that take me back to growing up in Chicago and being in Boy Scouts. We would gill net them on Lake Michigan on the sea wall under the John Hancock tower. A fire, oil and a pan and roll them corn meal and eat them in place.

No. These are not as good. Just as deer tenderloin is best cooked en' place at deer camp, but they are good nevertheless.

http://steamykitchen.com/15666-fried-smelt.html

Home grown prime rib beef, horse radish, twice baked potatoes, brussel sprouts, pomegranate cheesecake. Prairie Fume wine.

I had KFC tonight.

As a kid, dad always used to get a cheese/sausage box from his clients - we'd eat that. Dinners, fancy ones, never were a priority in my family.

As a reminder though, Christmas is the only time of year that you can sit in front of a dead tree and eat candy out of a sock without people calling the cops.

Jesus! A cheese and sausage box? Ain't gotta be fancy, but damn!

Merry Christmas to ya!

Allen,

Thank you for not including me in for the strange food that comes out of the water. I have no idea how anyone can eat that stuff. I use it exclusively for bait, and even then some fish won't touch it. I'm in their league.

Best to you and yours for Chritmas.

Steve

It was good stuff - big box with a lot of different kinds of fancy cheeses and the like. Box probably weighed 40lbs. Mom and dad always seemed to have to work Christmas Eve - we'd gorge all day on cookies and sweets anyway. Dinner was the cheese/sausage/cracker deal until it was time to get ready for Mass.


I worked today till about 3 - still sick but craved the KFC. Sitting home, sucking on some Vicks 44 and surfin the fire.

Elk lasagne..

Send me the leftovers.

We have had grilled steak on Christmas eve since my wife and I started dating. It's more than a few years.

Sounds lovely, Pugs, we're having messkin' tacos. Years ago, the kids decided that's what they wanted, so we have that every year since. Now my folks down in Miami on the other hand, are having the traditional roast pork with all the trimmings on Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas to you all! j

Tacos, our traditional family meal since I was a kid. I ask my daughter what she wants for dinner every time. She says 'Uhhh, Tacos!', like I lost my mind.

Kent

How the Hell can you live on the Chesapeake and not eat seafood? Oysters, clams, crabs, rockfish, eel, mussels, redfish, bluefish, speckled trout, flounder...the list could go on and on.

I live on the Great Lakes, spend a ton of time fishing. Used to live on Monterey Bay too - I can't even tell you how to fillet a fish.

I can do shrimp, perch, walleye and pike but outside of that - I don't dig seafood either.

Somethin' ain't right with you.

Tacos.. My wife's favorite..

Teriyaki burgers and tater tots here. The "serious" meal is lunch tomorrow.

This year it was venison fajitas for us.

Tomorrow we will have our traditional ham and side dishes.

Shrimp cocktail appetizer, ham, mashed potatoes, greenbeans, dinner rolls and gravy

Tomorrow it's deep fried turkey, pork and beef roasts with rice and gravy, rice dressing, and several other sides.

ham, mashed potatoes and gravy....lefse

Actually, thats exactly what I'm eating now....Just me and the wife here, don't feel like cooking today anyway. Tomorrow we'll have a ham.

We've never done the fancy meals at deer camp either.

If you can't live on a box of pop-tarts and a pack of brats - you're gonna starve in our place. Dawn/dusk hunting - at night you MIGHT order a pizza from the bar a town over or do burgers. No fancy stuff, just cribbage and good booze.

Tomorrow is Coffee and Mimosas and waffles and bacon for breakfast and then Duck Ala Orange, Oyster cornbread stuffing and braised brussel sprouts for dinner.

But that's a separate thread.

Italian tradition Christmas Eve dinner here....
Olio aglio con alici....garlic and anchovies saut�ed in olive oil and served over angel hair.
Baccala salad....dried, salted codfish, reconstituted and prepared in a cold 'salad' with olive oil, garlic, red pepper seeds and other spices.
Calamari in a red sauce.
Fried smelts.
Cold shrimp.
Hot pepper salad....sliced cherry peppers, anchovies, black olives, and mozzarella cheese.
Figs, anise, pepper cookies, Italian wedding and butterball cookies, pizzelle, biscotti and other treats.

Might be some..

Apple and oak wood fire going now, first shrimp, then tenderloins. Twice baked spuds and green beans.
Had creamed herring cutlets and crackers with Nitro Milk Stout appetizers.
Will have a Merlot

with supper then back to the stout

Tonight is finger foods and present opening. The big dinner is tomorrow so I'll save those details for "the other thread"!
Merry Christmas!

Very early evening Christmas Eve service and then home to enjoy roast wild turkey breast and its gravy, fresh green peas, mashed spuds with a hint of garlic, good bread stuffing and some sparkling beverage. It has been delicious.

Now, a family game and then the little ones off to bed, with big dreams in their heads tonight.

We are blessed - hope you are as well.

I bet that don't suck, RL.

Three servings down the hatch. As good as it looks...

Gonna drink some more Celebration Ales, wrap some presents, then do a hot tub.

No hot tub here.

Be cooler (or hotter) if we did.

Tonight was steamed vegetables. I know, I'm a wild man...

Tomorrow is a 4-bone prime rib roast, Yukon Gold mashed potatoes with roasted garlic, homemade gravy, horseradish sauce, dinner rolls, and grilled asparagus with carmelized shallots. Afterward, we'll have a walk (or at least a waddle) through the neighborhood to digest while looking at Christmas lights, then return for Bananas Foster.

I like tomorrow's menu a little better than tonight's.

FC

Honey roasted ham from a home grown hog. Green been casserole, sweet potato pie, homemade rolls with butter and honey.

Wife's family over tonight. Clam and potato chowder, beef and barley soup, cheese bread(2 kinds), green salad and pies. Breakfast will be sourdough waffles and then off to the inlaws house for ham and tamales.

Merry Christmas to all.

Traditional here. I'm so full of Turkey, dressing, and giblet gravy I could EXPLODE

Original or extra crispy?

Chicken pie, creamed potatoes, green beans, silver queen corn, macaroni and cheese, and candy bar pie. I am heading to the stair master to work some of it off. I had three heaping plates!

Very simple here. Had three of the five grandkiddos over and just had elk salami, homemade cheese ball, crackers, veggies/dip.

Ciopinno and gin here..

Original with biscuit, potatoes and gravy. Side of slaw.

Swedish meatballs, lutefisk, mashed potatoes, lefse and rice pudding for desert.

oysters on the half shell, shrimp cocktail, spiral cut ham,corn casserole,7 layer salad and rolls

Many of my kinfolk will meet somewhere in Southwestern Minn--either Canby or Hanley Falls--maybe Mountevideo. They will eat the exact same meal that Sam Olsen describes. Some of them are even named Olsen. THen they will sit around and see how high they can count in Norwegian.

I will miss the lefsa and absolutely nothing else

[/quote]


It was good stuff - big box with a lot of different kinds of fancy cheeses and the like. Box probably weighed 40lbs. Mom and dad always seemed to have to work Christmas Eve - we'd gorge all day on cookies and sweets anyway. Dinner was the

cheese/sausage/cracker deal until it was time to get ready for Mass.


I worked today till about 3 - still sick but craved the KFC. Sitting home, sucking on some Vicks 44 and surfin the fire. [/quote].

That box must have come from the Hillshire Farms store in Martin Square Mall.

Finger food: salami, cheese and crackers, little meatballs, little individual bite quiche and a cheese dip.

Didn't have much of that, but did my part of killing 2 bottles of Malbec from Mendoza, Argentina. That was really good.

Oyster stew. My family has eaten oyster stew on Christmas Eve for as long as I can remember.

Airport Kiosk says it all

simple venison cheeseburgers

I had some frog legs at the alligator place we visited in Florida.

...or the mental health crisis team.

I'd darn near kill for some GOOD lutefisk! That was our tradition before. ChristmasDay it was pretty much all over said and done with.

This year though it was Thai food X-mas Eve - out with my teenage daughter - no complaints.

Had a nacho today before heading to work the salt mine. Lots of room for improvement!

Shredded chicken and Monterey Jack chimichangas, with freshly grated cheese, sour cream, and hot Rotel. And some ice cold Mike's LITE Hard black cherry lemonade.

Muley shoulder roast, portabellos, onions, celery, Redskins.

Ribeye seared medium rare with A1 Spicy. Mimosa for after dinner drink. I'm a fan of doing seafood for Christmas, didn't work out this Christmas.

Shrimp, & King Crab

Crab, shrimp, redfish (wife and son's catch) and jalapeno sausage (son's 2014 arrow'd whitetail) gumbo. It was killer.

Spiral sliced honey glazed ham, Homegrown creamed sweet corn and green beans, Homemade buttermilk biscuits with homemade blackberry preserves..Apple pie for desert and shrimp cocktail for the appetizer !

Didja get pictures?

Okra, file, tomato?

Looking over this thread, I saw Sam mention lutefisk, and lefse.. My wife isn't sure what this is, I have no clue.. What are these foods??

No.

Yes, yes and yes.

Cool Thread, Pugs...

20 some years back, my wife, kids and I were calling around trying to find an open restaurant on Christmas Eve. Small town here, and the only place open was a family owned Chinese (Cantonese) place.
Even though it is a small town, the Chinese place is widely recognized as a world class establishment.

My wife made the comment, all those years ago, that we should make a tradition of eating at Fung Ming on Christmas Eve.
We have done so, and have enjoyed inviting a number of friends and extended family often through the years.

Christmas day is the big day for our family, but everyone who makes our Christmas eve dinner there goes away having had fun and enjoying a tremendous meal.

A couple of other families in the community have picked up on the tradition. One family in particular we see there every year, now.

If you go, order some soup, some egg rolls, and some crab rangoon. For your main course, I recommend the House Special Cantonese Style Chow Mein.

MMM mmmm...

Antipasti
White anchovies, shrimp cocktail, octopus salad
Primmo Piato
Clam and mussel sauce over Bocatini pasta
Secondo
Fried Bacalla, crab stuffed lobster

Finished off with good Lavazza espresso and Lemoncello and the cookies of course.

Buon Natale

my wife's father married a chinese woman later in life and with the split family we always spent Xmas eve with them so his wife and daughters would make a huge chinese dinner for us.

he passed but we've kept the tradition. Got $90 worth of takeout Xmas eve at the local place and had a fine meal at home.

French dip samiches made with venison.

I had to work over Christmas, but we did go to TX the week prior. Got to eat some vanillekiplerl that my folks whipped up. They are a Christmas tradition in our family. I have loved those cookies as long as I can remember.

chips and dip. Nothing fancy ever. They had Taco soup but someone mentioned it was a bit hot this year so I just stuck with a few chips and some dip and was just fine.

Have to eat the standard turkey/dressing crap the next day at our cousins. Wish for ham or pork butt roast or such every now and then but it is what it is.