Our Table

We are fortunate to have both sides of the family close to us, so we spent Christmas Eve with Aaron's family and Christmas Day with mine. We invited his family over for dinner. This was the biggest dinner I've ever put on by myself. Including Mari, there were 12 people! I was so busy in the kitchen that I didn't get to sit down until the main course was served! We had Hors d'Oeurves first: wassail, deviled eggs, stuffed mushrooms, bruschetta, and a homemade cheese ball. Then we had a spinach salad with feta, cranberries, and almond slices. The main course was shrimp angel hair pasta. For dessert, I made a buche de noel (cake roll or yule log) with ice cream in the middle. It looked like a giant ho-ho. That was by far the scariest thing I made. I had to turn the piping hot cake over on a cloth dusted with powdered sugar, roll it up, wait for it to cool, then unroll it, fill it with ice cream, and put it back in the freezer before the ice cream melted. I was a little nervous, but it turned out pretty well!