Whats on Your Table for X-MAS..?

[Thin Blue Line]

Monday morning early Ill head down to Mass., just north of Boston to my parents home. In my Italian family we celebrate and get together on Christmas Eve. When I was in my early twenties I realized that all these recipes my mother makes for x-mas eve were in her head. Most of these came from my fathers mother who has been gone for almost forty years. If something happened to her we would lose our x-mas eve. I started making x-mas eve dinner with her to help keep our family tradition alive. Ill get ther early but she'll be up around 4 or 5 am prepping things. Our menu will have Bake stuffed quahogs, bake stuffed shrimp, zappolas stuffed with anchovies, stuffed calamari in gravy ( tomato sauce ), cold calamari salad, baccala ( salt cod salad ), fried smelts, aioli over pasta ( white clam sauce ), oven fried scallops ( delicious ), stuffed vinegar peppers, plus some meat for the gravy for the non fish eaters that married into our family...lol...have a great and safe holiday...Im getting hungry as I type.

[Ace1st]

Now you guys really love seafood dont you! Sounds delicious. Merry Christmas!

[fmoore]

Not that that's a bad thing. I get paid to ski every day of Christmas Vacation (22nd-1st) if I want. Not a bad job at all. Up at 6:00, at the mountain by 7:30, on the slopes by 8:00, ski hard all day, off the hill by 4:00. Go home, eat, go to bed and do it all over again. What a life!

So back to the origional topic, the General Store makes an amazing sandwich called "The Vermonter." Smoked turkey, lettuce, peppers, onions, sprouts, homemade bread, Vermont Mustard. That's as close to a Christmas dinner as I'll get. The sandwich tastes much better than it sounds BTW

[Thin Blue Line]

The seafood on x-mas eve is common in italian households. I was just reading up on it a bit and it started because of the Roman Catholic Religion. This is a day of abstinence where you are not supposed to eat meat. Its called " La Vigilia Napoletana " if I read it correctly. Just figured Id share a little tradition with my friends on SFC...

[hubris 1]

that's a great story. i alway's loved that about christmas eve, all the food, the noise, the older family member's. it made me smile. .........and then the new in-law's, i don't eat that, what's that? i don't like seafood in red sauce.......calamari! what's that? you eat it? not me. and on and on..........and the best was when the kid's wanted all the salad dressing's they could find to pick from. it's olive oil and vinegear, not them. it can never be like when you were young.

[Thin Blue Line]

Ill tell you Hubris...it is by far my favorite day of the year...I still remember when I was real young my grandmother who was Sicilian rolling out homemade raviolis on her kitchen table on Sunday mornings....Its too bad so many people have let these sorts of things slip by the wayside..

[Honey Hole]

Blue Line - Loud and clear bud... One of the prized posessions in my kitchen is an old glass cup. It's the one my Grandmother used for YEARS to cut biscuits... and one that'll be used many more years.

My family is from VA's Eastern Shore... seafood is on our table for a different reason: Being watermen, it's probably all they could afford! We'll be roasting oysters/clams on the grill to start...and some raw ones on saltines, I'm sure. Oysters Rockafeller, Blackened Rockfish Salad, Rockfish dip, and Rockfish balls for apps. Baked Rockfish, Fried Oysters, and a ham for the main course. Plenty of baked pumpkin, boiled turnips, collards and kale, butter beans... and biscuits that (hopefully) "Mamaw" will be proud of.

[Thin Blue Line]

Honeyhole that sounds delicious...maybe you could share some of your recipes in the grilling and chilling forum...Ill do the same, best holiday wishes to you family...

[LuckyLady]

Seafood at my house

2LBS of shrimp - Scampi, grilled, fried, boiled
Lobster
Clams- Casino, fried, steamed
Scallops - Sometimes
Garlic Bread

Maybe a London Broil if we made it that far

[Thin Blue Line]

Hey Lucky Lady...sounds like a pretty good meal to me...We'll do meat but it will be sausages and meat balls...Have a nice holiday-