Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is my favorite day of the Christmas season. With any luck, most years I have done all of the Christmas shopping and can spend the day baking and cooking and watching the comings and goings. I make Christmas Tree Coffee cakes for Christmas morning and some for neighbors. Then I start working on dinner.

We always start with Paula Dean's Foolproof standing rib roast. You just count back 4.5 hours from when you want to serve the roast and follow her directions to have a delicious, incredibly easy Prime Rib Roast ready for you. There is a time when the oven is off for three hours and this is when we head to church.

We have a buffet when we come home from church, a last minute, everyone make something buffet. Matt makes a tray with proscuitto and sausages, Joe and Emily make a cheese and cracker tray and throw some pigs in the blanket in the oven. Tom generally makes some sauteed spicy shrimp and I make stuffed mushrooms.

This year I decided to make some Gougeres. Food & Wine had a recipe by Jacques Pepin and I substituted Manchego cheese. They were delicious. They will be making a return next Christmas.



I made some stuffed mushrooms. I stuffed the tops with sauteed mushroom stems, roasted garlic, bacon, cream cheese, s&P, and a little bread crumbs. A tasty morsel.



I decided to make Ina Garten's shrimp cocktail this year. This is one of the easiest, tastiest shrimp cocktail recipes. Roasted in the oven, they have a great flavor. The cocktail sauce is delicious. Maybe I made mine a little too spicy, everyone ate them.

We had a great evening, munching away, enjoying each others' company.