Christmas is just around the corner and I’ve been so busy prepping. It is my first time (along with my sister) cooking Christmas dinner. If you know me, I enjoy cooking. I love spending time in the kitchen whether its baking cakes or cookies or making different dinners from vegan, vegetarian and now meats again (Since I am no longer a vegetarian, well I only eat white meat. I still don’t like red meat). Anyway back to my point, It’s really exciting that our mom has let us take control of the cooking this year. We wanted her to take a break since she’s always doing the work.
Since I am Hispanic, there always has to be lots of food and treats around the house. So we have had our traditional tamales and sweet breads. But since I am also Canadian-born, I like to embrace both by cooking and baking a variety of different things.
It’s been an interesting Christmas holiday. Ever since school ended for the semester, I’ve baked like crazy. Minced meat tarts, short bread cookies, sugar cookies, pound cake and so much more (my Instagram is filled with it all).
But,
Our Christmas dinner is what I’m anticipating, so here are some of the things I did that have helped me and will hopefully make our dinner a success.
1. A week before Christmas dinner have a plan– My sister and I spent a whole day figuring out what we wanted to serve and after 3 episodes of Jamie Oliver’s Christmas special on T.V, we established the basics. So we made a list of everything we needed.
I also had extra cookies around, just in case we had guests. Preparedness is key. We decided to stick to the traditional Christmas dinner and will plan to amp it up next year–that is, if we don’t fail! (Let’s hope we do this right!)
2. 3-4 days–we got our veg! We went through our list and started buying the things that we planned to cook. Not everything was bought because we wanted herbs to be fresher for the day of. A lot of shopping occurred from household decor to dinner tools. We also double checked our list to ensure we had everything.
3. 1-2 days before. We completed our shopping (although we did forget an aluminum foil pan…oops!), we started peeling potatoes and leaving them in water in the fridge. We have chopped up all the veggies that are going in with the turkey.
4. Night before: All other veggies are chopped up and in the fridge, the turkey is clean and prepped to roast. All plates and bowls are nicely stacked and washed for the food (Thanks to Rachael Ray for the tips!). All other ingredients are on the counter and we have our list ready to get checked off. Now lets hope for the best! Our recipes are pinned to the fridge, our hearts are hopeful, the alarms are set and even the cutlery has been prepared!
5. Everyone has duties for tomorrow (We have Christmas Eve dinner rather than Christmas day dinner…then we stay up and dance all night long and open our presents REALLY early). We make sure the house is clean and prepared for our lovely, delicious dinner!
I hope my little set up of how we prepared for our first Christmas dinner helps anyone who is hosting for the first time. My best advice is definitely looking at websites with recipes and advice for the holidays. It’s the one thing that I did and I feel really excited. Maybe, I’ll end up writing about how it all goes down or not.
I hope you all enjoy your holidays!!
XOXO,
Beingmaarthaa
being maarthaa 