Every Christmas until this year, we have traveled. It has been great, and we love to visit family, but it was also nice to not worry about planes/weather/stress and just relax at home and be in our pj's all day. It was a perfectly lazy Christmas.... well, maybe not that lazy because of the cooking involved:
Christmas for me was often traveling to Mexico City with my parents to visit my grandparents/uncles and aunts/cousins. If you've ever been there for a long time, you know the food is amazing. I don't know what they do to it- but it just tastes different. My memories of Christmas and New Years included so much GOOD FOOD, I was definitely spoiled.My family knew how to cook- and food from all over the world. Yum.
Since our girls are getting older and are starting to remember traditions, we spent some time thinking about what type of traditions we want to start and keep in our family. We decided that we would cook our favorite Mexican dishes sprinkled with other things to start the memories with our kids.
So... I had to start with tamales. Making tamales is no small task, and I was extremely nervous about it. After 10 u-tube videos, and asking tons of people, I decided on a recipe, went to Chavez (local Latin American market), and started step by step :)
The smells in the kitchen from the roasted peppers were so YUMMY! Not to mention, the smell of Mexican cinnamon simmering in the holiday "ponche."
The greatest helper in her pjs!
With the tamale husks soaking up water.
We also made our gingerbread from scratch this year- gluten free. Turned out pretty well! Good thing I have a lifetime to perfect it though :)
Rolling out the gingerbread.
No time to brush our hair!
Since I'm kind of a mut of cultures, we also had a lot of french influence during the holidays. Buche de Noel's are my favorite!! We decided to make this too- which I was also super nervous about- but it was delicious! And, naturally gluten free!My favorite memory with Buche de Noel's was wishing my piece had the little baby (a little baby is hidden in the cake, and the lucky one to get the piece with the baby gets a prize)!
This year, none of us got it! It landed out of the piece when I cut it on the platter!! AH! (Cute Emilie still thought I got it since I was doing the cutting).
This is my little buche de noel.
I tried to find a different sort of salad to make- and came across this super delicious recipe with kale, mango, pumpkin seeds, and a simple olive oil/honey/lemon vinaigrette. It was surprisingly really good- I mean, I didn't think kale could be that good!
After a couple of hours of love, the tamales were done!!! AH! And, they actually were really good! Bring it on bobby flay! Let's have a tamale throw down...
Steve made posole...
For Christmas Eve dinner, we dressed up, and ate our feast and collapsed on our front chairs in front of the fire and read the Nativity story and sang Christmas songs. Maddie played Mary, Steve was Joseph, Emi was baby Jesus, and I was the Angel/Shephards/Wise Men.By this time, it was 9 and we scurried M and E to bed before Santa came!!!
Steve has great memories of waking up with blocks made by his dad and teddy bears made by his mom. So, he decided to make a teepee-- Restoration Hardware had a great Christmas cover on their baby catalog with a teepee and Christmas lights-- so we kind of copied the idea, and it was super cute! We positioned the teepee by the Christmas tree with all of the presents.
Christmas morning was a whirlwind, but there were some great moments : 1) Emilie finding her Hello Kitty in her stocking, 2) Maddie finding her snow white dress, 3) Steve opening his Wii (that really wasn't a surprise because he saw it in our Amazon account... wah wah wah.
A also made gluten free Cinnamon rolls that were delicious to me!!! (maybe not to the rest of the world... I forget how good food can be sometimes with the gluten)The rest of the day was pure laziness, an hour at church, but just lounging around and playing games for hours.
Isn't that how Christmas should be?
