We never have a nice Christmas Eve dinner as we’re both church musicians. Enjoy!

and making people joyful

Merry Christmas!

and Christmas Eve was always busy so chili became a Christmas Eve tradition because fuss-free. No longer a musician, but:
Black and white chicken chili with all the trimmings:
chips
sour cream
cheese
avocado

Ice cream of choice for dessert

Played an organ with several keyboards, foot pedals, and carillon bells in a tower!

Our church service is at 4:30, so we eat when we come back. The pierogies are stuffed with potatoes and cheese, the borscht features beets and other vegetables preserved from the Farmers Market this fall.

For appetizers we have shrimp with a very horseradish-y cocktail sauce, crab rangoon dip, a taco dip, and deviled eggs. Dessert is flan. The boys will have sparkling cider to drink, my husband some Chardonnay from earlier this week, and I am treating myself to my annual Poinsettia: cranberry juice with a little orange liqueur, half and half with some prosecco.

Shortly we’ll be going over to my in-laws to celebrate our traditional Wigilia dinner. I made cream of mushroom soup last night to bring over. There’ll be 11 other relatives and it’s potluck. There will be pierogies (I like the sauerkraut best), fried breaded haddock, sweet and sour cabbage, cucumber salad, green beans with mushrooms, beet salad, mashed potatoes with sour cream and parsley, and stewed apricots. Desserts will be an assortment of pies, platzek (coffee cake), chrusciki (a light and airy fried dough sprinkled with powder sugar) which a niece made just hours ago. We’ve been having this same meal on Christmas Eve for over 60 years! Merry Christmas everyone. Cheers! 🥂

even though I'll be the only one at dinner with Polish heritage. We're having cream of chestnut soup, cold beet and snow pea salad, baked mushrooms in cream, braised red cabbage with apples, cheese pierogi (if they decide to cooperate), a rice dish one of the guests is bringing, baked salmon with tarragon butter (it was going to be a bearnaise sauce, but I'm getting tired of cooking) - and apple pie for dessert. I don't want to think about how much butter and cream went into the meal! And leftovers for the rest of the week

I haven't made chrusciki in decades! I wonder if I can still find my grandmother's recipe. I used to make a vegan gołąbki, with mushrooms instead of meat, for wigilia.

Good ideas there to keep me going through New Years! If I was at your house, the first dish I’d try is the mushrooms in cream.

At the Casino.