twelve (plus) days of traditions: let's eat!

Greetings! I'm Sarah from Sweet Pean & JoJo. It's my little corner of the internet where I post about sewing projects, crafts, recipes and fun projects I do with my kids. I've always been "crafty" but have only been blogging about it for about three months and am having a great time seeing all the awesome inspiration that is out there and making new friends! Speaking of friends, Elizabeth from here at Twelve Crafts, is married to one of my good friends from high school!  I'd love to have you over for a visit to check things out. I have some cute things planned for Christmas, starting with this cool wreath!

When Elizabeth emailed me asking if I had an idea for a post about holiday traditions, I sent her back a list of several. She emailed me back noting that every tradition I had mentioned was about food! So, let me tell you a little bit about the food traditions in my family around the holidays.

Stained Glass Window Salad

When I was little girl my mom decided that we should have our "own" Christmas dinner. You know, just the parents and the kids. Some people do this on Christmas Eve or have special time Christmas morning. We do it whenever we can get everyone in one place on the same day.  Mom also decided that since Grandma always made a ham or turkey she wanted to do something different. So, baked Orange Roughy (fish) with little cups of butter to dip it in, sour cream mashed potatoes, corn she had frozen over the summer, & stained glass jello salad it was. Thirty some years later my mom is making the same recipes. As we got older we got to help. Help stir the potatoes, make the jello, set the table. Setting the table was the best part since it was the one time we got to put EVERY SINGLE candle in the house on the table. Made for a great candle light dinner and a few disasters. I think our record was around 50 candles! We still make quite the production of setting the table but limit the number of candles. Last year it looked a little something like this.

When my husband and I married, I decided to carry on the tradition of having a special dinner with just and the kids. Our menu is seared scallops, crab cakes and molten chocolate cake. We came up with menu based on some great food we had while traveling that year. I love having our kids get dressed up & set the table. We save our family presents for this night too. It usually ends up being sometime between Christmas and New Years. I love stretching out the holidays and having special time with just my husband and our kids.

As for other food traditions:

- Christmas eve at my husband's parents includes a huge pot of chili and oyster stew. We stuff our faces and then all watch a movie together. 
- my playgroup hosts an annual cookie swap. Each mom makes three dozen cookies and we trade!
- Christmas morning at my sister in law's house is my husband's favorite tradition. Scrambled eggs with oysters! Personally I find that tradition less than appetizing! Over the years my mother in law has developed an allergy to shellfish and can't eat the oysters but still makes them every year because - it's tradition!

So, this holiday season, I encourage you to come up with your own food traditions. Maybe it will be roasting hot dogs and marshmallows in the fireplace, an old family recipe that you pull out of the archives, or something new you found on a cool blog! The process of making food as a family, the smells, the sitting down together at the table are some of my best holiday memories and I hope they will be yours as well!

I'll be sharing mom's recipes for stained glass window salad, sour cream mashed potatoes, and baked orange roughy and my own for seared scallops, crab cakes and molten chocolate cake this month. So come on over!

Happy Holidays!