This year Christmas was scheduled a little bit differently for my family. My youngest sister had her first child in early December, and since she and her husband live in Texas, my doting mother spent most of the month down there and my father joined them for Christmas. You must understand that Christmas is huge in my family. Not because of some crazy gift exchange or tree-trimming extravaganza, but because of the meal. The Christmas Day meal that has been different every year of my life – purposefully chosen and planned, mostly by my mother and me, but with requests submitted by my four siblings and now their offspring too. Each year the meal would represent a different cuisine from around the world or from a different region of this country. It was always an adventure.
Christmas Eve was always pretty dialed in, as my mother made and still makes certain appetizers that each one of us loves and simply cannot live without each year. This makes for a decadent hodge-podge of snacks ranging from cheese balls to ham salad to chocolate covered peanut clusters to cherry-chocolate-nut bread, just to name a few. These treats comprise the dinner meal that is usually enjoyed over a several-hour period as people get out of their respective church services. We use Christmas Eve day as a prep session for Christmas dinner, which usually takes place in the mid to late afternoon on Christmas Day. Like I said, this is how it has ALWAYS been. UNTIL THIS YEAR. At first I was a bit taken aback that my sister would plan a long-distance birth at such an inopportune time, and my suspicion is that this was her crafty way of getting my parents to visit her for the holidays. Oh well, I can understand.
So here was the solution to our Christmas quandary: my Mother has been collecting little Asian dishes for years – bowls, cups, spoons, tea pots – the whole nine yards – in hopes of one day having an Asian feast with appropriate dishes on which to enjoy it. Since my whole family couldn’t all get together until January, we felt that we were already into the New Year’s mode of eating and didn’t want to have another fancy, heavy meal. The fact that Chinese New Year was in January sparked an idea, and one that made my Mother very happy. We decided on a collection of Asian foods that we could serve buffet-style and please members of all ages, since our family is now just under twenty people with most of the grandchildren under the age of ten!
We prepped the meal Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. Whoever was available helped with various projects and the work was fun – just like always with our holiday meals! The meal consisted of pork pot stickers, cashew chicken, moo shoo pork, beef and broccoli, sweet and sour chicken, rice, salad, eggrolls, and crab Rangoon (we bought the eggrolls and crab Rangoon from my sister’s favorite Chinese restaurant so that we didn’t have to be frying all afternoon!) All this on a four-burner stove. It was delightful, and I think everyone found at least one dish to call a favorite. The excitement of the kids was especially inspiring, considering that the macaroni and cheese and meatballs that were prepared “just in case they don’t like the Asian food” were hardly touched! My only regret is that we did not artfully display all this deliciousness on platters to really enjoy its beauty, but we were hungry and we wanted to eat while it was hot!
