What I'm Cooking for Christmas | 111

Everyone knows the staple foods for Thanksgiving, but for Christmas there's a little more variety in what everyone choses to make. In this episode, I get into the menu for my Christmas this year and share tips for making your Christmas dinner special. 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Day. Hi everybody. I'm Kelsey Nixon and this is Kitchen Prescription,
the podcast you listen to when you don't know what
to make for dinner. Today is episode one hundred and eleven,
What I'm Cooking for Christmas. It's the final countdown. Christmas
is less than a week away, and my guess is
you are feeling it. You're probably feeling a lot of things,
but you certainly shouldn't feel alone. Of overwhelmed happens to

(00:27):
be one of those feelings. So if you're anything like me,
you're wrapping up shopping, wrapping gifts, checking things off that
holiday traditions list. I genuinely hope you can find ways
to lean into the chaos and really soak up the
best parts of the season. Or at least that is
the mini mantra I've been saying to myself every morning
this week, lean into the chaos and soak up the season.

(00:50):
So today I want to chat with you about what
I'm planning to make on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day
because food is such a big part of this holiday,
and you know, I feel like the Thanksgiving menu feel
so obvious, like we all know what we're making for
Thanksgiving but Christmas can go a lot of different ways,
So I'll tell you exactly what I'm doing and see

(01:11):
if it might be a good fit for your family.
But before we do that, let's discuss a few recipes
you can throw on your meal plan for the week,
because dinner never takes a break, and even though it
is one of the busiest weeks of the year, you
still got to make dinner. So first on my list,
we're going real simple this week. Sausage and potato skillet.

(01:31):
I make this in my big twelve inch dual handle
lodge skillet, or sometimes I'll use my brazer, But I
say that because the twelve inch part is so important,
because you really can make an entire meal for your
family in one skillet. And this one's so great because
it has protein, potatoes and peppers like Benji's all in

(01:52):
one dish. It you finish it with a little bit
of unexpected cheddar cheese and a thing of squeeze of
lemon and some fresh parsley, and it's so good and
so hearty and insanely simple. So that is if you'd
like got a meat and potato person in your family,
this is perfect. This is as easy as it gets
to satisfy your meat and potato lover. Next up loaded

(02:14):
sweet potatoes, so we love a loaded sweet potato. I
did a Mediterranean sweet potato couple. Love was it last
month that I did that? But we the way we
did these for years, and the most common way I
do them is with I saw taste some black beans.
Sometimes I'll throw a little hollowpen you in there that
goes in the roasted sweet potatoes. Then I do a

(02:35):
yogurt sauce, and I do cilantro and avocado, and we
just kind of load them up and they're good. They're
real good. So those are happening this week. And then
we're repeating a recipe we did at the beginning of
the month that was just such a hit. It's my
creamy spinach mushroom yoki. Maybe twelve minutes to make this,
like once you get all the ingredients out, maybe twelve minutes.

(02:58):
It's that fast. So obviously fast and simple is the
assignment for the week when it comes to dinner as
I prepare for these kind of more elaborate meals with
THANKSGIP or with Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. So there
are your recipes the week You can find them all
in Recipe Club individually or in our weekly meal plan
with an easy to follow shopping list's broken down by recipe.

(03:19):
You guys all know that Recipe Club is an amazing
resource specifically designed for weeknight's weeknight cooking. The real magic
is in the simple dinner system that we provide. We
send weekly meal planning emails. The site has been specifically
designed to help with dinner time decision fatigue. All of
the recipes are family tested and clearly written. It's just
an incredible resource that helpsat thousands of families get dinner

(03:41):
on the table. And if you are looking for a system,
especially as we approach a new year, now is a
great time to jump in the club commit to becoming
a better home cook this year. Or maybe you don't
even need to become a better home cook and you
just want to cook more regularly and you want to
have a very simple system to be accountable to. Recipe
Club is perfect for that. We are still running our
holiday promotion. It's fifteen percent off site wide that includes

(04:04):
regular memberships, gifted memberships, and we have a few bundles left,
which includes our premium recipe Binder with an annual membership.
Our recipe binders themselves are sold out and will be
sold out till early spring. But if you really want
a binder, you can still get one of those bundles.
All right, let's jump into the back half of the
podcast and chat about what I'm cooking for Christmas. So

(04:29):
everyone knows what the menu is supposed to be for Thanksgiving, turkey, stuffing, cranberries,
we get it. But during the month of December, it's
not as clear. A traditional Christmas dinner might include roast turkey, ham,
prime rib, roast beef. I'm even thinking of some classic
movie scenes that involve a Christmas dinner, like Christmas Vacation
where Clark w Chriswold cuts into the dry turkey. I mean,

(04:52):
how iconic is that scene? You have Aunt Bethany's jello
salad that she bring like so so funny and a
big hit. This year, my house has been how the
gre Inter Stole Christmas. My girls are obsessed. And Nora
asked me the other night if we're having roast beast
for Christmas dinner because that's what the Hooves have been Whoville.
So it's kind of fun, but growing up, we know

(05:14):
we kind of had a different tradition. We would pick
a different food theme every year for Christmas Eve dinner
and it was really fun. I mean, that was the
tradition is always mixing it up. Some years we would
have Mexican food or Italian or Chinese food, and we
would just totally mix it up, but that would be
the theme of the home meal. Some families do the
Feast of Seven Fishes and so on. There's just so
many ways you can do a Christmas dinner, but ultimately,

(05:37):
a traditional Christmas dinner really should just be a celebration
of family, food and togetherness. And when I think back
on my memories as a kid on Christmas dinner, that
really is the feeling I remember, more so than even
the specific dishes we ate. So it's creating this time
where you enjoy hearty meals, classic ristpies, and cherish traditions.

(05:58):
So if you're stuck you haven't decided what you're serving,
I thought it might be helpful for me to run
through my menu to see if that might spark any
ideas for you. So let's do that. First up, Reindeer ribs.
This is a tradition we stole up from my friend
Melissa a few years ago where we eat ribs on
Christmas Eve and we keep the bones to leave out

(06:18):
for the reindeer, just like we leave out cookies for
Santa and carrots for the reindeer. We also take those
bones and you scatter them on the front lawn. It's
so funny, Like my kids think it is the best though,
and it honestly gets to eat ribs some protein, which
is good. But it's been a really sweet tradition they
look forward to every year. So we're going to do
the reindeer ribs. They sure. We're actually getting together with

(06:41):
some friends on Christmas because we won't be with my
extended family on Christmas. And we've got a color a
couple of other families in our neighborhood that are the same.
They kind of do independent Christmas here and then go
see extended family right after Christmas, just like us. And
so we're going to get together and we are going
to read from the Bible and do the Nativity scene.

(07:01):
We're actually gonna do homemade pizzas because two of the
guys are excellent pizza makers, and we're actually gonna bump
the ribs up to a really hearty lunch for my
family because my kids don't want to give up the
reindeer ribs, but they want to celebrate with our friends
on Christmas Eve. So we're gonna do those reindeer ribs
for lunch. And I usually serve the reindeer ribs with

(07:24):
smashed potatoes, crisp but garlic beans. Sometimes I'll do this
corn casserole that is like a recipe for my husband's family.
It's like a perfectly retro nineteen sixties dump and star recipe.
It's actually delicious. We'll sometimes do my family's cranberry salad.
We almost always make our famous slush drink, and we

(07:46):
must start with my sausage stuffed mushrooms, which are so
good for dessert. This is a new tradition, you guys.
We're starting at this year. I hope it sticks because
I'm very excited about it. So we're having gingerbread cake.
And I came across this thing. Well, first, let me
give you some background. My husband grew up with a
Christmas tradition of decorating gingerbread houses every year, and that

(08:09):
morphed over time. Originally it was original gingerbread, and then
it turned into gram cracker gingerbread cookie. It like it
has gone a lot of different directions, but it would
not feel like Christmas for him if we did not
decorate gingerbread houses. At one point we were buying kids.
But I came across this company that makes a product
called the Tomta Cake TMTE and it's the cutest thing

(08:32):
you have ever seen. What it is is, it's this
It's a mold for a gingerbread house. So you actually
make a gingerbread cake in the mold and it comes
with this sweet story book in this little kind of
like metal gnome, and you drop the gnome into one
of the cakes and as what you do is you

(08:53):
decorate the cakes just like you decorate gingerbread houses, but
nothing falls over because it can't, which is the most
annoying part of gingerbread houses. And then once everybody's decorated
their cakes, then you cut into the cakes to eat them,
and whoever has the gnome whinsurprize and good luck for
the year. Isn't that so cute? I'm so excited about it.
So I'm going to bake a bunch of cakes and

(09:16):
everyone will decorate and it'll be so much fun. On
actual Christmas Day, we always do crepes for breakfast along
with something savory, which is usually my bacon cheddar scallion strata.
It's in Recipee Club and it is fantastic, delicious, my
favorite savor breakfast out there. And we'll do like usually
buy like fresh squeezed orange juice and I have some fruit,

(09:37):
and you know, we make the most of it. For
Christmas dinner, I always make a roasted porklin with cranberry
barbecue sauce, and it's today for in fact, for many years,
that's what I gave as a neighbor gift, was my
cranberry barbecue sauce, because it's so good. It's very beautiful,
it's got classic red and green colors. It's something everyone
looks forward to. I usually pair that with oven roasted

(09:58):
crispy potatoes and some salt tape Brussels sprouts with maple
and pecans. But that will definitely be our Christmas Evening dinner.
Growing up, for dessert on Christmas Evening, we would always
do these peppermint ice cream cake rolls from the local creamery.
I grew up in a pretty small town, and it
was so good. It was so good. It was called

(10:20):
far ice cream and it was like this chocolate cake
and then rolled in between the layers was their peppermint
ice cream. And I wish they still made them. They don't,
haven't made them for years, but I still have so
many memories cemented with having this own. Sometimes we do
hot fudge of the jop. I'm just remembering it was
so good, So I'll have to check when I'm back
in town see if they brought them back this year.

(10:42):
But boil boy, do I miss that. I just have
to decide if I've got enough Gusto and me to
make an ice cream cake roll, which is not the easiest.
Probably not, probably not. Probably. Maybe what we'll do instead
is I'll make a really delicious batch of brownies and
top that with peppermint ice cre so that I get
the ooh. Or maybe I'll do like a text sheet cake.

(11:03):
That's what I'll do, a Texas sheet cake and top
with peppermin ice cream so I can get those flavors together.
But I'm not gonna worry about rolling anything. All right.
Hopefully by running through my simple menu it sparked a
few ideas for you as well. We're keeping this short
and sweet stay because I know you got a lot
going on, but I want to finish how we always finish,
by running through five things that made my life easier
or more enjoyable this week. So here we go. I

(11:27):
mentioned this a couple of weeks ago on the podcast,
but it is worth mentioning again because it is so great.
It is a warming mate. So if you are hosting
or you are gifting to someone who likes to host,
it rolls up. It's like a silicone mat. It rolls
up like a what would you say, almost like a
beach tot like it rolls and it stores really compactly.

(11:49):
But then when you unroll it, you can plug it
in and it's a warm surface, so you can take
your baking dishes, put them right on top, and it
keeps the food warm. It's so cool, like so much
better than a big bulk chafing dish. And anyways, so
definitely planning to use that as we're getting together with
friends and cooking and all of that. I'm gonna even
take it to Utah when we travel home to see

(12:11):
our families. I'm facting, you know what, I should probably
just buy my mom one. That's what I'm gonna do.
There we go. So if you've got someone like my
mom who loves to host a warming matt really cool idea. Okay,
let's talk about the hardest person on my list this
year to shop for, and that is my dad. I
love my dad, I adore my dad, but the man
is literally impossible to shop for. He's not very sentimental.

(12:35):
If he wants something, he just buys it for himself,
and that's kind of it. So but I did find
and this was actually given to me by someone who
helps us with fulfillment, an employee of ours. A couple
months ago, after I had been really stressed, she gave
me a Scout massager. And it's this little handheld Scout
massager and it's got these little teeny tiny bristles and

(12:57):
as you rub them over your head, it is so
soothing and so nice. It actually can promote hair growth
as well, but it feels amazing. My dad loves like
a comfortable gift. He likes to be warm, he likes
a backscratcher, So I'm like the scalp massager. That's what
we're giving him, the scalp massage. And the more I

(13:18):
did research on this, the more I realized how popular
these things are. So if you've got someone that's hard
to shop for, maybe a scalp massager is the suggestion
you've been looking for, or maybe it just solved a
problem for me this week. Number three on my list
is our crate maker. We went through a couple of these.
We went through a crape pan, and I think we're
on our third and we finally found one that consistently

(13:41):
makes great crapes, and so I'm excited to be pulling
it out for Christmas morning. My kids gave it to
me for Christmas last year. Okay, next story, my sister,
my whole family was here for Thanksgiving, and my sister
had had some stuff sent here from Old Navy and
Gap when they were visiting. She forgot to change her address.
So the other day I had two bags of clothes

(14:05):
show up that I did not order. When I finally
figured out what it's my sister, I called her and
she's like, oh, dang it, I can't I forgot to
change the address. She's like, but you have to try
this set on. It's a set for It's like a
lounge set from Old Navy. It is a pair of
high wisted crop kick flare sweater pants that's the actual
name if you want to look it up, with a

(14:26):
matching kind of bell sleeve V neck sweater top. And
I was intrigued. So I put it on and I
was like, whoa, this is a great matching set. It's
perfect between It's just perfect for lounging. Like I'm not
gonna sleep in it, and I'm probably not going to
put it on to like go to lunch with my friends,

(14:47):
but for any time spent around the house, it's perfect.
And you know you could, you could go out in this.
It's nice. Anyways, high waisted crop kickflairs our pants and
the bellsley v nextwetter you'll see them. They're together. Amazing set, amazing,
well done old maybe, and I'm so glad my sister

(15:08):
accidentally sent it to my house. Next, finally, is this
cute book I bought a couple of years ago called
It's like a family scrap book with some guided questions
and you fill out out every year and you kind
of write down what traditions you carried out that year.
And I'm gonna be honest, I almost didn't include this

(15:31):
because we missed last year. And they're like, oh man,
is it dead? We missed it? But no, I am
sticking to the fact that you can miss things certain
years and pick them back up. So we're picking back
up the our Christmas storybook. It's really pretty. It's like
very well designed. We're going to add our picture of
Santa in there, and we're going to write down all
the things we did as a family, because I think
it really will be a keepsake for my kids. So

(15:54):
you can just get on an Amazon it's like two
day shipping and it could be a really nice little
family gift this week before Christmas. Then the last thing
I'll say is if you are looking for a last
minute gift and shipping isn't an option, don't forget about
a gifted recipe club membership. When you gift a membership
that's on sale right now, you can either gift it

(16:14):
via email or you can print out a gift card.
And we've had tons of members do some really cute things,
whether it's attaching a mini whisk or spatulo, or making
their favorite recipe or printing off some of their favorite recipes.
But that can be an amazing stocking stuff for a gift.
I would say most people who are gifting it are
gifting it to a mom or a mother in law,
or if you all already a Recipe Club member and

(16:36):
you love the program and you want to cook along
with somebody, this can be a great gift, So don't
discount that, and you can get that up until the
very last minute, which is great. All Right, that's it
for today. Make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so
you never miss an episode. Remember this whole podcast was
created so you could have a quick twenty minute listen
while you map out your own meals for the week.
Listening to a podcast while imil plan has been part

(16:58):
of my own simple dinner system for as long as
I can remember, so I try to put out a
really good fit for that each week. Next week we're
taking it off. It's going to be the twenty sixth
of December and we are going to relax, enjoy family.
I hope you do the same, and we'll be back
in twenty twenty five. Thank you so much for listening today.
I'm so glad you're here. Merriest Christmas, Happy holidays. I

(17:20):
hope you have the best time spend with your families
and look forward to chatting with you