The Small Is Beautiful Manifesto

25 December, 2008

Christmas Day Festivities

Of all the traditions that I grew up with, there wasn't one for the Christmas Breakfast/Brunch. When I became a real Momma, I decided to take hold of that meal and create something with my little family to enjoy and look forward to. My mother-in-law actually inspired the meal with her recipe for a baked french toast. After, hubbie and I tweaked it a bit, we came up with our Santa Souffle. Not really a souffle, but it sounded good.

Breakfast is a nice warm dish of Panettone and soft bread soaked in a spices custard mixture topped with sliced pears. Then we top it off with "snow", our sweetened whipped cream and maple syrup. To accompany, we have a nice ham, sliced melon and if necessary, an egg or two.

The usual pattern is for us to wake up and see what Santa brought us! I wake up, pop the Santa Souffle in the oven alongside the Ham, push the button on the coffee maker and get the video camera ready. Then the boys are allowed to walk in and find their presents.



L, realized that the Disney Statues, were loaded up with 6 Disney Passes for 3 days each! He was very excited jumping up and down with a smile from ear to ear.

Then we go to our very large stockings... stuffed with the usual, toothpaste, chocolates, socks, underwear, books, music, bookmarks, glow in the dark dinos, under eye gel, face wash, deodorant..etc.

After all the excitement, time for breakfast. By this time the oven is pumping out some great smells that arose the tummies!


Notice the Christmas Plates??? Well I use these wonderful plates every Christmas Brunch. Hopefully, these will be recalled as fond memories that Momma would do...I am missing that fork, however....



Okay now with our bellies full, we move back into the living room and open all of our presents. At this time, we also open any presents that were sent to us by family and friends. This takes a while, as we do one at at time.

The holiday naps settle in for the grown ups and the toy exploration starts with the boys. I start making our Christmas Day Meal. Typical Italian Christmas Meals are a favorite homemade pasta. Our family always did Ravioli with meatballs and pepperoni, as this was the tradition from Orsara, Puglia. There is antipasti and Christmas Cookies to follow. Every thing is made by hand, even the tomatoes were canned from the garden.
The Well Method for making pasta dough.....I saw my grandma do this every Sunday of my life. Ravioli's were only for the holidays though. Long tagliatell was for common Sundays.








Now the Dough Rests for an hour, then is rolled out into nice large sheets. Didn't take any pics of that, as I was by myself with flour hands. The filling is dolleped on the dough in rows. The dough is rolled over itself and the filling row and then cut into little squares. Viola, a Ravioli!



Now the table is set and the meal laid out before us. We are very grateful for a wonderful holiday celebration and toast to a Christmas Miracle, the birth of the light...the sun... the hope of generations!


2 comments:

Amy said...

What lovely new and old traditions. Your food photos are making me hungry!

Paige said...

That sounds like a wonderful Christmas morning! I'm in awe of the delicious food you wrote about - yum!