What a great Christmas Eve afternoon we had!

Because I decided late in the game to prepare a Christmas meal for those of our relatives who cared to join us, I went with preparing what I had on hand rather than going shopping and spend a lot of money on things I didn't have.  There was no Oreo Delight, simply because I didn't have any Jello Instant Chocolate Pudding.  I simply made two pumpkin pies and one Cherry cheesecake pie.  Looking back, I wish I'd made bread pudding instead of pumpkin pie, which we had on Thanksgiving.  

Let me stop right now and confess something:  I've never thought about it before, but I seem to prefer doing all the cooking!  Not because I think I'm such a great cook, but because I can fix what I like best, the way I enjoy it prepared.  Never before have I admitted that to myself, let alone others.  Of course, that usually means a lot of work on my part, but it's what I like to do.  Everyone is willing to bring something, which is fine as long as I can make the stuff I like to eat.  

I didn't even wear myself out cooking, either.  I boiled the chicken on Monday, then deboned and de-skinned it, put it back in the broth I cooked it in and put it in the freezer.  That part of my chicken-and-noodles was done.  On Tuesday I rolled out and cut the noodles, put them single-layer on cookie sheets, and put those in the freezer.  On Thursday I made the Ree Drummond mashed potatoes, put them in a pan, and covered them with foil (just like Ree does it).  All that saved me a lot of time and energy on Friday.  I used the grandson's oven to heat the fully-cooked ham, which left my oven free for the beans, mashed potatoes and rolls.  I gave Cliff the job of going over to the grandson's house, making the graze, and applying it to the ham.  Then I did something I'm sure most organized cooks have been doing for centuries:  for the first time in my life, I wrote down what time each item on the menu had to start cooking in order to have dinner at 3 PM.  I ended up at one point having an hour-and-a-half doing nothing, so I peeled some sweet potatoes I hadn't planned to use and cooked them.  That worked great, except for one thing:  I would have done better forgetting about the sweet potatoes, because I already had enough on the menu without them, and I had a couple of great-grandchildren showing off their cuteness outside:  Our daughter's family all came early, and I was cooking then.  That's my own fault, though.  I'll remember that next year and get my priorities right!  If I see idle time, I'll make a note to use that for family time, not for cooking another item we don't need.  One other thing I regret is that I wanted to get a group picture of all thirteen of us; several people had left before I thought about it.

Did I mention it was 70° outside?  Because there would be only thirteen of us, I had planned to eat in our trailer house, although I was a little concerned about all of us being crowded into our limited space while Covid is rampant.  Once I heard the forecast for Friday, we moved the meal to the shop, where the doors were open, we had a lot of space, and the children could play outside.  As if it were meant to be!

This is Ivan, my youngest great-grandson

He's 18 months old, but bigger than most two-year-olds

There were thirteen adults and the two great-grands.  No picture of Amara, my sweet and lovely great-granddaughter, who I think is going on three years old, and of course we missed the ones who weren't here.  After today we're done with leftovers.  All I need for New Year's is a big pot of the most delicious black-eyed peas I've ever tasted, discovered just a year ago.  You know, for good luck.  I'm not superstitious, but it's fun to pretend.

And that's how our Christmas gathering turned out.