Skip to main content

Christmas 2020: The Meal(s)

Christmas is one of those holidays that is lined with traditions. From watching Christmas movies to making Christmas cookies, there are lots and lots of traditional activities for celebrating the holiday. Some families also have traditional meals, where certain items make an appearance during the festivities. It doesn't take too much imagination to see how these things happen a few years in a row, and then suddenly it is a family tradition.

In the case of the Mild Home, we do appreciate a nice panettone and hot chocolate, but we don't have a go-to recipe yet. Many times we visit our respective families during the holidays, so we have left-overs that we will happily feast on. We did make a seafood paella a couple of years as a means of celebrating, but it didn't stick around as a long-term thing. Basically, we're still experimenting a bit.

For this latest go-round, we decided to make a prime rib. We both appreciate it, but it wasn't something we had ever prepared ourselves, so we decided to give it a go. After all, it was Christmas and we wanted to splurge a little bit to celebrate. Like I said, it's something that the Mild Wife and I have never cooked before, so we relished the opportunity to give it a go. It's always fun cooking something new in the Mild Home.

The meal itself was pretty tasty, and we definitely liked how it turned out. We may have a new contender for a Christmas meal. However, the really fun part was in the aftermath. We had plenty of leftovers because we simply weren't going to finish all of it ourselves in one sitting. So, we cooked other meals with the left over meat. Let me tell you: prime rib tacos are delicious. So is prime rib fried rice, though I don't think I'm quite doing that particular dish justice by calling it "fried rice." All in all, the leftovers were delicious.

My absolute favorite part, though, was the fact that we had a big hunk of bone when we were done. That bone had been seasoned, it had slow-cooked in an oven, and had undoubtedly soaked up some of the fat from the meat. Basically, it seemed like a waste to throw that out. So, we made some broth out of it. Specifically, we went out of our way to add extra seasoning to it to make a pho broth.

That broth lasted for even longer than the remixed leftovers did, and it was every bit as delicious as we expected it to be. A single hunk of meat made a bunch of meals for days at a time, and left us with a profound respect for the bones from a chunk of beef.

I'm not guaranteeing that this is going to become a Christmas tradition in the Mild Home, but I'm certainly not going to bet against it, either.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Pink

Way back in high school, there was a male teacher that all the girls thought was attractive. It was an open secret that a bunch of them had crushes on him. In fact, the school newspaper even did an article about him that quoted some girl saying, "he's so cute, he even makes pink look good." Yes, he had worn a pink shirt to school one day, and it had apparently been a big hit. I was reminded of this story when my sister-in-law suggested that she would choose pink as the color for her wedding and bridal party. I don't think I've ever made a color look good before, but I remember thinking, "well, I know it's possible to not look stupid in pink as a straight guy, I guess I can try." And I think that's almost exactly what I told her. I also happened to own a gray suit, so I figured the combination would look all right. However, I was pretty much the only one willing to play along. My sister-in-law's brothers wanted absolutely no part of th...

Dreams

Normally, I don't eat very many sweets. I tend to eat pretty generous portions, but I generally prefer savory food over sweet. In fact, I usually prefer things half as sweet when possible. My preference doesn't have anything to do with health reasons, it's just one of those things that I've always liked better. That said, I do inevitably eat dessert, particularly if I'm out with other people. My stance towards dessert is roughly equivalent to those who are social drinkers . If other people want to munch on something for dessert, I'm not about to cross my arms and refuse. That'd be just a tad gauche. So, I do eat some dessert. I even have a few standby favorites that I'll usually order when presented with them (brownies, creme brulee, and apple pie). But left to my own devices, I'm not about to go hunting for dessert. Apparently, this means that the sugar can really mess with my system under the right circumstances. As I've discovered, ...

New York City Trip (Day 1)

After my crappy flight , I was now in Newark, New Jersey at 7AM on a Friday morning. I had done a little bit of reading up, so I knew which bus I needed to take and where I was going to get off. All in all, getting into the city was surprisingly easy. I suppose speaking the language does make things simpler. Through no real planning of mine (a theme of the trip, at least on my part), I picked one of the later bus stops at which to get off, Grand Central. I actually just figured that getting off at Grand Central would give me options, and heck, it's called Grand Central. That just screamed "decent place to disembark that might be close to some stuff" to me, so that's where I got off. However, it also meant that we drove down 42 nd St to get to my bus stop. That just happens to be a big street, and it gave me a glimpse of Times Square as we drove by. My bus stop choice had accidentally given me a rough layout of the city. Go me. I had about 6 hours to kill...