Christmas Meals

There are 3 main steps to helping your stress in the kitchen during December:  gathering of recipes, narrowing food items down and simplifying your meals/work.

The first step is to gather up all the recipes that you want to use for your Christmas baking.  Most people have recipes in lots of different nooks and crannies in their kitchens and December is not the time to start trying to find that one special recipe you just have to have! Make copies of these recipes or put them into a cookbook program on the computer like Mastercook and place them in your notebook.  (Hint - here is a great gift too - a collection of favorite family holiday recipes!)

The second step is to write down what meals you need to plan out as a Christmas time meal.  This would not be regular nightly meals but rather special meals you want to have throughout the Christmas season.  For example each Sunday of Advent is a special meal at our house as well as Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas morning breakfast.  Write each meal on a page in your Christmas notebook and write down the items you plan on serving with the meal.  Do not forget things like drinks, condiments, toppings, etc. that go with your main dish and sides.

The third step is to review your items for each meal and decide what can be made ahead of time and frozen or purchased pre-made from another source to help make your meal preperations more simple.  The goal is to not make your meals so stressful - consider finding a shortcut to making some parts of the meal.  An example would be to make a breakfast casserole for Christmas morning that you assemble the night before and then just place in the oven to bake while you open the first round of gifts.  If others are joining you ask them to bring even the smallest thing as it will really help you out when preparing a large meal at your house.