Today I have a special treat for you! My sister-in-law Tina’s family have become like family to our family and I thought I would have Lisa, Tina’s mom, share a little about their family Christmas celebrations! Lisa is an amazing hostess and completely down plays her spread in this post but you all know everything is bigger in Texas. So when she says “light and tasty” she means an amazing buffet of everything delicious!  Nothing light about it! Just to give you an example, these were “just cupcakes” Lisa made when we went to visit them at their lake house last summer!

Hi everyone,

My name is Lisa Dyer, and I am honored that Kristen wants me to write for her holiday blog.  Christmas is one of my favorite holidays, because it’s time spent with family and friends.  My husband, Craig, and I feel blessed to have the Seckinger family as part of our family.  Our only child, Christina, married Graham and now we’re one big family, creating new holiday traditions!!

You would think that having an only child would mean quiet Christmas traditions.  NO WAY!!  We always have big, loud get-togethers, combining my family and Craig’s family on Christmas Eve.  Craig’s mom and dad always very graciously hosted my entire family at their house on Christmas Eve. That’s a lot of extra people to include for the holidays, but this has created some of our fondest memories.  Last year, Craig and I were able to host Christmas Eve at our house.  We had the Dyers, the McClendons, the Holleys and the Seckingers all under one roof to celebrate.  We love that our families enjoy spending time with each other, and we’re so glad to be adding to our number every year as our kids get married and we celebrate together!   

The menu is always light and tasty.  We have queso and chips, along with stuffed jalepenos.  These are both Texas favorites!!  We also have a variety of dips and crackers, and Christmas sugar cookies.  Almost everything can be ready ahead of time, because we’re always more interested in spending time with each other and NOT in the kitchen.  The sound of my little brother playing his guitar and singing is always a pleasure to hear before and after we eat.

Santa always arrives on Christmas Eve.  The sound of firecrackers announces his arrival!!  The children run out of the front door to see what Santa has left for them.  The smoke from the firecrackers creates the illusion that Santa has left as quickly as he’s arrived!  We open our wrapped packages on Christmas Eve too.  As the presents are opened, and the wrapping paper piles up, everyone laughs, and enjoys being together!  As you can see from our pictures, we’re one BIG family!

The Dyer Family                                                                                  The McClendon Family

                                                                                                 The Seckinger Family

I am including a couple of our favorite Texas recipes for you to try over the holidays.  I hope your family enjoys them as much as we all do!!

Queso Dip

1 pound bulk pork sausage

1 medium onion, chopped

1 can cream of mushroom soup

1 can diced Rotel tomatoes

1 large block of Velveeta

In a skillet, brown the sausage with the chopped onion.  In a crockpot, combine the sausage and onions with the can of cream of mushroom soup, the diced Rotel tomatoes, and the Velveeta.  Put the crockpot on high until the cheese begins to melt, then you turn it down.  It will be ready when you’re ready!

Sausage-stuffed Jalapenos

1 pound bulk pork sausage

1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened

1 cup (4 ounces) shredded Parmesan cheese

22 large jalapeno peppers, halved lengthwise and seeded  (Pickled peppers are hotter then fresh peppers.)

Ranch salad dressing, optional

In a large skillet, cook the sausage over medium heat until no longer pink; drain.  In a small mixing bowl, combine the cream cheese and Parmesan cheese; fold in sausage.

Spoon about 1 tablespoon into each jalapeno half.  Place on an ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake, uncovered, at 425 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until filling is lightly browned and bubbly.  Serve with ranch dressing if desired.

Yield:  44 appetizers

Sugar Cookie Recipe

½ c. sugar                 2 c. flour

½ c. powdered sugar        ½ t. salt

½ c. butter, softened      ½ t. soda

½ c. oil                   ½ t. cream of tarter

1 egg                          

½ t. vanilla extract

½ t. almond extract

Directions:

Blend together sugars and butter.  Add egg, vanilla, and almond.  Mix dry ingredients together and add to previous mixture.  Refrigerate at least one hour.  (I usually refrigerate overnight for easier rolling.)  Flour your surface and roll out cookie dough, cut out desired shapes, and bake at 350’ until slightly brown around the edges.

Sugar Cookie Icing

2 c. powdered sugar

2-4 T. Milk

1 t. vanilla

Food coloring if desired

Thanks, Lisa! We’ll be missing your Texas hospitality this year! Might just have to whip up some jalapenos to make us feel a bit closer!   Thanks for sharing some family recipes…and your family!

Over the past week if you had been at our house you would have experienced dough people baking and bake fest 2012. Whew.  We also did our gingerbread house which thankfully required no baking, but smelled as if it was freshly baked!  Here are some pictures from our baking adventures!

lest you think it was all dreamy, take a look at my zopf loaf this yr! Terrible without those Swiss girls here to help me!

Oh me oh my!  Thankfully, Bake fest 2012 was more successful!

Bake fest 2012

Gingerbread house

there might have been a wall collapse

Thanks, Grandma for the gingerbread house! The boys loved working on it together! We’ve never had such a fancy kit!

Hey folks! Things are pretty jolly around here. I did the baked goods for my friends big vendor sale yesterday! None of us sold much but we met lots of sweet gals and had a great time. In lieu of baking up another storm of baked goods for neighbor  gifts I got home last night, made up baskets for neighbors and friends and we went out on a little family delivery drive.  I was worn out! I was disappointed to not sell like I did at the Embassy sales but glad that I can skip the other baking day!   Seth was a rock star this weekend while I baked and was at the sale. I came home to relaxed happy boys last night after an afternoon with daddy. Did I mention he did tons of dishes, helped with meals and even was talked into some taste-testing. What a guy.

Last week I was doing my yearly search on what fun advent gifty things people are doing. I love our open the window advent calendar and our evening devotionals. We will keep those from yr to yr but some year when I have oodles of time and a little extra cash I want to do something like this for the kids with bags containing little notes and sweets…

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Aren’t they cute?!

I found this recipe for Winter Minestrone (Barefoot Contessa) while I was pintresting advent stuff. It is a rainy chilly day here so we are snuggling down for afternoon naps and when we wake up I will make this soup and we’ll decorate our gingerbread house. Seth confessed he doesn’t have the patience to survive another gingerbread house project so we will surprise him with our finished product and frazzled nerves!

This week I hosted our MOPS cooking club. We meet monthly and have a different theme and location each month. We all bring our favorite recipe in the theme and the recipe to share. We had a theme of Thanksgiving sides this month. One friend brought some turkey and everyone else brought their favorite side dish along with the recipe to share.  I wanted to pick a recipe that was yummy, but also offered a convenient option for busy moms. So I made Gretchen Sandlund’s Mashed Potatoes.

Before I get to the potato part I have to talk about Gretchen. She was my mom’s best friend in Ohio when we lived there years ago. Gretchen was (and I am positive still is) an amazing example of using your energy to serve others and offered her home in hospitality constantly.  What she had she shared and continues to.  Even as a child I was aware that Gretchen was a rare momma.  Balancing 5 children, her husband’s busy work schedule, grocery shopping trips in the middle of the night, running the children’s choir at church, taking on the burdens of others, just to name a few….and all at once, her plate was FULL!  I am sure Gretchen was kind to me because of her friendship with my mom but I always felt loved when I was with her. She recognized my love for babies and would let me hold her itty bity babies, seemingly not freaking out that I was too young or not capable. She would prop me up in one of their lazy boy chairs and let me cuddle away. She along with my own mom and other special women fostered my desire to be a mom someday.  Her family is so special to ours. I look forward to their Christmas card each year to see how their family has grown!

Back to the mashed potatoes…

I love this recipe because you can make them the day ahead and just warm them in the oven. I love homemade mashed potatoes but hate the pot, mixer, measuring cup mess in the middle of cooking a million other things. Most things can’t be done in advance but these you can check off early! And if you wanted to get super fancy shmancy you could pipe the potatoes into individual ramekins and bake them that way.

Disclaimer: my mom wrote down Gretchen’s recipe years ago and my mom is known for reconstructing recipes when she loses the original. So when Gretchen writes to me with any corrections I will update the below recipe.  (I completely forgot to take a picture so you just have to trust me on this one!)

Gretchen’s Mashed Potatoes

1 bag Russet or Yukon Gold potatoes

1 8 oz package of cream cheese, softened

1 stick of butter, softened

1 cup half and half

1 T seasoning salt

1/2 tsp onion salt (I used onion powder for flavor but not added salt) 

Pepper to taste

Boil the potatoes until tender. Put into a mixer and whip with all other ingredients. After the potatoes are nice and smooth spread into a casserole pan. Refrigerate until ready to serve, bake at 350 for 30 mins or until heated through.  Enjoy!

And while we are on the topic of side dishes I thought I would throw this one out there too just in case anyone is tired of the same old sides. This one was introduced to us in Germany by our friends Bo and Leigh. When I asked Bo for the recipe after our first introduction to it this is what he sent me…clearly he loves it!   I am still tracking down the original source but for today we will give credit to Bo because I am betting he loves it more than the person who first concocted it. *update…he thinks it’s Paula Deen that created it. I found the link to her magazine post with the original.

Harvest Casserole

Paula Deen

a.k.a – “Awesomeness”

 Serves: 10-12 people (or 5-6 people who know how important it is to go back for seconds)

 5 cups (1/4 inch diced) sweet potatoes [about 2 large]

5 cups chopped Granny Smith apples [about 3 medium]

1 cup sweetened dried cranberries

1 ½ cup firmly packed brown sugar – [divided]

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon – [divided]

¼ teaspoon of salt

¼ cup of butter [1/2 stick cut into teaspoon size pats]

1 cup quick-cooking oatmeal

¼ cup all purpose flour

½ cup stick of butter, melted

 Method:

1. Preheat oven to 400 F ***adjust for Celsius***
2. In a large bowl, combine sweet potatoes, apples and dried cranberries
3. In a small bowl, combine ½ cup of brown sugar, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, and the salt.
4. Add to the sweet potato/apple/cranberry mixture, tossing to combine.
5. Spoon into sprayed 13 X 9 X 2 inch baking dish (or similar size) ***cover with oil to avoid sticking***
6. Dot with butter pats.
7. In a small bowl, mix oatmeal, 1 cup brown sugar, flour and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon. Stir in melted butter (1 stick).
8. Spoon evenly over casserole.
9. Bake covered in foil for 45 minutes.
10. Uncover and bake for 30 minutes.
11. Eat until you burst with awesomeness.

Tips:

• Sometimes, I’ve found the need to add a little more cinnamon to achieve the taste, so go with it by sight. If it looks like it needs more, add another teaspoon or two.
• I’ve also sometimes up the amount of oatmeal to achieve a bit fuller coating. Once again, judge by the eye. If you need more, add about 1/3 to ½ cup.
• Don’t forget to spray Pam or oil the casserole so the stuff doesn’t stick.
• As it bakes, the butter will combine with the sweet potato and apple juices, so it doesn’t hurt to cut the apples and sweet potatoes up earlier and let them sit in the fridge for a bit to dry out slightly so there is less liquid on the bottom of the casserole.

What sides are you all making this year? This is our first yr in a while to not have to make a turkey and host Thanksgiving dinner. We are going to celebrate at my Aunt and Uncle’s house so I get to just contribute the meal with pies, appetizers and fun stuff and not host the whole shebang. It will be a nice break. Although I might have to buy a turkey on sale the day after just so our house can smell like thanksgiving.