Christmas Dinner

Heather and I wanted to have Christmas dinner. We knew that Mom would likely be far too busy to manage, even with us helping her out. So we talked it over with Megan, and decided to cook the whole thing ourselves. Mom just about cried when we floated the idea by her.

Heather works at a hospital, and every year the hospital gives all of its employees a free twenty-pound turkey for Christmas. We designated Megan the turkey preparer, leaving her the wonderful task of cleaning it. She also prepared some made-from-scratch biscuits using her mom's recipe. Heather and I handled the rest of the menu: mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, deviled eggs, dressing, and banana pudding. Apart from the banana pudding--which Mom taught me to make a year or so ago--I'd never prepared any of it, so I learned from Heather how to make the taters and deviled eggs.

We had a blast the whole way through. I strongly recommend against cooking Christmas dinner alone; it's so much fun with other people in the kitchen! We had everything ready right on time, and the five of us sat down for a delicious meal. It was awesome.



After dinner, Dad made his rounds of all three shops, making sure everybody was good to go for Christmas. (Christmas is the busiest day of the year for most Waffle Houses, since they're one of the very few restaurants open.) We got to one of the shops right in the middle of a pretty impressive rush, especially for 9pm on Christmas Eve. It was nothing they couldn't handle, especially with Dad jumping in to help, and it settled down pretty quickly.