Christmas Food

This was the first year in our marriage that we were going to celebrate Christmas in Hayward, just as the dbBrown family. What did that look like?  We weren't really sure. We talked about what makes it feel like Christmas to us, what foods did we grow up eating, how do we want to celebrate and what do we want our girlies growing up thinking is our normal family celebration?

We knew that presents are not the most important. We know that we wanted our focus to be on celebrating Jesus, his birth, his gift of salvation to each of us, and the promise and hope of eternal life when we die.  ...but how do we do that?!?

Food is often what our culture turns to when we get together and celebrate. Cookies, family traditional foods (even when Grandma doesn't make them anymore, someone else takes over the recipe), candy, punch. The familiar foods evoke the smiles and sweetness of memories shared over past years eating the same food or participating in the same tradition, playing the same games, listening to the same music.

Knowing we are just starting our family traditions we want to make decisions carefully and purposefully. I love celebratory food, but don't want to compromise my family's health or standard of what makes something fun and tasty just because it's a holiday. Our overall philosophy on food is to make healthy food taste delicious: high fruits and vegetables, high nuts, low dairy, meat, sugars, wheat and corn (and overall limiting processed foods as much as possible).

I thought for quite a while about what to make for our family Christmas Eve meals to make it celebratory, but still keep in integrity with our family's goals on healthy clean eating. Here's what I came up with. Our meal was delicious, plentiful, beautiful, fragrant and ....celebratory!

So here was the projected menu for our Christmas Eve meals:
-Christmas Salad with Poppy Seed Dressing
-Parmesan Spinach Balls
-Roasted Garlic Herb Mushroom Medley
-Cranberry Orange Roasted Brussels Sprouts

No, I didn't get around to making it all. Delightfully, Denver got home early and my meal-prep time was shortened, so I made an abbreviated version of what I was planning. We had roasted veggies (broccoli, beets and sweet potatoes), Parmesan Spinach Balls, and Garlic Herb Quinoa. I look forward to sharing the recipes in upcoming posts.