Holiday Eating

Hi friends, how was your Christmas? Mine was great!  This year we decided to host our first annual Boxing Day party with my family and Phil’s so we could continue on celebrating after Xmas Eve and Xmas spent at both our parent's homes. We wanted it as low maintenance as possible since I wouldn’t have much time to prep being out of the house for two days leading up, so everybody brought a dish. We had tons of food! We’re still eating all the leftovers, actually. I didn’t take photos since everybody arrived at the same time and we all quickly dove in. Here, however, is the hot mulled cider I made. I wish I could tell you I made it from scratch, but as I said we wanted it as low maintenance as possible. So instead I picked up a bottle of apple cider from the refrigerator section and added my own mulling spices… clove, cinnamon sticks, star of anise and added chopped apple and orange slices. We only added alcohol as we served it since we wanted something for the kids to enjoy too. I think you usually add rum but we added Cointreau. Oh, and we kept it hot in the crock pot Phil’s sister leant us (thanks Vic!).

The apron I found in my stocking from my mom and my new curlers from Phil’s mom. Who is that person??

With the leftover ham my mom brought I decided to make ham and split pea soup.

Meaty ham bone
16 Cups of water
4 Large carrots
1 Large onion, chopped
2 Celery, chopped
2 1/4 Cups of dried split peas, rinsed
1 Tsp table salt
1/4 Tsp black pepper

Cover ham bone in 16 cups water in a deep pot, uncovered and simmer.

Chop 2 carrots, onion and celery and add to pot with rinsed split peas, table salt, pepper and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until peas are falling apart and soup is slightly thickened, about 2 hours.  That's it!