Christmas Day

So here we are, finally with the details of our Cajun Christmas at Randy's brother, Jason's house.  I stupid forgot my camera Christmas afternoon/night, so I had to get all my pictures from my dad.  

Every year before Randy (or B.R.) my family did a traditional type of Christmas with Stouffer's lasagne Christmas eve and ham for Christmas dinner.  When Randy and I started hosting Christmas we decided to do something a little non-traditional, so we did something everyone likes, Italian food.  Last year we had chicken cacciatore, meatballs and spaghetti and canolli cake for dessert.  Jason then hosted "Second Christmas" (Randy's dad was away for Christmas Day for work, so we celebrated twice.  We are totally ok with celebrating things twice in our family, especially Christmas.)  Jason chose his theme as southern Christmas with BBQ, red pepper corn, etc.  

There was some concern in Randy's family that my family might be offended by having a themed Christmas celebration.  I can understand the concern, that all the hullaballoo would make us forget the true reason for Christmas, but I don't think that's the case.  Everyone celebrates Christmas differently, so we realize it's not for everyone.  Having us all together for Christmas, Jews and Gentiles, working together to create a wonderful meal for each other and celebrate the birth of Christ together, I think that is at least part of what Christmas is all about.  Both of our families were all for it, helped plan, and participated.  Randy's grandmother is probably rolling over in her grave.

Jason went all out and created a Cajun Christmas wonderland with a Christmas tree, beads, purple tablecloths, gold and green sparkles and mardi gras masks.  We had a full spread complete with gumbo appetizer, shrimp etouffee, jambalaya, greens, crawfish, two vegetable soufflees, pecan pie and bananas foster over home-made icecream.  Now let's be honest here, we're a bunch of yanks from Philly.  We've been down south, we love Paula Deen like we love cheesesteaks, but cooking this kind of stuff is not second nature to us.  We relied heavily on the food network website, and everything turned out beautifully.

Randy likes to play with his food.

Here we are too busy enjoying the awesome food to look up for pictures.  See the pretty purple paper tablecloths?  Easy clean-up!  All those little specks are tiny shiny stars.  Jason even had gorgeous little red and yellow damask print napkins and played jazz music.  The man is genius at creating a mood.

Jason bought awesome masks and beads from the Party store.

If anyone from the south is reading this, I'm sure you have fabulous recipes for your favorite Cajun foods.  For those non-southerners like us who crave awesome southern food that we can't get every day, we Philadelphians really liked these recipes:

Gumbo over steamed rice

Jambalaya

Shrimp Etouffee

Pecan Pie - from the Red and White checkered Betty Crocker cook book that everyone and their mother (literally) has.

Bananas Foster

If you haven't made Bananas Foster before, the flame can be a little daunting.  I have now made it four times, including Christmas, and it was super easy.  I didn't even burn Jason's house down.  I did, however, make flames shoot about halfway up his microwave over his stove.  Nothing melted and there were no scorch marks, so I would consider it a success.  And if you've never had it before, it's soooooooooooo good, and you don't even have to like bananas.  It's so rich a yummy, like caramelized sunshine.  Of course, please be careful as anything flammable can be very dangerous.  Also, the bananas get very very hot, so even if you serve it over ice cream, please let it cool a little before you enjoy.  I heard about my delicious hot bananas for hours when I made it this past weekend for our friends in State College.  Don't worry about your ice cream melting, it mixes together with the butter and brown sugar mixture and it's a-MAZ-ing.

After dinner we all piled in two cars and hit a local Christmas attraction, two houses all decked out for Christmas.

It's a little over the top, but hey, go hard or go home, right?

Anyone else have any themed Christmas celebrations?  Just us?