Newer traditions

I realized this year as I was making my list and checking it twice that Josh and I have developed some of our own holiday traditions. When did that happen? Somewhere in the eight years of marriage, poof! I thought I’d make myself a little catalog of how they developed so that when the kids ask me, “Why do we eat these weird sandwiches and Auntie doesn’t?” I’ll have an answer.

I’m a terrible bread maker. The science behind the magical potion called yeast seems to fail me. Even when using one of those “No Fail, even your dog could make these rolls” recipes I can’t figure out. I can get the dough to rise the first time and then doom. Predictible fail. However, the stars seem to always align when I make Hawaiian bread. And so it became our tradition that I would make Hawaiian bread on Christmas. It may have started as a necessity tradition but we’ve grown to love it. Hawaiian bread has the best aroma ever, and the taste has just a hint of pineapple. Mmmm good!

Another tradition is that we have ham for Christmas dinner, which is pretty standard; however I found this crazy ham sandwich leftover recipe last year. Mostly I hunted it down out of frustration. We had lots of ham left over and I was bored with it. Three additional uses is usually my leftover limits, and last year I still had a huge ham stack! So I turned to my favorite recipe website allrecipes.com and found this gem. It is good, people. Grilled Ham & Pineapple Sandwiches. They are dope! Sour dough bread, smear on some cream cheese, cooked ham, pineapple slice, smoosh it all in your sandwich and throw it in a fry pan until everything is nice and warm. Yes, you can’t eat it every day or your heart would stop, but it is pretty amazing stuff. I imagine it would be righteous on a Panini press. Hint, hint Santa.

Right now you are thinking, “Are all of their traditions about food??” No! Okay yeah, most of them. We like food. Non food traditions include a Homer Simpson Santa that has to be on display somewhere in the house. He seems to not get packed up every year. So Homer Santa is always watching, all year long. A set of reindeer dessert dishes that comes out every year, each has its own reindeer in full character. My favorite is Vixen. The additional of a new “couple” to the Christmas ornament collection. Last year it was a really beautiful set of Santa Mickey & Minnie. I think it will be really fun when we have 50+ couple ornaments for every Christmas we’ve spent together. Won’t that be a beautiful tree?

And so begins the 12 days of Christmas blogging. Have a topic you want to hear me ramble on about? Leave a comment because as wise Homer Santa says, "Seasons Greet-er-ings!"