Cooking The Holiday Meal

For my family and I the holidays are all about the food!  Sometimes I will start planning what I am making Christmas day during the summer.

Now, here in Canada we celebrated our Thanksgiving in early October.  I honestly have no idea how those of you who are American can manage two holidays back to back.  Do you wait to decorate for Christmas until after Thanksgiving?  Do you also wait to start your holiday shopping?  Here in Canada we have the entire month of November and December to get ready for Christmas.  Much easier!  In fact, this week I am busy decorating the house getting it ready for a Santa Claus Parade party.  The parade goes by the front of our house and every year we host an open house where we serve hot chocolate and Christmas cookies to anyone who drops by.  Last year we even put out a patio heater to keep our party goers warm!

Now back to the food!  I love hosting parties at the house and have had as many as 50 people over for dinner.  Having many things done in advance is the secret to not going crazy on the day of the party.  For instance, I have set the table as much as a week in advance.  I simply throw a sheet over the whole thing to keep the dust off so that on the day of the party all I have to do is lift the sheet and the table is ready!

I also do up as much food as I can in advance.  If I am hosting a party for more than 8 people I will even do up the turkey the day before.  I slice it up and pour a little gravy over it to keep it moist and then re-heat it the next day.  No one has ever been able to tell that I did it earlier.  Another secret is that I use a tinfoil pan to reheat it in so that there are fewer dishes on the day of the party.

There are other dishes that you can make the day before so that you can get out of the kitchen and enjoy your own party.

Here's a recipe for simple mashed potatoes that my cousin gave me.  Make them the day before and re-heat them the day of your party.

Susie's Mashed Potatoes

1 large pot of potatoes, peeled and cooked

1 - 8oz pkg. of cream cheese

2 cups of sour cream

1/4 cup of butter

salt and pepper to taste

Beat all ingredients until fluffy and pour into a greased casserole dish.  Re-heat in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.

If you want fancier mashed potatoes then try this recipe from Six Sisters - Twice Baked Potato Casserole


Another one that I do up in advance is squash.  Baking a squash the day of the dinner takes up a lot of oven space.  Cut a large butternut squash in half and rub it with butter, cinnamon and a little brown sugar.  Bake at 350 until very tender.  When cooled slightly, scoop squash out of the shell and put it into a bowl.  Add salt, pepper, butter and brown sugar to taste.  Beat until smooth and pour into a greased casserole dish.  Re-heat the day of the dinner at 350 until warm.

What's nice about both these recipes is that I can cover both bowls with tinfoil and place them on a rack in the oven.  I can then set the large tinfoil pan that the turkey is in right on top of the bowls.  By simply re-heating I can stack dishes and not worry about things not cooking properly.

Be sure to utilize crock pots on the day of the party too.  I always cook my stuffing in the crock pot and the potato or squash recipe above could easily be heated in a crock pot to save room in your oven.

Come back on Monday when I will share with you my recipe for a delicious and moist turkey.  I'll also explain why I never stuff my turkey with traditional stuffing and I will share the easiest crumble recipe ever!

Better Late Than Never But Never Late Is Better

Are you habitually late?  Being late, even just once (when it counts), can make people believe that you are incompetent, self-centered and lack integrity.  More importantly, though, being late is really stressful!  We panic and forget things that we need to take with us (like a small child).  We snap at our loved ones and, of course, as soon as we are running late, we get behind someone on the road going slower than an asthmatic snail that causes our stress levels to skyrocket. 

When my boys were little my dear, sweet mother-in-law would quite often babysit for us.  However, dear, sweet mother-in-law was also chronically late.  We learned to tell her that we needed her 15 minutes before we actually did so that Mr. P and I would not be late to functions.  However, as my boys got older, my mother-in-law decided to re-enter the work force after being home for several years.  Because her job required her to meet with clients several times a week, she had to institute some strategies to help her get to these meetings on time.  The point of all of this, besides being a plug for my dear, sweet mother-in-law, is that it is possible to learn how to be on time.

Here are a few tips that you can try to help you be punctual.

1. When you need to be somewhere on time, write down your appointment 15 minutes earlier than when you really need to be there (it worked with my dear, sweet mother-in-law).  If you need to be at the dentist at 1:00pm then write it on your calendar as 12:45pm.

2. Set up some sort of reminder.  Online calendars like Cozi will text a reminder to you in advance but even just a post-it note paper clipped to your purse strap will help you remember those "can't forget" appointments.

3. Adjust the amount of time that you give yourself for your commute to account for rush hour traffic.  If you think that it will take you 30 minutes to get to your destination than give yourself 40.  Try to add at least 25% to the time you have allotted.  For me, living in a relatively small town, rush hour is when I have to wait for more than 4 cars before turning left.  More than 8 and I wonder if I should pull over for the funeral procession.

4. If you can, avoid scheduling appointments during "peak times".  A trip to a doctor's appointment at 9:00am means rush hour traffic.  If you can make it for 10:00am instead you could save valuable commuting time.  However, don't make your appointment too late because we all know that a doctor's appointment at 3:00pm usually means a good hour wait in the waiting room!

5. Don't check your email or your voicemail just before leaving.  It always takes more time than you think.

6. Be sure to fill your car's gas tank at least once a week or when it hits 1/4 full.  Never be late because you had to stop for gas.  You just can't estimate how many people will be in front of you in the line up for gas and how long they will take.  I fill my car up every Friday while I am running errands and getting groceries.

7. Streamline your morning routine.  Lay out your clothes the night before and have everything ready that you need to take with you in the morning set in one spot.  For more information on how to streamline your morning routine click here.

8.  Set your clocks ahead by a few minutes each - by different amounts.  Since you probably won't remember just how many minutes each clock is set ahead you will have to take each one at face value.  For your computer, try using the Procrastinator's Clock.  This awesome download will set your computer's clock up to 15 minutes ahead.  The trick is that it is not always 15 minutes ahead, sometimes it can be only 2 minutes or maybe 5 minutes.  It gives you a sense of urgency because, "you have to assume that the clock might actually be telling the correct time though it’s likely to actually be up to 15 minutes fast. Yikes! All that anxiety should give you a good kick in the pants to get moving, because you can’t really trust the clock to be anything but on time, even though it probably is fast."

9. Figure out what's important and prioritize. Sometimes you just don't have enough hours in the day to do all that you want to do and trying to cram in more will not give you the life that you want to live.  Lead a life of quality, not quantity.

Streamline Your Morning Routine

Have you seen the 1983 classic A Christmas Story?  It is one of my favourite movies of all time.  One of the reasons is because of the scene above.  Mom, at the stove preparing bacon, eggs, toast, oatmeal, coffee, juice and milk for her family before they head off for work and school.  I always dreamed of having a morning like that.  I can tell you right now, it never happened.  Ever.  OK, maybe on the weekend when there was that rare day that we did not have an early morning hockey practice or Mr. P did not have to run out for some plumbing emergency but this scene has never happened during the weekday when school was in.

It's almost time for the kids to go back to school and this will be the first time in 17 years that I don't have a child heading back.  I have to admit that Mr. P and I are doing a happy dance over that!  No shopping for school clothes, books, pencils, pencil crayons, back packs, lunch pails, and well, you get the picture.  And yet, I will miss those days dearly and I have a twinge of regret that I was never able to send them off like the mom in A Christmas Story.  Sometimes we set such high standards for ourselves, don't we?

This is a picture of my boys waiting for the school bus on one of their first days of school.

This is my youngest on his first day of school ever.  Excuse me while I wipe a tear!  How cute they were!

Alright, enough reminiscing and back to the topic at hand, which is, how to streamline your morning routine to get you out the door faster and with less stress.

Your morning routine actually starts the night before.  Try doing these following tasks the night before to make your morning run more smoothly:

1. Lay out your clothes for tomorrow including sock, undies, shoes and accessories.  Have everyone else do the same.

2. Program your coffee maker to come on before you roll out of bed.  There's nothing more enticing than the smell of fresh brewed coffee to make getting out of bed easier.

3. Program your thermostat so that the heat kicks on 30 minutes before you have to get out of bed.  Getting out of a nice warm bed when the room is still cold requires more willpower than saying no to dessert after 3 months on a diet!

4. Prepare your lunch or as much of it as you can.  If you don't like making your sandwich the night before because it gets soggy by lunch the next day, then place all the supplies that you will need to make it in the morning together in the fridge so that you can access it easily and know if you are out of something.

5. Check your calendar for the next day and prepare your to-do list.  This will get your mind wrapped around how you need to plan for your day to go smoothly.

6. Make sure you have enough gas in the tank of your car.  If not, fill it up after dinner instead of in the morning.

7.  Have one place where you put all the items that you need to remember to take with you the next day.  Make sure your keys are there and anything else you need to remember.  If something can't go in this spot (like the cupcakes you baked for your child's class) then put a post-it note on your keys so that you don't forget to grab them from the refrigerator.

8.  If you haven't already decided what's for dinner tomorrow, take a moment to think about it and take anything out of the freezer and place it in the fridge to defrost.

9.  Make sure that your child's backpack has everything that they will need for the day packed inside.  Do they need gym clothes, a book report, uniforms, etc.?  Make sure they are in there.

Now for the actual morning part of streamlining your morning routine.

1. Set your alarm for 30 minutes earlier to get some time to yourself.  You could use this time to run a load of laundry, exercise or, my favourite, sit quietly with a cup of coffee.

2. Get ready first so that you'll be better able to handle whatever else comes up.

3. Write down a morning routine for each family member.  Use pictures for children that are too young to read.  It will save on nagging because the kids will know exactly what they should do.

4. Don't fight with your kids' personalities.  If it takes 30 minutes to get your teenager out of bed, then start rousing him 30 minutes earlier.  If your 12 year old daughter needs to change her outfit just before leaving each morning, then announce that you will be leaving 15 minutes earlier each morning (make up some believable excuse).  When she runs and changes you will still be on time.

5. Consider fast foods for breakfast.  Not fast food, as in the golden arches, but things like smoothies, fruit and a muffin, cereal and milk.

6. Give yourself a treat.   There's no point in doing all of this preparation if you don't use the extra time in the morning for a little snuggle time or perhaps you could even go so far as a family breakfast all together at the table just like in A Christmas Story.  If you can manage that, you are my hero!